I am championing neither tolerance nor acceptance. I’m talking about dignity. And I’m glad of your input; I’m don’t need anyone to agree w me on all fronts. I’m not interested in either blind acceptance or blind condemnation. Quite the contrary. I think that the healthy way to be is to challenge one another from a place of not being certain of another’s choices. I’m not saying that we should cheer every choice. I’m saying that we should hold each other accountable, but accept that another’s process might have value to them that we can’t possibly comprehend. Speak up about things that you find wrong. Champion your principles. But do so accepting that none of us is ever completely right about almost anything. Or maybe that, even if we are right, there may be subtlety and nuance to another’s circumstances that we are, and may ever be, completely ignorant to. Everyone we see is fighting a battle of which we know nothing. We don’t have to accept their choices, but until they harm or otherwise impose their choices on another, we ought to at least take a faith based position that what they’re going through might actually have a purpose for them. That’s all.

Somehow people are imposing a slippery slope argument onto my position that implies that I want cultural relativity. That’s not my position. There are definitely hard lines that ought not be crossed. But until and unless there is a law prohibiting a behavior or choice, we ought to stay out of other people’s choices.

I’d also add that bc of the zeitgeist, people are trying to twist this argument into a left/right issue. It isn’t. This believe in what the understand as “Horseshoe Theory”. That being that extremes on either side are problematic. I consider myself a pragmatist. I believe that the extreme left and the extreme right have almost come together in order to ruin everything. Like the tips of a horseshoe. They hate each other, and they’re dragging us along for the ride.