Shawna did not want to talk about
tolerance anymore. For one thing, she was back to the same question that had
nagged at her in San Francisco: Why was Adolf Hitler wrong and the Allied
forces right? Following that train of thought, if all lifestyles and beliefs
are equal, as Ms. Carmona insisted, then the Nazis should have been allowed to
live out what they believed. If all religious beliefs and truths are equal,
then Christians should be allowed to believe that lifestyles condemned in the
Bible are wrong. If homosexuals are to be praised for their lifestyle, then
straights should be praised for believing homosexuality is wrong. If everyone
should have the right to choose, then pro-lifers have the right to believe that
abortion is wrong. And yet she knew that Ms. Carmona—and Terilyn, of course—
would not agree with those statements. Their logic regarding tolerance still
sounded screwy to Shawna, but she did not want to embarrass herself by bringing
it up.
For another thing, she did not like
where Terilyn's train of thought was leading. Terilyn believed in tolerance for
everyone—everyone, that is, except those she considered
"narrow-minded," people like Shawna's parents and the people at
Shawna's church.
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