RAZORMOUTH: Tolerate This!!!

I don’t know if I can tolerate one more letter or article on tolerance. This word has lost all meaning. It’s been relegated to the status of a swear word. You know, the four-letter type used by bar-hopping, dope-smoking, baby-making adolescents whose acumen for the English language is equivalent to that of a Neanderthal; the only problem is there are too many letters. But really, this word is used to justify every licentious practice under the sun, so it may as well be a swear word.

Tolerance, as a judicial concept, interestingly enough finds its origins in Christian jurisprudence. Tolerance refers to the discretionary acceptance of an opposing religious view. For example, the English parliament of 1689 passed a law that granted partial freedom of worship to dissenters from the established Church of England. They called it the Toleration Act.

Now, I’m not here to argue the merits, or non-merits of that act, but I want to point out a very important point, tolerance means: limited and discretionary acceptance. To be tolerant of something or someone doesn’t mean acquiescence, and it doesn’t mean that you can’t speak out in opposition.

But based on the flurry of articles all decrying the rhetoric of the religious-right and calling for toleration, it’s clear that this word has been co-opted by some of the least discretionary people. To add insult to injury, many of them are indiscreetly propagating their immorality and insisting that traditional Christians turn a blind eye, shut off their minds, empty their hearts, flush their moral and religious views down the toilet, and shut up! Tolerance to them means total capitulation to their view.

The irony is that while they’re clamouring for us to zip it up, they’ve got every Christophobic pundit out there preaching about their god-given rights. “If a man wants to sodomize another man—tolerate it!” “If a woman wants to terminate an inconvenient child—tolerate it!” “If the public schools are going to be used for the purposes of homosexual propaganda—tolerate it!” “If tax dollars are used to promote queer causes—tolerate it!” With one accord the hue and cry is: “Tolerate it, or else!”

Tolerance they say? Well, tolerate this. I don’t have to agree with your lascivious and self-destructive lifestyle. And I, and every other Christian, has the right to openly express our opinions, judgments and God-given wisdom—tolerate that. And, just like homosexual-activists, we have every right to promote our religious views and influence an uninformed populace—tolerate that! And if a homosexual embraces Christ and rejects his lifestyle all because we, by the grace of God, intervened, well, I guess you’ll just have to tolerate it.

Yes, tolerance. I believe in tolerance. I believe in it so much, I won’t harass people just because they disagree with me. In fact, I won’t use the Human Rights Commission to impose my moral disposition on those who propagate views and lifestyles which are inherently sinful and self-destructive. I don’t sue those who promote perversion. I don’t threaten. I don’t harm in anyway. No, I tolerate.

And I’m not alone, many others do the same. We tolerate. Our tolerance is a fait accompli, because we believe in the rule of law and respect for human life. We believe in civility, and we believe in due process. But we keep hearing the same tired song: “If only we would learn to tolerate each other.” Folks, our tolerance is tolerance!

But, our tolerance stops far short of complete capitulation. Toleration, doesn’t mean we’ll empty our minds and suddenly be overwhelmed with warm fuzzies for the opposition. It does not mean that we’ll shut up, zip up and go away. And tolerance does not mean we’ll stop being political and use the democratic process to gain the upper hand, influence society, and see the dawn of civility return to America, or Canada, where I live.

Let’s get something straight: Toleration doesn’t mean that traditional Christians will hide in the closet, which I suspect is what all Christophobes want. Tolerate that!

DECONSTRUCTING LIBERAL TOLERANCE by Francis J. Beckwith

Absolute tolerance is altogether impossible; the allegedly absolute tolerance turns into ferocious hatred of those who have stated clearly and most forcefully that there are unchangeable standards founded in the nature of man and the nature of things; Leo Strauss, Liberalism Ancient and Modern

SYNOPSIS Liberal Tolerance is perhaps the primary challenge to the Christian worldview current in North American popular culture. Proponents of this viewpoint argue that it is intolerant and inconsistent with the principles of a free and open society for Christians (and others) to claim that their moral and religious perspective is correct and ought to be embraced by all citizens.

