Whose freedom is it?

Tolerance. For a lot of liberals, the term means body-slamming anyone who won't bend the knee to the dogmas of the Left. That fact was underscored by a recent letter to a California newspaper from John and Agnes Donahue. The Donahues are the elderly couple from Downey, California, who refused to rent an apartment to a pair of unmarried lovers. The Donahues, you see, are Catholics of the old school who think they'd be cozying up to sin if they rented to a couple who were playing house.

To the ACLU and other members of the Culture Police, such non-conformism is unforgivable. The Donahues' antiquated ideas about staying true to conscience, their skepticism about the sexual revolution, makes them candidates for punishment and public rebuke. So they were dragged before a state tribunal for a fine and a sermon. Although the penalties were later overturned, don't think the "civil rights" posse has given up.

The Donahues' letter suggests they've grown deeply weary from being harassed: "We worked hard to acquire [our] small five-unit apartment in the first place, and we are not trying to impose our faith on anyone else or to force their beliefs to coincide with ours. Why do they try to force us?"

Consider also the assault in California on the Boy Scouts' freedom to set their own rules. The nine-year-old Randall twins of Anaheim Hills refused to utter the Scout Oath and pledge commitment to God. The family sued, and a court just obliged them, ruling that the Scouts can't require members to recite the whole of the Scout Oath.

The implications are sweeping. If the Scouts can't define what they're about, what private organization can? Tolerance, it seems, amounts to "making list of |intolerant' attitudes, views, and opinions--and stamping them out," writes Gary Bauer of the Family Research Council. Liberals are all for freedom--as long as you use it the way they want you to.

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