Imagine, if you will, a prestigious national forum inviting a former movie star -- a politically conservative one -- to give a big speech down the block from the White House. For the sake of argument only, imagine more precisely that the actor is Charlton Heston, the president of the National Rifle Association, and that during the course of his remarks he chooses to slam one of his adversaries like this:

"The leadership of the American Civil Liberties Union doesn’t care about children who don’t look like them. As far as those leaders are concerned, other children can be eliminated."

I emphasize Heston never said this and never would or could. But let’s assume, once more for the sake of argument, that he did, for whatever ineffable reason, rant along these lines. What do you think the reaction would be among America’s leading editorialists and columnists, to pick just one group of social arbiters?

The short, obvious answer is that they would rip the life out of him, and justifiably so. "Pray tell, Moses," scores of word processors would drip, "how do you propose that ACLU children be ‘eliminated’? By automatic gunfire? Or by more biblical weaponry?"

For those who can’t imagine the point of this seemingly absurd exercise in "what if," permit me to report on what another former movie star, a politically liberal one this time, really did say a few months ago in Washington. Let me also brief you on the remarkable uproar in the media that her remarks did not provoke.

Following her speech last June at the National Press Club about preventing teenage pregnancies, Jane Fonda was asked why she thought "Christian conservatives object so strongly to sex education in the schools." While drawing a distinction between rank-and-file members of the Christian Coalition (whom she implicitly characterized as dull sheep) and the organization's leadership, she said this of the latter men and women:

"They don't care about children that don't look like them. They don't care about children that are not white, middle-class Christians. As far as they are concerned, others can be eliminated."

I would ask readers to pause here and reread the last three sentences with the care such an indictment, no matter how sarcastically made, demands.

Senior officials, Fonda claimed, of a significant American organization, are so uninterested in the fate of poor children, black children, Jewish children, and all other boys and girls who are not white, middle-class, and Christian, that they would just as soon see them smote dead. What hideous slander.

What, you say? You don't remember this episode? Well, that's perfectly understandable insofar as only a handful journalists and other opinion leaders across the country saw fit to comment on it at the time. A computer search found only a few pieces here and there, with not a single word, I’m afraid, spotted in either the Star Tribune or Pioneer Press.

Suffice it to say, Fonda’s remarks didn’t provoke nearly the outpouring of outrage that doubtless would have resulted if a conservative had said something so monumentally nasty.

I don’t want to fall into a rant of my own here about liberal bias in the media. But it’s hard to think of a more exquisite example of the kind of double standard that causes folks on the right to foam.

One might respond at this point: Hold your lather, pal. It’s only "Hanoi Jane," a woman of world-class bad judgment and taste. Why take her seriously? I can think of at least four reasons.

For starters, the National Press Club, which regularly hosts heads of state for lunch, thought she was important enough to grace its podium. She appeared there, not just as a celebrity, but as founder and chair of a consequential organization, the Georgia Campaign for Adolescent Pregnancy Prevention. Not the least bit incidentally, she is married to Ted Turner, one of the most powerful media tycoons on Earth. And fourth, while her remarks were miles beyond the pale -- and presumably understood as such by most citizens who don’t especially like religious conservatives -- her comments did capture the rudiments of the wild intolerance routinely manifested by some of those very same anti-right critics.

What, you say again? I have things upside down? That if the subject is bigotry, that religious conservatives hardly can be portrayed as innocents? Let me close by perhaps irritating a broader crew.

I start firmly from the premise that those of more traditional or orthodox faith are no less generous with their compassion and charity than are those on the liberal side of the theological aisle. I likewise believe the United States profits sizably from the increased political participation of religious conservatives and from the rise of organizations such as the Christian Coalition. But at the same time, I’m often made sorely uncomfortable by the fervor with which some on the "Religious Right" tackle one issue in particular, that of homosexuality.

It’s not that I disagree with them when it comes to most specific questions; for instance, I too am opposed to the idea of gay marriage. Rather, I deeply wish that activists on the right would more universally pursue their advocacy and protest in this area with more apparent warmth and less seeming preoccupation. I wish this not just for intrinsic reasons, but also because as long as it’s not the case, religious and other conservatives will continue inviting extra rounds of unfair shots about their very decency -- and not just when the topic is teenage pregnancy and not just from the enlightened and kind-hearted likes of Jane Fonda.