In her freshman year at Stanford, Judy Romea found the campus group known as the Stanford Anscombe Society, named after Elizabeth Anscombe, a British philosopher. According to their website:
“The Stanford Anscombe Society (SAS) is a student group that promotes discussion regarding the roles of the family, marriage, and sexual integrity in the lives of Stanford students both now and after graduation. SAS is neither religiously nor politically affiliated, instead basing our positions on human principles. We hold that the family is the key unit of a stable society, and we define the family as one man and one woman bound together by marriage, along with any children that they might have. SAS defines marriage as a union, until death, between one man and one woman. We promote the idea that sexual integrity is necessary for this family unit to be successful.”
“We meet every week to discuss relevant topics, which have included how to foster a healthy dating culture at Stanford, the harmful effects of the hookup culture, and the philosophical case for marriage as a union between one man and one woman.”
“Furthermore, we host speaking events every quarter in which guest lecturers present their work on marriage and the family.”
Romea is now a senior at Stanford and worked hard on their last speaking event which took place on April 5, but not after being heavily discriminated against by the Student Graduate Council. The event, Communicating Values: Marriage, Family & the Media, was scheduled to take place in the Oberndorf Event Center located in the Stanford Graduate School of Business.
The Student Graduate Council said that their actions were taken to offset the unsafe space that the conference on marriage would create. The student council made it clear that they disagreed with and disapproved of some of the speakers scheduled for the marriage conference. One of the speakers in particular was Ryan T. Anderson, the William E. Simon Fellow at the Heritage Foundation.
Although Stanford boasts of its diverse nature, it seems that the diversity and tolerance ends with anyone defending traditional marriage of one man and one woman. They welcome every other point of view, but not any that oppose their own liberal lifestyles. In response to the intolerant discrimination from the student council, Romea commented:
“A void in the campus discourse exists regarding marriage, family, and human sexuality. At best, deviations from these values are viewed as strange, while at worst, they’re the result of bigotry and hatred — as we saw with the funding controversy regarding this conference.”
Romea and her group persevered through all of the harassment. University officials manage to cover the security fees being extorted and the conference took place as scheduled.
What they endured is an example of the growing intolerance of the liberal left. They speak of tolerance and diversity but only if it agrees with their ideology. Anyone who disagrees with them is labeled a bigot and hateful. In reality, they are the most intolerant of them all, proving that they are nothing more than hypocrites.
The watchword of modern liberals is “tolerance.” Since when did this become our highest ideal and an expression of society’s core aim and belief? Without question, it certainly should not be — at least not under the current understanding of the word.
The fundamental problem with this otherwise decent notion becoming the gravamen of society is that, under current understanding, it is nothing more than a pretext for those claiming to be tolerant to impose outright hostility and explicit intolerance on those whom they have neither the inclination nor desire to tolerate. The examples of this are best understood in a specific context.
For those with sincerely held religious beliefs that homosexuality is a disordered, unnatural, and sinful behavior, i.e., a choice, these examples will be unsurprisingly and unfortunately familiar. Those who are diametrically opposed to a religious worldview — a worldview held by all major religions and representative of the Biblical truth accepted since time immemorial — simply cannot stand for anyone with any influence to embrace, express, or espouse a contrary view. Notably, these are the same individuals now preaching tolerance of all manner of deviant and disordered behavior. The frightening truth behind these examples is that they represent the most intolerant and indefensible worldview that has ever been presented in modern policy arguments, and it has been building for many years.
First, take the example of the tolerance-first crowd’s mandate for students who seek to become mental health professionals. In today’s “tolerant” world, they must subscribe to the notion that same-sex behaviors, attractions, and identity are to be accepted, affirmed, and encouraged, regardless of an individual client’s desires and self-identity.
In Keeton v. Anderson-Wiley, a Christian student pursuing a mental health counseling education was dismissed from the postgraduate program for her refusal to submit to a remediation program designed for nothing more than to impose the liberal officials’ view of “tolerance.” The remediation program included, among other things, attending gay pride parades, reading ten articles articulating a “tolerant” viewpoint, and submitting a two-page summary outlining her increasing “tolerance” from her participation in these mandated activities with homosexual activists. If the last one reminds you of being invited to self-criticize before the homosexual politburo, then you are not alone.
