Liberals proudly claim their ideology is one of tolerance, diversity and open-mindedness. Yet they are actually just as bigoted as they claim conservatives are.

The hypocrisy lies in liberals’ failure to respect arguments and positions contrary to their own. If liberals are so tolerant, open-minded and respectful of differing views, this certainly wasn’t shown in the responses I received from my Daily Kent Stater column “Strengthening marriage was an Election Day victory” on Nov. 18, 2008.

The responses to this column deemed me as a bigot, a hate monger, homophobe or a supporter of the denigration of the separation of church and state. But if liberals actually practiced what they espoused, they wouldn’t have to demonize and brush conservatives aside with baseless labels. Instead, if they were really interested in participating in the values they espouse, they would engage civil debate as opposed to wild accusations of bigotry.

But it seems the only way liberals can live up to their mantras of tolerance and open-mindedness is when they exclude conservatives.

Liberals would apparently rather diplomatically engage religious, tyrannical nutcases such as Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and make concessions with the dictators of Russia, such as Prime Minister Vladimir Putin in the name of peace, than to give any respect to conservative values.

In fact, my positions regarding traditional marriage were labeled far worse than the likes of Putin, Ahmadinejad and every other dictatorial foe of America by the very liberals who espouse LGBT “rights.” On Nov. 20, 2008, the Daily Kent Stater actually published, in “Stater columnist sparks discussion about LGBT rights,” the president of PRIDE! Kent, Leora Rzepka, saying that my column “almost felt like hate speech. Getting rid of a group of people, Nazis do those kind of things.”

Marriage is a matter of definition, with traditional marriage in no way hostile to any community. Conservative Republicans have very real concerns about the standards marriage should harbor in order for the health and success of our society. Yet the only manner liberals treat this concern, far from taking a broad perspective, is to claim conservatives are a bunch of bigots and worthy of comparison with Nazis.

Liberals are even intent on undermining conservative policies when those policies have been democratically established. Activist judges were in full force when the LA Times reported on May 16, 2008 the California Supreme Court’s ruling to strike down a law defining a marriage as between one man and one woman.

Instead of respecting the desires of Californians through their representatives in the legislature, activist judges decided to replace their own ideology with that of the electorate’s. One dissenting judge, Marvin R. Baxter, correctly noted that the mechanism the majority opinion was based on a violation of “equality,” could easily be applied to extending marriage toward polygamy or incest. The ruling was more than just about homosexual marriage, but any standards for marriage whatsoever.

There is nothing unconstitutional concerning standards in laws and legal titles, laws being standards in and of themselves. The procreation requiring one man and one woman to join is a standard of nature; life by its very definition cannot be brought about without this model.

By defining marriage in accordance with what the definition for conceiving life is, the basic unit of the family is constructed. Any attempt to recreate this basic arrangement of the family is charity in the usage of the term “marriage” at the expense of what constitutes a true family, which is that of what is formed from the natural condition.

The “love” argument doesn’t hold much ground either. One can love ones siblings, family or good friends, but this doesn’t imply that such love is appropriate in a definition of marriage. The love of marriage is confined only to an unrelated heterosexual couple in a stable relationship consisting in the form for reproduction. Marriage should not be thrown lightly toward every scenario of love imaginable, as marriage serves as a meaningful function to develop a framework for the most fundamental aspects of society: the family.

The more liberals address conservative arguments with a massive hysteria of accusations of bigotry, the more the alternative definition of a bigot will ensue: “a conservative winning an argument against a liberal.”

Stephen Ontko is a senior economics major and columnist for the Daily Kent Stater. Contact him at [email protected].