Marx Religion Reference Taken Out Of Context

To the editors:

I have only recently come across the June 1 dissent from the Crimson staff editorial on gay rights. The writers argue that the pro-gay argument is intolerant to religion.

I don't want to argue with the writers on the merits of the issue, just to ponder at their use of Marx's saying that democracy provides freedom of religion, not freedom from religion. The writers use this saying to support their argument. But Marx said that as a critique of the human rights idea, as manifested in the French Declaration of the Rights of Man.

Marx was concerned that the human rights idea did not provide "man" with "real" freedom: it provided freedom of religion, but not freedom from religion, which Marx thought desirable. It provided freedom of property, not the freedom from property, which Marx wanted.

In Marx's view, this human rights idea only protected the rights of egoistic man, not of man as "species-being." So Marx's saying was a critique, not a happy description. To invoke it so out of context is absurd. AEYAL GROSS   Aug 13, 1998

The writer is on the law faculty of Tel-Aviv University.