This editorial appeared in The Kansas City Star.
Only 26 University of Notre Dame graduates skipped their commencement ceremony Sunday to protest the school's decision to give President Barack Obama a speaker's platform and an honorary degree.
Meanwhile, about 2,900 graduates filed into the Joyce Center basketball arena to listen to Obama and the university's president, the Rev. John I. Jenkins, make an eloquent case for respectful discourse, even on the polarizing topic of abortion.
It's also telling that many of the demonstrators who massed at the campus' fringe had no connection with the university. Most were veteran protesters affiliated with groups that exist to oppose a woman's right to terminate a pregnancy.
The abortion debate generates a great deal of sound and fury, as indicated by the protests that erupted when Notre Dame, a prominent Catholic university, issued a commencement invitation to a president who supports abortion rights.
But most Americans have more in common with the 12,000 graduates, families and friends who were inside the Notre Dame arena than with the demonstrators outside.
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