Part III | Expanded Analysis
Category B | Principles
Topic 11 | Tolerance, respect, love
Tolerance, respect, and love are important and valuable concepts, but each is most efficacious in different spheres of legal, political, moral, and religious life. It is helpful to think of tolerance as primarily a legal and political principle, respect as primarily a political and moral principle, and love as primarily a moral and religious principle.
Introduction
The concepts of tolerance, respect, and love are terms used frequently—and usually indiscriminately—in religious freedom discourse. However, understanding the spheres in which we should use and advocate for each of these concepts will add clarity, meaning, and power to such discourse.
Tolerance
Tolerance is a valuable legal and political principle that places an obligation on the state, and often on people, to forebear the views, speech, and actions of others, even if they don’t like or agree with them. The adage “I disagree with what you believe, say, or do but will defend your right to believe, say, or do it” is a succinct summary of the meaning of tolerance. Anti-hate, anti-harassment, and antidiscrimination laws are examples of sociolegal mandates grounded in the concept of tolerance.
In his Letter Concerning Toleration, philosopher John Locke argued that religious tolerance is key to social stability and security. Locke posited that forced religious uniformity in the form of a privileged state religion constitutes oppression, which leads to unrest and social instability. Conversely,
"greater will be the security of the government, where all good subjects, of whatsoever Church they be, without any distinction upon account of religion, enjoying the same favor of the prince and the same benefit of the laws, shall become the common support and guard of [the government] . . . ." 304
In other words, if government tolerates and treats all forms of religion equally, religious adherents of all faiths will, in turn, support the government: “Oppression raises ferments and makes men struggle to cast off an uneasy and tyrannical yoke” but tolerant, just, and “moderate governments are everywhere quiet, everywhere safe.”305
Locke cautioned, however, that toleration has its limits: religious intolerance is a danger to society and should not be tolerated.306 Philosopher Karl Popper later echoed this warning in his paradox of tolerance, which holds that unlimited tolerance of intolerance will inevitably “lead to the disappearance of tolerance” in a society.307 For this reason, any legal system mandating tolerance of others will place limits on tolerance.
The most important limit to tolerance is the “harm principle,”308 which stipulates that your rights end where my nose begins. But this principle prompts yet another caution: the idea of harm can be viewed so expansively that limits on tolerance may become overbroad. We should be cautious not to unduly limit tolerance due to unreasonably heightened sensitivities or the proclivity of some people to take offense in order to limit the rights of others.
An example of measured tolerance is the official reaction of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints to The Book of Mormon musical theater production. While the production’s premise, plot, dialogue, and character portrayals were offensive to many, the Church demonstrated tolerance—respecting the creators’ right to freedom of expression and choosing not to protest or pursue legal action against them. Instead, the Church took the opportunity to positively encourage audiences and others to explore “the Book of Mormon as a volume of scripture [that] will change people’s lives forever by bringing them closer to Christ.”309
It is commonplace to hear people assert that “tolerance is not enough; we must respect people’s differences,” including religious differences. This is an attractive moral or political principle, but legally mandating respect would be unwise. Mandating respect would create a legal obligation to offer a measure of approval and endorsement of beliefs, words, or actions that may be unwarranted. While tolerance can be legally required, respect in some measure must be earned. We can surely respect those with whom we disagree and respect their right to hold a given belief, but we should not be required to respect beliefs that we may judge to be odious, immoral, or otherwise wrong.
Respect
Respect is a helpful moral and political principle that goes beyond mere tolerance or forbearance to include approval and admiration.310 Admiration generally is the product of greater effort than is required by mere tolerance; for example, respect may require an effort to try to understand the point of view of someone with whom we may disagree.
