David,

You've gone way beyond advocating tolerance, which I support. You are advocating appeasement.

While there may be good found in most religions, it is only where it has deviated from its irrational foundation that you'll find that good. I used to believe that religion was just silly. Rand has taught me that religion is evil; it is evil because its metaphysical and epistemological foundation is the unreal, the make-believe, the fictional, the made-up, the irrationally contradictory. Without reality as a proper foundation, the ultimate consequence of these primitive philosophies called religion is death.

As Rand pointed out: faith and force go hand in hand, as do reason and freedom. Faith and reason are opposites.

I, like you, have loved ones who hold religious beliefs. I tolerate this in them and love them in spite of those beliefs, but I always condemn any irrational ideas or actions stemming from those beliefs. I continue to love them because of their overall good sense of life because they have not given explicit thought to these flawed ideas but have accepted them implicitly. I will tolerate honest errors from them. I will not tolerate the initiation of force based on those errors.

The freedom of speech is our most important right. Without it, there is no hope in winning the cultural war. When our right to freedom of speech is lost, that will be the time to shrug.

Freedom of speech must be fought for. We must use it or lose it. I do not grant sanction to any form of appeasement to the religionists, be they Islamic, Christian, Druid, or the religious flavor of the month.

 
No appeasement... no sanction... live free or die!