Indeed, this young woman’s university also mandated that she attend and thereby lend her personal imprimatur to a number of activities, including a “gay pride” parade, that are fundamentally at odds with her religious beliefs. After that, she was to outline the number of ways she previously displayed “intolerance” and provide her self-critique describing how she had wronged those whom she would never encounter. Does that sound like tolerance of all belief systems to you? Sure it does, unless, of course, your religious beliefs reflect Biblical truth. After all, the “tolerant” crowd simply cannot tolerate the “intolerance” handed down by a just and holy God.
Second, consider the current influx of legislation designed to remove all licensed mental health professionals from their profession if they fail to worship at the altar of “tolerance.” In California and New Jersey, the tolerance police have gone to extensive lengths to ensure that all viewpoints are acceptable in mental health counseling, unless, of course, that viewpoint accepts the fundamental principle of mental health counseling that the client has the right to self-determination. Indeed, the good ol’ tolerant folks in these states — and in a number of others now — are willing to subscribe to that age-old principle of self-determination only as long as the client’s goals are shared by the homosexual activists imposing these mandates.
Even when the client has unwanted same-sex attractions, these laws mandate that licensed mental health professionals ignore and reject the client’s wishes. After all, how can anyone have such goals in their counseling? Is that tolerance? The answer is simple: certainly not.
There is little doubt about the disturbing basis for these laws. Unfortunately for the tolerance police, the Keeton case came too late, and some mental health professionals were able to obtain licenses without being forced to attend remediation (read “reeducation”) programs or self-criticize before the homosexual politburo. So, what can the tolerance police do with those who received a license before they could be denied entrance into the profession? Well, in California and New Jersey, the answer is to categorize these licensed mental health professionals as “unprofessional,” and subject anyone who dares to mention that change is possible for those who sincerely seek it to professional discipline, including stripping them of their professional license. In other words, the tolerance police have decided that anyone espousing a contrary view is unworthy of the profession.
It would be one thing if scientific evidence supported such a claim, but this is simply not true. As Dr. Nicholas Cummings, former president of the American Psychological Association, has explained, he personally counseled hundreds of clients that were successful in reducing or eliminating their unwanted same-sex attractions. Indeed, Dr. Cummings explained that the basis for these laws is a “distortion of reality” and that such laws ignore patient choice. One would think with such a grand ideal of tolerating all views, those preaching it the loudest would accept other points of view on this issue. Nevertheless, as you have probably discovered, this has never been about tolerance, but rather about silencing dissent in a totalitarian manner.
Notwithstanding the substantial number of “intolerant” people who would be removed from the marketplace of ideas under the previous two solutions, there are still too many avenues for the intolerant to espouse their “hatred” and “bigotry.” So, what shall the tolerance police do with the few remaining intolerant among us who have not yet been silenced? Well, of course, demonize them and ignore their fundamental right to direct the upbringing and education of their children. To handle this problem, the tolerance police have developed another solution: call these parents hateful, intolerant bigots unworthy of any parental rights — and take their children away.This is not a hypothetical scenario to make a point, but is actually what the sponsor of the New Jersey legislation banning change counseling espoused openly about his motives. Assemblyman Tim Eustace, the sponsor of the bill, stated that any parents who would allow their child to obtain counseling to align their attractions and feelings with their religious beliefs are abusing their child, and the state should remove the child from the home. Of course, for those most tolerant among us, these children must be removed from these bigots’ homes lest Biblical truths continue to be taught.
The teaching of Biblical truths to the next generation is a serious problem for the tolerance police, and they intend to minimize it with another strategy: giving homosexual activists priority in the adoption process. Certainly any two loving people are capable of raising a child. Right? After all, as one of the “tolerant” among us, MSNBC’s Melissa Harris-Perry stated last year, “the children belong to us all.” Surely we cannot place those children in homes full of religious intolerance.
So, how do they effectuate providing children to those whose lifestyle choices have made natural procreation impossible? Well, quite simple: prohibit any religious entity from participating in the adoption system if they do not submit to the “tolerant” view that children should be placed in the homes of homosexuals.
Theoretical, this is not. The Catholic Charities of Boston, one of the oldest and most respected adoption agencies in the country, experienced this exact prohibition in recent years. When it refused to place children in the homes of homosexuals, a refusal deeply grounded in the religious teachings of the Catholic Church, the state refused to continue to grant that charitable organization a license to provide adoption services in Massachusetts. How better to provide those “tolerant” people with children to indoctrinate than to remove them from their abusive, religious parents and force them into the “tolerant” homes of those who will not “abuse” them with religious teaching. Never mind the fact that many of those “tolerant” homosexuals to whom these children will be provided will inflict tremendous abuse on the children.In short, the false prophets of tolerance are now seeking to impose a new zero tolerance policy in the marketplace of ideas aimed at nothing more than silencing the views of anyone who will not bow to the altar of “tolerance.”