We should remember, however, that we can respect people and their inherent human dignity without respecting (i.e., admiring or approving of) their views.311 This idea has been adopted as a political principle by the U.S. National Governors Association in its “Disagree Better” campaign to promote respect between citizens, even when their political views may widely differ.312
While encouraging respect is admirable, legally mandating respect is unwise because in some contexts respect must be earned and/or deserved. It is appropriate to say, for instance, that someone’s effort or idea has earned our respect. In addition, legally mandating respect could result in amorphous “crimes against honor” that are defined by some people’s inclination to take offense and are easily subject to abuse and discriminatory enforcement. In some jurisdictions, for example, respect is legally mandated through blasphemy laws that are applied discriminately to religious dissidents or minorities.313
Love
For many people, tolerance and respect are insufficient; they believe they have an imperative to exercise the religious or moral principle of love. For example, some people believe their religious faith requires them to love their “neighbor,”314 a term interpreted broadly to include all people. Others may have nonreligious reasons for believing that we, simply as human beings, are obliged to love all people.
Certainly, love can take many different forms. The Greeks, for example, distinguished between self-love (philautia), familial love (storge), romantic love (eros), friendship (philia), and love of humankind (agape).
While love in many forms can be an admirable religious and moral principle, it would seem self- evidently unwise to legally mandate any type of love through secular law. Love is more like a gift we give each other in an exercise of moral agency, rather than a right we can demand from one another. A legal regime that attempted to enforce a duty to love would almost certainly devolve into a dystopian nightmare of privacy invasion, selective enforcement, and abuse of power.
Conclusion
While tolerance may seem an unsatisfactory legal standard for societies, it is unwise to be dismissive of its role and purposes. Tolerance is the most realistic way legally and politically to promote the social stability necessary for diverse groups of people to coexist and even flourish. We may expect more of ourselves, and others, on the basis of morality or religion—in the form of respect for or even love of others. But while such religious, moral, or political standards can be encouraged, they should not be legally mandated.
References
304. JOHN LOCKE, A LETTER CONCERNING TOLERATION 42 (William Popple trans., 1689), https://www.google.com/books/edition/A_Letter_Concerning_Toleration_Written_b/L9jYMVtd7vsC?hl=en&gbpv=0 (spellings and capitalization modernized).
305. Id. at 58.
306. Id. at 54–55.
307. KARL POPPER, THE OPEN SOCIETY AND ITS ENEMIES at ch. 7 n.4 (Taylor & Francis 7th ed. 2012).
308. See JOHN STUART MILL, ON LIBERTY 104 (Project Gutenberg eBook 2011) (1859), https://www.gutenberg.org/files/34901/34901-h/34901-h.htm (“The liberty of the individual must be thus far limited; he must not make himself a nuisance to other people. But if he refrains from molesting others in what concerns them, and merely acts according to his own inclination and judgment in things which concern himself, the same reasons which show that opinion should be free, prove also that he should be allowed, without molestation, to carry his opinions into practice at his own cost.”).
309. See Book of Mormon Musical: Church’s Official Statement, News Release, THE CHURCH OF JESUS CHRIST OF LATTER- DAY SAINTS (Feb. 7, 2011), https://newsroom.churchofjesuschrist.org/article/church-statement-regarding-the-book-of-mormon-broadway-musical; Morgan Jones, How the LDS Church’s Response to “The Book of Mormon” Musical Is Actually Working, DESERET NEWS (Nov. 16, 2016), https://www.deseret.com/2016/11/16/20600593/how-the-lds-church-s-response-to-the-book-of-mormon-musical-is-actually-working.
310. See Respect, OXFORD LEARNER’S DICTIONARY, https://www.oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com/us/definition/english/respect_1?q=respect (last visited Dec. 2024); Respect, MERRIAM-WEBSTER, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/respect (last visited Dec. 2024).
311. See, e.g., Jonathan Turner, Politics, Truth, and Respect, in 7 OXFORD STUDIES IN POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY 100, 100 (2021).
312. Disagree Better, NATIONAL GOVERNORS ASSOCIATION, https://www.nga.org/disagree-better (last visited Dec. 2024).
313. See Blasphemy Laws Are Bad for Security, OSCE (Mar. 24, 2022), https://www.osce.org/odihr/514612.
314. E.g., Matthew 22:37–39 (KJV).