liberal values
Chicago Fan's post at Slog about "Fully Living One's Beliefs" makes the all-too-pertinent observation that "liberal laws still allow conservatives to live out their values, while conservatives would not allow liberals to live out theirs:"
That is, in an America where abortion, divorce, cohabitation and premarital sex are legal, if you truly believe due to your deeply held religious principles that these things are wrong, you are free to live out your religious principles by not having cohabitating premarital sex that leads to an abortion. Liberal values allow conservatives to do as they please, to live out their religious beliefs. Conservatives do not return the favor. That's the fundamental divide. [emphasis in original]
The problem, of course, is that conservatives tend to demand conformity rather than accepting pluralism. Their disapproval of reproductive freedom means that abortion must be outlawed; their fear of diversity means that other races and religions must be demonized; their hatred of LGBT relations means that same-sex marriages must be unrecognized. The liberal viewpoints on these issues, on the other hand, do not demand that any woman aborts her fetus, that any Christian prays to Allah, or that any straight men marry each other. Ed Brayton's "Theocratic Quote of the Day" from Gary North demonstrates the wingnut demands quite well:
"...we must use the doctrine of religious liberty to gain independence for Christian schools until we train up a generation of people who know that there is no religious neutrality, no neutral law, no neutral education, and no neutral civil government. Then they will get busy in constructing a Bible-based social, political and religious order which finally denies the religious liberty of the enemies of God." [emphases added]"The Intellectual Schizophrenia of the New Christian Right" in Christianity and Civilization: The Failure of the American Baptist Culture, No. 1 (Spring 1982), p. 25