Posted By Michael Minkoff on Nov 26, 2013
For many years, every time I saw a “Coexist” bumper sticker, I would get perturbed in my spirit, and I didn’t really know why. It wasn’t that I felt criticized. Particularly speaking, I’m an open and forgiving sort. I love discourse and conversation, and the command to “coexist” with people who disagreed with me didn’t seem to have any teeth. I was already doing that.
It wasn’t until recently that I realized exactly why this bumper sticker is so patently false in concept and sentiment. To tell others to “coexist” indicates, for one, that you do not think they are coexisting. But, also, it is in itself an imperative, even a religious imperative. Apparently, the people who display these bumper stickers on their cars have not thought this out.
This might make a good bumper sticker in response (if it weren’t so wordy of course): “Coexist is a moral imperative. Perhaps you should learn to get along with people without telling them what to do.” Which amounts to, “Why don’t you coexist?” Ironically, the inclusion of all these current religious symbols indicates that various religions already are coexisting, at least in the strictest sense of the word. It is the very “tolerant” person driving around with a one word sermon pasted to his bumper that feels most compelled to tell everyone else how they should think and what they should believe.
The very foundation of liberal tolerance is therefore a paradox, to put it graciously. It might, perhaps more accurately, be called a “self-contradiction.” Moral philosophers have been talking about it for quite some time. Even as far back as the nascent years of the American Republic in 1783, Ezra Stiles, then president of Yale, preached a sermon to the Connecticut General Assembly (But what about separation of church and state?!), in which he criticized the so-called open-mindedness of the “Coexist” faction of his own day—the Deists. His words are worth repeating:
I pity from my heart . . . those who are caught in the vortex, and are captivated with the wily satirical delusory and deficient reasonings of deism. Elevated with the pride of mental enlargement, of a supposed untrammeled understanding, they ascend aloft above the clouds of prejudices into the Pisgah heights, from whence they fancy that they see all religions the same, that is, equally nothing but priestcraft and artificial error. Whereupon they complement themselves as endowed with a superiority of discernment in morals, with high sensibility, sentimental and liberal ideas, and charm themselves with other fine self-applied diction, which in truth only clothes the tedium of weariness of half-discussed unfinished inquiries; or perhaps the hope that at worst the want of certain knowledge may pass with God, if there is any, as a sufficient excuse for some of the doubtful levities of life.
I’m afraid many modern skeptics may not be educated enough to realize just how insulting that was. Let me put in plainer terms: Moral skeptics and irreligious people are not freed from morality or religion by their skepticism and supposed “open-mindedness.” They are in fact most to be pitied because they are freed from the virtues of religion while still retaining its vices—self-righteousness and hypocrisy. The modern “tolerant” liberal is only tolerant in broad terms. When it comes to specifics, he still holds his own version of ethics and morality to be higher and better than any other. That is the paradox and irony of both the “coexist” bumper sticker and the immutable modern doctrine of tolerance. In a sense, what it is saying is, “My irreligious stance is better and more reasonable than all religions. All religious people should therefore follow my moral and religious code. They should all become active members in the church of me.”
[Humans] are creatures of that miserable sort who loudly proclaim that torture is too good for their enemies and then give tea and cigarettes to the first wounded German pilot who turns up at the back door. Do what you will, there is going to be some benevolence, as well as some malice, in your patient’s soul. The great thing is to direct the malice to his immediate neighbors whom he meets every day and to thrust his benevolence out to the remote circumference, to people he does not know. The malice thus becomes wholly real and the benevolence largely imaginary. There is no good at all in inflaming his hatred of Germans if, at the same time, a pernicious habit of charity is growing up between him and his mother, his employer, and the man he meets in the train. Think of your man as a series of concentric circles, his will being the innermost, his intellect coming next, and finally his fantasy. You can hardly hope, at once, to exclude from all the circles everything that smells of the Enemy: but you must keep on shoving all the virtues outward till they are finally located in the circle of fantasy, and all the desirable qualities inward into the Will. It is only in so far as they reach the will and are there embodied in habits that the virtues are really fatal to us. (I don’t, of course, mean what the patient mistakes for his will, the conscious fume and fret of resolutions and clenched teeth, but the real centre, what the Enemy calls the Heart.) All sorts of virtues painted in the fantasy or approved by the intellect or even, in some measure, loved and admired, will not keep a man from our Father’s house: indeed they may make him more amusing when he gets there. [Emphasis added]
That is an apt description of liberal tolerance: it positively raves about general love for humankind, the celebration of diversity, and the acceptance of all differences. But when it comes to specifics, it is even more close-minded and malicious toward diverse opinions and practices than any rabid religious fundamentalism. Aside from making a person feel better about themselves, general tolerance is ultimately and practically useless. I would much rather be tolerant specifically than seem tolerant generally. General tolerance purports to serve all of mankind. In the end, it serves only the “tolerant” person’s own ego.
