Is Tolerance a One-Way Street?

Daniel Henninger writes "Tolerance at Ground Zero" in which the Ruling Class has gathered around the right of Muslims to erect a mosque near the spot where their fellow followers of Islam murdered nearly 3000 Americans.  He discusses the tolerance exhibited by the members of the American Ruling Class and notes that - in the case of Christianity vs. Islam - tolerance is a one way street.

Muslims vs. the West

The “West” developed immersed in - some say because of - a Christian culture. That culture is under assault from various directions.  It is most violently attacked by Islam. It would be useful if political leaders in Islamic countries would, in response to the welcome that their religion has received in the West, reciprocate by openly allowing Christians to establish churches in their countries; to worship and proselytize, as Muslims are allowed to do here. So far we see no sign of that happening. It is not even on the agenda of those who loudly proclaim that they are the representatives of the millions or billions of “moderate Muslims.”   Is toleration of other religions going to be another one-way street?

Christianity vs. Humanism

Christianity was the default faith of the vast majority of the American people until the mid 20th century. Even now, three out of four Americans profess to be Christians. Yet the secular forces of the Ruling Class has pushed the open expression of Christian expression out of the public sphere as if somehow - when Christians speak of their faith in school assemblies or erect a crèche in a public park at Christmas time - they create a theological terror. Was it really true that in 1950, when many school days began with a Christian prayer, religious expression was not repressed and Christian symbols were found in public parks the US was a theocracy? To hear the ACLU and its ideological supporters explain how those acts created an "established church" that must have been a fact.  But we know that it was not.  How were we ever led to assent to having our voices and our expression of faith be stifled by this perversion of the first amendment?  Is tolerance for religion in the public sphere only to be allowed if the religion threatens you with death if you dissent? 

Gays vs. Straights

Sex has always been a big deal in all cultures; sexuality is closely intertwined with morality. The do's and don'ts are defined - to put it in old-fashioned terms - around sin. We in the West have become rather blase about it; putting sex on public display in every venue we visit. As a substitute for religious rules, the more "enlightened" create their taboos around public hygiene. In other cultures - such as Islam - this is not the case. We're casual about sex while Islam is deadly serious.  In our culture, open homosexuality was considered bad form by irreligious people and a sin by the more observant religious. But the "gay community" has demanded not just the tolerance of "averted glances,"  but public acceptance of its views of morality. Today we are being told that if we do not celebrate and asset to homosexual weddings we are not just homophobic, but we are evil. That our concepts of sin are, frankly, outmoded. A judge has ruled that

Religious beliefs that gay and lesbian relationships are sinful or inferior to heterosexual relationships harm gays and lesbians.

He has found it to be a "fact" that opponents of homosexual marriage are driven by (irrational) fear, that they rely on (irrational) stereotypes, that people who oppose same-sex marriage believe homosexuals are "inferior." He makes much of the fact that a large proportion of the people that voted for Prop. 8 were religious; making his ruling - in effect - a judgement based on a religious test. Until this ruling, religious test were not permitted under our constitution. The religious orientation of the people voting for or against this proposition should have absolutely no bearing on a legal judgement, but in this case it had a definite bearing.

The obvious distaste this judge has in his devaluation of religious value systems has more than a little of the flavor of Orwell's "1984" where it was not simply good enough to acquiesce, we have to positively assert our love of what we opposed before.   Not to do so exposes you as a bigot, and removes you from the Ruling Class, to be cast into an outer darkness, awaiting oblivion. 

We shall see.