Saturday, October 1, 2011

TFTD: Bigotry By The 'Tolerant'

Anyone ever notice that the most intolerant people out there are the people who champion tolerance? 

When it comes to dealing with views they dislike, they are perfectly willing to spew invective demonizing their opponents and seeking to prevent themselves from operating any sort of "public" ministry (such as hospitals and orphanages) because of their "intolerance," even though tolerate itself means:

1 allow the existence or occurrence of (something that one dislikes or disagrees with) without interference.

2 endure (someone or something unpleasant) with forbearance.

Soanes, C., & Stevenson, A. (2004). Concise Oxford English dictionary (11th ed.). Oxford: Oxford University Press.

We have a denial that there are any sort of absolute moral right and wrong.  Therefore opposition to certain acts are claimed to be arbitrary and imposing beliefs on others – which is seen as morally wrong….

Wait… what?

If there is no sort of moral absolute in terms of right or wrong, then there is nothing right about being tolerant and nothing wrong about being intolerant.  Indeed, under the rhetoric of "tolerance," and protecting people from those who are "pushing their views on others," they are in fact intolerant and pushing their views on others.

America should wake up and realize that a major religion which has often praised America for the religious freedom which allowed her to practice her faith unhindered now feels she must prepare for a growing wave of religious intolerance in America.  This growing wave is not from fundamentalist anti-Catholics, but from the policies of the United States government.

Archbishop Dolan writes:

The federal Department of Justice has ratcheted up its attack on the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) as an act of bigotry.  As you know, in March, the Department stopped defending DOMA against constitutional challenges, and the Conference spoke out against that decision.  But in July, the Department started filing briefs actively attacking DOMA’s constitutionality, claiming that supporters of the law could only have been motivated by bias and prejudice.  If the label of ―bigot sticks to us—especially in court—because of our teaching on marriage, we’ll have church-state conflicts for years to come as a result.

So let's cut to the chase here.  If tolerance is the rule of the game, you'll tolerate us as we try to bring to the attention of the world the teachings of Christ making sober, reasoned appeals as to why our view is correct.  If you believe we are morally wrong in our stance, then you are just as obligated to show the objective basis for your position as we are for ours.

The person who refuses to do either is certainly behaving hypocritically.  The government which refuses to do either is behaving in a tyrannical manner.

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