How Far Is Tolerance a Virtue?
The 'Rights' of Postmodern Sexual (Im)morality
Kent Webber
January 1, 1996
Do you remember the Quik rabbit? That fluffy, innocent little thing that
slurped down those strawberry drinks and blushed as he admitted that "patience is a virtue"? Well, he's still impatient, still indulgent. But he's grown up into quite a monster since we saw him in the early 1980s. He's now thoroughly post-modern and happily freed from his blushing innocence and all the chains of absolute truth. In place of his traditional patience and self-control, he's preaching—to the state and in the church—you-make-the-call morality and "tolerance." Frankly, most of us in the believing community are a little baffled as to how best to respond to him.
This tolerance business is of paramount concern. What does tolerance actually mean? How can Christians who claim to know the truth regard tolerance as a virtue? Conversely, how can those who proclaim the virtue of tolerance avoid undermining their claim with an implicit endorsement of moral nihilism? And are any arguments still available to Christians who
want to balance tolerance with a firm resistance to "approved and protected" immorality in the public sphere?
Tolerance and Truth
Tolerance walks hand-in-hand with the idea of pluralism, which we can define in two ways. First is pluralism in the traditional and descriptive sense, free from value judgments, in which the state protects the existence of several different and conflicting moral traditions. Second is pluralism in its
more alarming, postmodern sense, a position where all objectivity is set aside and those same highly disparate moral traditions must all be respected as equally valid or true.
In either context, Macmillan's Dictionary of Political Thought would define tolerance as "the policy of forbearance toward that which ...
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