There are many historical examples of liberal tolerance faltering in particulars, but one that is presently fresh in my mind comes from Gone With the Wind. In it, Scarlett O’Hara muses about the relationship of the Northern abolitionists to the Southern slaves. This is a classic example of Screwtape humanitarianism, and this particular brand is still alive and well actually:
What damnably queer people Yankees are! Those women [Yankee women who had just told Scarlett they wouldn’t trust a “negro” to be a nurse to their children, and who had insulted Scarlett’s black chauffeur, Uncle Peter, to his face] seemed to think that because Uncle Peter was black, he had no ears to hear with and no feelings, as tender as their own, to be hurt. . . . They didn’t understand negroes or the relations between the negroes and their former masters. Yet they fought a war to free them. And having freed them, they didn’t want to have anything to do with them, except to use them to terrorize Southerners. They didn’t like them, didn’t trust them, didn’t understand them, and yet their constant cry was that Southerners didn’t know how to get along with them.
In other words, the myth of liberal tolerance, open-mindedness, and good will has been going on for years, and many people have been taken in by it. It is likely that, in fact, the most deceived people of all about liberal tolerance are liberals themselves.
So, next time someone tells you that you’re close-minded and intolerant, and that you need to learn to “coexist,” I hope you have the forbearance and grace to show that person real love by attempting, as futile as the attempt may be, to disabuse them of their self-delusions.
Summer Schreiner of Cocoa, Florida attended the Silver Ring Thing Conference, a Christian event that promotes abstinence only. At the conference, she obtained a t-shirt that read:
“Don’t drink and park… accidents cause kids”
Summer believed in what the shirt said and was proud to wear it to school the next day. Everything was going well for her at Clearlake Middle School until just after lunch. On her way back to class, the 8th grader was stopped by the vice principal who told her to go to the office and change her shirt because it was inappropriate. She was given a t-shirt that read:
“Tomorrow I will dress for success.”
Summer tried to explain that the shirt is not offensive, but that it promotes abstinence, but her words fell on deaf ears. She felt angry and humiliated the rest of the day. When she got home she told her mom, Angela Hogan, who said her daughter had dressed for success. Angela contacted the school and asked them to change their decision or apologize for wrongfully humiliating her daughter.
However, school officials said that they would not change their ruling nor would they offer an apology. Their school dress code forbids ‘clothing which contains sexually explicit, or oriented wording,’ and ‘clothing that infringes on the rights of others.’ According to reports, Michele Irwin, director of communications for the school district said:
“This is not a situation of whether or not the district agrees or disagrees with sexual abstinence among teenagers. It’s about the fact there is sexual innuendo on the shirt, and so we believe it violated our dress code policy.”
A vast majority of public schools, including middle schools are involved with organizations like Planned Parenthood who promote sexual promiscuity. I don’t know if that is the case with Clearlake Middle School, but Summer did say:
“If they teach you about sex in the textbooks and stuff, and that’s in a textbook, why can’t I wear something that is related to it on a t-shirt?”
Had I been Summer, I would have told the vice principal that the shirt saying about dressing for success was offensive to me as it did not insinuate the same set of values for success that I believe in. That’s what I would have done, but then again, I was somewhat of a rebel in school if I didn’t agree with the philosophy or politics being taught.
What you have done? Would you have caved in or stood your ground for your faith?
My own 2 cents.
What does it say about a society that does NOT protect ALL SPEECH? How far have we fallen from our Christian foundations as a nation that the promotion of the message of abortion is more protected than abstinence? Why has the Church become so lukewarm and lost saltiness, that it is no longer the center of influence of our society?
Salt’s primary use is for the preservation of meat. Salt slows the process of PUTREFACTION. When the Church went to sleep and we stopped fighting the good fight, our society started to putrefy. The stench of our rotting society is a testimony against the Church.
What Did You Say? 
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