America is a nation of rich multi-ethnic, multicultural diversity. I love our country for this diversity. According to scripture, heaven itself will be inhabited by people "from every tribe and language and people and nation" (Revelation 5:9). Although we have not always honored our diversity, with the election of the first African-American president, we have demonstrated how far we've come. I am very grateful for this progress no matter how I voted.
Maintaining civility within diversity requires citizens who respect those who differ from them. Requiring such respect is good for the nation. People who (within the law) choose different beliefs, morals and lifestyles, must be asked to live in harmony. We have made great strides in promoting respect through civil rights on race and gender, and through special laws protecting the disabled. We should not be disrespectful of anyone for matters related to their nature or how they were born. These cannot be chosen or changed.
What greatly concerns me is the inclusion of sexual preference into civil rights and diversity training curriculum. This is dangerous to liberty. Civil-rights battles should be restricted to matters of nature, not lifestyle. The referendums on the ballots in several states confirm that Americans do not want the sexual lifestyles of others forced on them as normalized for everyone.
Like all civilized people, we have laws restricting some types of sexual behavior. Rape, incest and all sexual contact between adults and children are rightly illegal in our nation. Beyond these restrictions, consenting adults are free to live their sexual preferences. But to ask our nation to make new, special laws for these preferences is to force the lifestyle choices of others on everyone. Americans do not want this to happen. Sexual preferences outside of heterosexuality are not matters of nature. Heterosexuality is a matter of nature because without it there would be no human race.
People should be asked to treat respectfully those who choose different sexual lifestyles. But when these lifestyles are forced on others as is happening in Massachusetts, liberty is wrongly threatened. Forced affirmation and endorsement of lifestyles you disagree with is not freedom. There is an important difference between required respect (which is necessary) and forced affirmation or indoctrination.
In a free and diverse nation, tolerance is a safeguard to civility. But tolerance that asks for more than respectful treatment of others, is not only deeply misguided, it is a form of intolerance. If we don't respect this distinction, the liberty of our nation will be threatened. We will be under the tyranny of tolerance and no exception will be tolerated!
Parents and teachers in public schools in Massachusetts are feeling the destruction of liberty as their children are facing forced indoctrination of the homosexual lifestyle. Elementary-aged children are being sent home with diversity packets without parental consent and parents are being forced to comply. Business owners and doctors are also being forced to affirm homosexual preferences that violate their beliefs and morals. This is not tolerance, nor is it respectful. It is coerced approval of the lifestyle choices of others. Discrimination (in actual civil-rights cases) injures people for what they are by nature, not for lifestyles they choose. It is a threat to liberty to start protecting lifestyles with special laws and forcing those lifestyles on others.
People who chose a homosexual lifestyle once said they only wanted to be left alone to live they way they desired. In a free nation, this would be a fair request and could be enforced with existing laws. But the radical homosexual community does not want tolerance and freedom to live their preference. They want forced acceptance and indoctrination on everyone (even our children) to normalize their sexual choices in society. If the nation goes the way of Massachusetts, liberty will be profoundly disrupted, chaos will follow and the great progress we've made would be unnecessarily threatened.
Steven W. Cornell is senior pastor at Millersville Bible Church. His e-mail address is s.cornell@millersvillebiblechurch.org.
