Tolerance as the highest principle must be oppressive

While proponents of homosexual rights keep saying that the new regime they seek will preserve the rights of non-homosexualists, the evidence suggests otherwise. Based on an article by Rory Leishman, Paul Cella catalogs

the harrying scrutiny, harassment, and finally, legal penalties to which Canadians are subject if they publicly deviate from Liberal orthodoxy on homosexuality. A mayor fined $10,000 for refusing to proclaim a gay Pride Weekend in her town, and ordered to issue the proclamation, her freedom of religious expression being emphatically subordinate to the equality of homosexuality; a print shop owner fined $5,000 for refusing, in his private business, to print materials for a gay organization, and duly ordered to print the materials; a school teacher ordered to stop writing letters to the editor denouncing homosexuality or lose his job; a citizen and a newspaper editor each ordered to pay $4,500 in damages for publishing a newspaper ad which included biblical versus condemning homosexuality; a Catholic high school ordered to allow a 17-year-old to attend a dance with his partner; civil marriage commissioners (as well as “virtually everyone else engaged in the provision of secular services for marriage ceremonies”) ordered to marry gays or lose their jobs, their personal beliefs notwithstanding; and so on. Meanwhile in Europe, a nominee for justice commissioner was rejected because, being Roman Catholic, he cleaved to Catholic teaching on human sexuality.

… The drab picture painted by Mr. Leishman … is, in the final analysis, the inevitable consequence of the legal regime of Tolerance. For tolerance, when enshrined as a guiding dogma, must become an oppression. Tolerance knows no principles outside itself; there is nothing within it to check its own action.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at May 28, 2005 05:12 PM | Send