While this world has a history of vicious intolerance—one it sometimes appears may continue forever—I see signs that there is more good than bad, that we are evolving socially and spiritually. Only in the backwaters of a dark soul can someone believe another’s life is theirs for the taking, and there are many more bright souls than dark in this world.
The question becomes: how can we maintain and express our deep-seated religious beliefs and practices without becoming intolerant of those who do not share, or possibly oppose them? The answer to this is expressed by L. Ron Hubbard in his nonreligious book called The Way to Happiness:
You’ve probably never heard of Cyrus the Great, but if you admire and enjoy freedom of religion, freedom from slavery, and a country that includes people of all different faiths, races and cultures, you may owe him your thanks.
We are supposed to be living in an enlightened age, but instead we seem to be devolving into a society of bullies who, ironically, pride themselves on being “tolerant”— but only of what they deem fit to tolerate.
I have been a structural and specialty contractor for almost half a century and have helped build several of the very Disney properties over which you preside. I used to have an enormous respect for Disney.
It’s almost like Disney wants to attack my religion. I mean, it claims to uphold “values of inclusion, tolerance, and civility” but forgets what is “indefensible and inconsistent” with those values when it comes to someone’s church.
Man’s entire history has, to a large degree, centered on the question of God. Wars have been fought, families torn apart, entire groups of people persecuted all because of how they worshiped or believed in God.