We saw an example of true tolerance given on Outside the Lines on ESPN when ESPN commentator Chris Broussard was asked to comment on the news that NBA free agent Jason Collins’ announcement that he is gay.
He appeared with openly gay ESPN senior writer LZ Granderson. They discussed whether the NBA was ready for such a move, how teammates might react, and then later in the conversation Granderson said, “If we really want to move toward progress and toward full acceptance, we have to have this conversation and this process.”
Broussard agreed and shared this example:
I’d like to second what LZ said. “I’m a Christian. I don’t agree with homosexuality. I think it’s a sin, as I think all sex outside of marriage between a man and a woman is. [ESPN’s] L.Z. [Granderson] knows that. He and I have played on basketball teams together for several years. We’ve gone out, had lunch together, we’ve had good conversations, good laughs together. He knows where I stand and I know where he stands. I don’t criticize him, he doesn’t criticize me, and call me a bigot, call me ignorant, call me intolerant.
In talking to some people around the league, there’s a lot Christians in the NBA and just because they disagree with that lifestyle, they don’t want to be called bigoted and intolerant and things like that. That’s what LZ was getting at. Just like I may tolerate someone whose lifestyle I disagree with, he can tolerate my beliefs. He disagrees with my beliefs and my lifestyle but true tolerance and acceptance is being able to handle that as mature adults and not criticize each other and call each other names…
Personally, I don’t believe that you can live an openly homosexual lifestyle or an openly premarital sex between heterosexuals, if you’re openly living that type of lifestyle, then the Bible says you know them by their fruits, it says that’s a sin. If you’re openly living in unrepentant sin, whatever it may be, not just homosexuality, adultery, fornication, premarital sex between heterosexuals, whatever it may be, I believe that’s walking in open rebellion to God and to Jesus Christ. I would not characterize that person as a Christian because I do not think the Bible would characterize them as a Christian.
That is true tolerance. It is showing grace and acceptance for somebody as a person without sacrificing truth and betraying what he knows to be true. I’ve said before that you can only tolerate somebody when there is a disagreement, an impasse. Agreement with a person is not tolerance. It is agreement. Yet that is how many on the left will define tolerance.
It is evident that they can not show Chris Broussard the same amount of tolerance that he demonstrated himself. It sounds to me that Broussard and Granderson have a cordial working relationship. They may even be friends. Broussard isn’t calling for Granderson to be fired. Granderson actually said, “Chris and I have had those uncomfortable conversations, the NBA now needs to have those uncomfortable conversations.”
It’s sad that many on the left could not emulate the respectful dialogue that Broussard and Granderson had.
HT: Ben Shapiro