Liberal tolerance is not what it appears to be, however. It is a partisan philosophical perspective with its own set of dogmas. It assumes, for instance, a relativistic view of moral and religious knowledge. This assumption has shaped the way many people think about issues such as homosexuality, abortion rights, and religious truth claims, leading them to believe that a liberally tolerant posture concerning these issues is the correct one and that it ought to be reflected in our laws and customs. But this posture is dogmatic, intolerant, and coercive, for it asserts that there is only one correct view on these issues, and if one does not comply with it, one will face public ridicule, demagogic tactics, and perhaps legal reprisals. Liberal Tolerance is neither liberal nor tolerant. _________________________________________________________

Our assessments of the future are always at the mercy of unexpected contingencies. Perhaps, like the Berlin Wall, current academic and cultural fads that challenge Christian orthodoxy will soon crumble by the sheer force of their internal contradictions, coupled by the ascendancy of both the vibrant movement of Christian thinkers within the discipline of philosophy and the growing criticism of Darwinism and naturalism by Phillip Johnson and others. Perhaps. But barring such a near-miraculous cultural turnaround, I offer a number of observations. This article will suggest some ways that Christian thinkers and cultural critics may defend their faith if present trends continue.

First, do you remember the words of John Lennon, put to song in the mid-1970s? Imagine there’s no heaven; It’s easy if you try No hell below us; Above us only sky.... Imagine no possessions; It isn’t hard to do Nothing to kill or die for; And no religion too You may say I’m a dreamer, but I’m not the only one Someday you’ll join us, and the world will be as one. Those who came of age under the tutelage of Lennon and his contemporaries are now dominant in our most prestigious institutions of cultural influence: law, education, the media, and the social sciences. Although the optimism of these former flower children may be waning, their totalitarian impulses, implied in Lennon’s call for global unanimity on matters controversial, are in full bloom. We will call their project liberal tolerance.

Relativism: The Ground of Liberal Tolerance Liberal tolerance is grounded in relativism, . This notithe view that no one point of view on moral and religious knowledge is objectively correct for every person in every time and placeon, as understood and embraced in popular culture, feeds on the fact of pluralism, the reality of a plurality of different and contrary opinions on religious and moral matters. Against this backdrop, many in our culture conclude that one cannot say that one's view on religious and moral matters is better than anyone else's view. They assert that it is a mistake to claim that one's religious beliefs are exclusively correct and that believers in other faiths, no matter how sincere or devoted, hold false beliefs. Thus, religious inclusivism is the correct position to hold.

Relativism, pluralism, and religious inclusivism are the planks in a creed that does not tolerate any rivals. Its high-minded commitment to openness prohibits the possibility that anything is absolutely good, true, and beautiful. This was the central thesis of Alan Bloom's 1987 best seller, The Closing of the American Mind. Bloom writes: The relativity of truth [for college students in American culture] is not a theoretical insight but a moral postulate, the condition of a free society, or so they see it.... The point is not to correct the mistakes and really be right; rather it is not to think you are right at all. The students, of course, cannot defend their opinion. It is something with which they have been indoctrinated[i] According to Bloom, by dogmatically maintaining there is no truth, people who are relativists have become close-minded to the possibility of knowing the truth, if in fact it does exist. To understand what Bloom means, consider the following dialogue (based loosely on a real-life exchange) between a high school teacher and her student, Elizabeth:[ii] Teacher: Welcome, students. Since this is the first day of class, I want to lay down some ground rules. First, since no one has the truth, you should be open-minded to the opinions of your fellow students. Second....Elizabeth, do you have a question? Elizabeth: Yes, I do. If nobody has the truth, isn’t that a good reason for me not to listen to my fellow students? After all, if nobody has the truth, why should I waste my time listening to other people and their opinions. What would be the point? Only if somebody has the truth does it make sense to be open-minded. Don’t you agree? Teacher: No, I don’t. Are you claiming to know the truth? Isn’t that a bit arrogant and dogmatic? Elizabeth: Not at all. Rather, I think it’s dogmatic, as well as arrogant, to assert that there is not one person on earth who knows the truth. After all, have you met every person in the world and quizzed them exhaustively? If not, how can you make such a claim? Also, I believe it is actually the opposite of arrogance to say that I will alter my opinions to fit the truth whenever and wherever I find it. And if I happen to think that I have good reason to believe I do know the truth and would like to share it with you, why won’t you listen to me? Why would you automatically discredit my opinion before it is even uttered? I thought we were supposed to listen to everyone’s opinion? Teacher: This should prove to be an interesting semester. Another Student: (blurts out): Ain’t that the truth. (the students laugh)

