By Charley Reese, The Orlando Sentinel
August 1994 –Secular liberals will tolerate Christians provided they don’t believe in Christianity and don’t practice it.
Oddly enough, that is the same sort of “tolerance” exhibited by the communist governments in the heyday of their dictatorships. Having found that not even indoctrination coupled with terror could stamp out religious faith (a study of Roman history would have told them that), they sullenly tolerated closet Christians and recruited their own religious quislings (refers to a World War II traitor) to help propagandize their secular orthodoxy.
The current crop of Christian-bashers are essentially making the same argument: Christian belief has no place in public debates, in considering public policy issues or in motivating people to participate in the democratic process. The only Christianity allowed is the quisling variety, which has the same values as secular liberals, which in effect, is only one value – toleration of everything except disagreement with secular liberals.
The other standard totalitarian tactic being used against American Christians is to accuse them of the sins being committed by the accusers. The intolerant secular liberal accuses the Christian of being intolerant; the secular liberal, while spewing hate against the Christian, accuses Christians of being hate-mongers; the secular liberal whose forte is getting the government to enforce his beliefs accuses Christians of trying to enforce their beliefs on others; the secular liberal who sees public education as a battleground in which to indoctrinate children into his belief system accuses the Christian of trying to take over the schools.
An organized campaign has been launched against these Christians, primarily evangelicals. So far the Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith, the American Jewish Committee, and Planned Parenthood have fired broadsides at politically active Christians they don’t like. And, of course, their tame parrots in the press took up the squawk.
It goes without saying that if some Christian organization accused the Jewish right of being led by “prophets of rage,” then the ADL would scream anti-Semitism. It goes without saying that if some organization promised to ferret out Jews running for school board posts, the American Jewish Committee would scream bigotry.
Well, in politics, double standard, hypocrisy and other low-life habits are accepted weapons. The bottom line is that in America anyone – religious or not religious, Christian, Jew, Buddhist, Moslem or whatever – can run for office if he or she jolly well pleases. And all of them are free to advocate the values they believe in.
The people guilty of bigotry, the politics of hate and intolerance in this case are those who are trying to paint evangelical Christians as some deviant form of fascist. These Christians are just good, decent Americans following the American tradition. The secular left is afraid they will be successful, since it knows a majority of Americans share the values of the Christian activists.
It is not bigotry to have a set of moral beliefs. Christianity condemns homosexual behavior in exactly the same manner as it condemns heterosexual adultery and fornication. It condemns the acts, not the people. There is no legal requirement to be a Christian, nor do Christians seek such laws.
All legislation forbidding a behavior is an attempt to impose some moral code on everyone else in the jurisdiction. In a free society, Christians have the same right to advocate laws reflecting their moral code as everyone else. Morality and church are not the same things. The state cannot sponsor a church or religion, but it cannot avoid reflecting a moral code. Which code is decided by means of the democratic process.
Of course the secular left hates all people of faith because the secular leftists are control freaks, and you can’t control a person whose first loyalty is to God. 
