Tolerance remains alive and well
Where does senator get that people are being forced to not believe?
In an op-ed on July 31, Sen. William Sharer of Farmington wrote about confusing tolerance with acceptance.
He goes on at length about how tolerant Americans are, then claims tolerance has been confused with acceptance, which he does not support.
He puts up a straw man — a ridiculous assertion, tied to a group or idea you want to run down, that can be easily destroyed — then proceeds to destroy it. This is like saying “Democrats want to force everyone to become Communists” and then showing how bad forcing people to become Communists would be as a way of running down Democrats.
He says “We are bombarded with the idea that it is intolerant to mention God. I say it is intolerant to forbid the mention of God by people of faith.” I, personally, have never heard anyone say it was intolerant to mention God. I have, I admit, heard of prayer and religious instruction being forbidden where it violated the separation of church and state.
He says “To force people into conduct that is against their faith is intolerant.” I can only assume he’s referring to those two dozen or so cases across the entire United States where religious people have refused to serve gay people in some way or other — wedding cakes, marriage licenses and so forth. Personally, I think in several of those cases the religious person was in the right, and in others not so much. This will have to be fought out in the courts as was desegregation. There are limits to both religious exceptions — as in I’m an emergency room doctor, but it’s against my religion to treat women — and government control — as in you’re an orthodox Jew, but you work in a restaurant, so you have to handle pork.
He says “To forbid them from even acknowledging their faith publicly is the epitome of intolerance.” Now where has this happened? To what does he refer? Have some ministers been told that they can’t admit to being Christians unless they were inside a church?
He says “It is also intolerant to force them to NOT believe as many want done in America.” You can’t force someone to NOT believe. I’m not aware of any attempts, other than by individuals, to even try to convince someone to NOT believe, much less force them, and to say that “many” want to do this in America is quite a stretch. I, for one, don’t believe that many people in the United States want to force people to NOT believe. This is a straw man put up make people think non-believers are trying to force atheism on the country.
Americans are pretty tolerant, and they don’t have to accept everything they tolerate — but putting forth these unfounded, rabble-rousing intolerant assertions about people who do not believe puts the lie to Sen. Sharer’s assertions. America is a tolerant society, but apparently Sen. Sharer is not.