The proponent of liberal tolerance, it turns out, is not the celebrant of diversity he portrays himself to be. Perhaps another example, one from popular culture, will be instructive. In 1997, in her acceptance speech for an Emmy for cowriting the coming out episode of Ellen, Ellen DeGeneres said, "I accept this on behalf of all people, and the teen-agers out there especially, who think there is something wrong with them because they are gay. There's nothing wrong with you. Don’t ever let anybody make you feel ashamed of who you are. There are many who, after hearing or reading Ellen's speech, applauded her for her liberal sensibilities, concluding that the actress is an open and tolerant person who is merely interested in helping young people better understand their own sexuality. If you think this way, you are mistaken. Ellen’s speech is an example of what I call “passive-aggressive tyranny. The trick is to sound passive and accepting of diversity; while at the same time putting forth an aggressively partisan agenda and implying that those who disagree are not only stupid but also harmful. In order to understand this point, imagine if a conservative Christian Emmy-award winner had said, "I accept this on behalf of all people, and the teen-agers out there especially, who think there is something wrong with them because they believe that human beings are made for a purpose and that purpose includes the building of community with its foundation being heterosexual monogamy." There's nothing wrong with you. Don't ever let anybody, especially television script writers, make you feel ashamed because of what you believe is true about reality Clearly this would imply that those who affirm liberal views on sexuality are wrong. An award winner who made this speech would be denounced as narrow, bigoted, and intolerant. That person could expect never again to work in Hollywood. Ironically, Ellen's Emmy speech does the same to those with whom she disagrees. By encouraging people to believe there is nothing wrong with their homosexuality, she is saying there is something wrong with those (i.e., Christians and other social conservatives) who don't agree with this prescription. This condemnation is evident in the script of the show for which Ellen won an Emmy. In that famous coming out episode, the writers presumed that one is either bigoted or ignorant if one thinks Ellen's homosexuality is deviant and that such a one is incapable of having a thoughtful, carefully wrought case against homosexuality. Such hubris is astounding. It presumes not only that Ellen's detractors are wrong but also that they are stupid, irrational, and evil and should not even be allowed to make their case. They are, in a word, diseased, suffering from that made-up ailment, homophobia What a strange way to attack one's opponents! After all, whether one fears homosexuals is irrelevant to the question of whether homosexual practice is natural, healthy, and moral. No one would say that the arguments of an antiwar protestor should not be taken seriously on the grounds that he is hemophobic that is, fearful of bloodshed. Moreover, if one is homophobic (assuming there is such a thing), that is, suffering from a phobia as one would suffer from claustrophobia, then the homophobe cannot help himself and is therefore suffering from a mental disorder, perhaps one that is the result of his genes. Consequently, calling someone homophobic is tantamount to making fun of the handicapped, unless of course the accuser is himself homophobic.

Ms. DeGeneres has every right to think those who don't agree with her judgments on human sexuality are wrong. The problem is that she and her more cerebral and sophisticated colleagues present their judgments as if they were not judgments. They believe their views to be in some sense “neutral. From their perspective they are merely letting people live any way they choose. But this is not neutral at all. It presupposes a particular and controversial view of human nature, human community, and human happiness. It assumes that only three elements, if present, make a sexual practice morally permissible: adult consent, one’s desire, and the lack of intrusion into another person’s lifestyle orientation (i.e it doesn't hurt anybody). This, of course, is not obvious. For example, an adult male who receives gratification as a result of pedophile fantasies while secretly viewing his neighbor's young children, though he never acts on his fantasies and nobody ever finds out, is acting consistently with these three elements. Nevertheless, it seems counterintuitive to say what he is doing is on par with heterosexual monogamy and ought to be treated as such. By what principle can the Ellenites exclude this gentleman from the “tolerance” they accord more chic sexual orientations? At the end of the day, Ellen's viewpoint is one that affirms what its proponents believe is good, true, and beautiful, while implying that those who dispute this viewpoint are incorrect.

Ellen is as intolerant and narrow as her detractors. In the words of Lieutenant Columbo, the proponent of liberal tolerance is pulling a fast one. She eschews reason, objective morality, and exclusivity, while at the same time proposing that liberal tolerance is the most high-minded, righteous, and philosophically correct perspective that any reflective person with a university education can possibly embrace. Even the most sophisticated defenders of this viewpoint, whether intentionally or not, cannot seem to avoid this philosophical fax paus.

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