Americans long ago agreed that tolerance was to be the ingredient that fused together the melting pot of people of various cultures, ethnicities, and religions. This added ingredient was supposed to allow for each flavor of individual to coexist beside the next without dominating the uniqueness of each other and degrading the tastefulness of our society.
However, today’s progressive is hell-bent on derailing this American strategy by forcing ideological inclusion, regardless of how it puts a bad taste in many of our mouths.
On Tuesday, the clash between the tolerant and the inclusive happened in Montgomery County, Maryland, as the tolerant parents, many of Muslim faith, battled to have the school board allow their children to opt out of any LGBTQ+ teachings on the grounds that it violated their religious beliefs.
These parents were met with counter-protestors who were against any opt-out measure for LGBT+ teachings, as they shouted “secular schools” in response to the concerns of the Muslim Americans within their community.
"The issue of gender and sexuality are influenced by our faith, and we should not be caricatured as intolerant and all and our face perceived to be subversive because it doesn't align with your beliefs and tolerance of the faith community threatens to erode support for religious freedom. Therefore eroding the benefits it provides for everyone," stated one demonstrator who was in favor of the opt-out measure.
On the other side, one of the supporters in favor of LGBTQ+ teachings to all children, regardless of faith, explained that their support for this expanded curriculum is because “it teaches students that there are many ways to be human.” She explained her point even further by stating, “Allowing families to opt out of this curriculum will perpetuate ignorance, intolerance, and fear of the LGBTQ voices and sends the wrong message that they are right to be afraid.”
The act of forcing ideological inclusion is in direct contradiction to the principle of expressing tolerance for other people’s belief systems. As the progressive protestors chanted “secular schools,” what they fail to understand is that secular schools choose ideologically neutral positions, yet what they’re advocating for is the opposite.
Secular schools choose the least confrontational position that satisfies the community at large, yet the minority of progressive activists in Montgomery County, Maryland are choosing to stand in the way of a compromise that could potentially satisfy both parties.
The tolerant compromise to implement an option to “opt-out” based on a parent’s decision simply allows for their child to be removed from that lesson or situation but does not interfere with the school teaching anything LGBTQ+ oriented if they choose to.
The objective of progressive ideologues isn’t to encourage tolerance through principles of liberty, but intrude into the lives of others with the mechanism of inclusion. To them, inclusion isn’t a request but a demand, and it requires a call to action if the demand isn’t fulfilled.
Progressive activists are overtly using the state to enforce ideological inclusion by leveraging empathy narratives and weaponizing the innocence of children to produce the outcome that they desire.
Over the past few years, I’ve watched as these activists explain that if they do not talk about sexuality in school, they will never speak about it, or they will be miseducated by their parents. Activist teachers co-signed this narrative, believing that their college degree gives them the authority to discuss matters of race, sexuality, and gender with your child over you, the parent. When you pushed back, they attempted to make you believe that this activity was abnormal and must be motivated by hatred.
The motivation of those Muslim parents was not to encourage hate but to protect their children from what they believe is inappropriate for their children and interferes with how they raise them. It was to reclaim their authority over the standards their children should abide by based on their religious beliefs, not the whims of an overzealous institution or teacher.
Tolerance, the ability to respect one’s differences as long as they don’t interfere with yours, is the American ingredient that they’re aiming to discard so they can insert the bitterness of dogmatic inclusion into the next generation of children within the melting pot.
But progressives only see inclusion as a one-way action: their way.
