It’s a long way to Tipperary, and it’s a long way from here to charitable, hospitable Toleration.

Here’s your reference frame:

Last month, as Indiana’s rather tame religious-freedom legislation was being torched by the mob, America’s more devout dissenters were informed that the price of participation in the marketplace was the subjugation of one’s conscience to one’s Caesar. “You can’t opt out of the law,” the agitators explained. “This isn’t the Jim Crow South!” Their core message? That if we all keep quiet about our views — and if we treat commercial transactions as commercial transactions — nobody will end up getting hurt. Or, put another way: “Cater my wedding, you bigot.”

(source: The Tolerant Jeweler Who Harbored an Impure Opinion of Same-Sex Marriage)

So at the time, the range of responses that didn’t require an immediate change of laws (which I think is strongly warranted) and didn’t insist that only bigots could oppose gay marriage described an arc from “go along to get along” to “deal with the problem when it comes to you” to “do business with absolutely anyone, but do it in a noisily Christian way.”  

(Actual bigots just don’t get a voice in this conversation, as far as I’m concerned.  But people who treat others according to their real human dignity and yet decline to participate in their delusions and promote their self-destruction need a sensible, lawful, just way to do what’s right.)

All three of the above strategies were recommended by those (including me) who thought that pre-emptively declaring “won’t serve pizza at gay weddings” was unwise.  My favorite is the last, actually.

This case suggests the limitations of such strategies, and what you must anticipate if you adopt it:

a Canadian Christian jeweler custom-made a pair of engagement rings for a lesbian couple, Nicole White and Pam Renouf, at their request. Later, when they found out that the jeweler personally opposes same-sex marriage, they went to pieces and demanded their money back.
…
Let’s understand what happened here. This Christian jeweler agreed to custom-make engagement rings for a lesbian couple, knowing that they were a couple, and treated them politely. But when they found out what he really believed about same-sex marriage, even though the man gave them polite service, and agreed to sell them what they asked for, the lesbian couple balked, and demanded their money back — and the mob threatened the business if they didn’t yield. Which, of course, he did.

(source: Heads LGBTs Win, Tails Christians Lose)

As Cooke ties it up:

“We can’t be expected to honor our contracts with companies that disagree with us,” the outraged couple is arguing, “for that might taint our nuptials.” The new message? That we can’t all get along by keeping quiet, but instead need to positively affirm one another or face the consequences. Or, put another way: “Even if I ask you to, don’t cater my wedding, you bigot.”

Would that the agitators could settle on a strategy.

(source: The Tolerant Jeweler Who Harbored an Impure Opinion of Same-Sex Marriage)

That is the thing, though.  You can’t expect the torch-and-pitchfork crowd to behave consistently.  And you cannot delude yourself that their manipulators intend them to do so.  When one sets mindless mobs to work, one does not do so in order to achieve sensible agreement with reasonable people.

One does it to rend and destroy, to express the will to deny anyone what we wish for but cannot have.

The challenge is to find peace in the face of such things.

The challenge is to embrace the reasonableness of truth, goodness, and beauty, and to realize the facticity of irrational evil, and the futility of reasoning with it.  To love people in spite of it.  And to be willing to die before lying to them.

And then, it is possible, you may find the daylight and the freedom and the creativity in which to speak truth winningly.

And if not, you can only hope to see the Resurrection sooner.

Nothing can go wrong, then:  only do not be drawn into the half-light, then the darkness, in your urge to fight–or your urge to flee–or your urge to be nice.  Walk in the light.

Tell truth, and shame the devil.