To Be or Not to Be... Tolerance?

In the name of tolerance, girls’ high school teams in California and elsewhere must now accept male players who feel female. In the name of tolerance, businesses cannot fire a man who one day shows up on the sales floor dressed as a woman. For the left, tolerance does not mean tolerance. It means first, acceptance. And second, celebration. That is totalitarianism: You not only have to live with what you differ with, but you have to celebrate it or pay a price. Tolerance is not really the issue with our debate about homosexuality. Homosexual behavior is already legal in the United States. Again, the issue in this debate is whether we should we go beyond tolerance to endorsement. It’s one thing to permit homosexuality; it’s quite another to promote it by endorsing same-sex marriage. It is interesting to note, however, that when homosexual activists ask for tolerance, they are implicitly admitting that there’s something wrong with their behavior. After all, you don’t need to ask people to “tolerate” good behavior. Tolerance is a virtue if you’re talking about listening to other points of view, but it’s a vice if you’re talking about letting destructive behavior overrun your society. All civilized societies are intolerant of harmful behaviors such as murder, rape, and theft for example.

We are called to go beyond tolerance to love . Tolerance is too weak . Tolerance says, “Hold your nose and put up with them." Love says, “Reach out and help them .” Love does not allow us to be indifferent to acts that destroy other people, and it certainly doesn’t allow us to endorse such acts. So according to homosexual activists, only people who oppose them have to be tolerant—they somehow have a moral right to impose their views on everyone else without anyone’s consent . And if you disagree, you might be cited for a “hate-crime .” For homosexual activists, tolerance is a one-way street.