What the Supreme Court should really be doing

 Forcing your view of something on all citizens is not American, is not constitutional and is not decent. Here's how I dealt with this issue some years ago. 

Sam Smith, 2009 - This is what diversity is really about. It is not about forcing your values on someone else. It is about sharing space with those of different values in a way that no one is hurt.

This is not a new concept in American life, although it seems to have faded from view. Absent these days, for example, is the concept of reciprocal liberty. As Thomas Paine said, "Where the rights of men are equal, every man must finally see the necessity of protecting the rights of others as the most effectual security for his own."

Describing David Hackett Fischer's discussion in 'Albion's Seed' of the difference in the view of freedom within the American colonies, Leonard J. Wilson writes, "Their contrasting concepts of liberty are among the most visible today. The Puritan concept of liberty, 'ordered liberty' in Fischer's terminology, focused on the 'freedom' to conform to the policies of the Puritan Church and local government. The Virginia concept of liberty, 'hegemonic liberty', was hierarchical in nature, ranging from the great freedom of those in positions of power and wealth down to the total lack of freedom accorded to slaves. The Quaker concept of liberty, 'reciprocal liberty', focused on the aspects of freedom that were held equally by all people as opposed to the unequal and asymmetric freedoms of the Puritans and Virginians. Finally, the Scotch-Irish concept of liberty, 'natural liberty', focused on the natural rights of the individual and his freedom from government coercion."

The good thing about the Quaker notion of reciprocal liberty is that you don't have to approve of the other person's behavior to accept his or her right to engage in it.

America, at its best, knows that you don't have to like someone or their beliefs to extend to them the same freedom to be right or wrong. As Walter Kelly said, we have to defend the basic American right of everyone to make damn fools of themselves.

For diversity to work, no one gets to approve its membership. It exists because that's the way the world is.

The distinction is whether diversity is merely different or if it hurts someone. If it hurts someone - as with ethnic discrimination or the physical mistreatment of women - then society rightfully gets to call a halt to it.

But an abortion is not a public or social act. It is a personal matter chosen for personal reasons. So is opposition to abortion. A decent America would neither prevent abortions nor punish those in medicine who decline to provide them.

And if we understood and practiced such a principle of reciprocal liberty we might feel much better about our land and about each other.