It’s one of those standard mistakes made by non-liberals, not grasping the difference between tolerance and approval. The liberal stance is that sure, we might not desire to live as you do. We might even think that your way of life is less than optimal – to put it mildly. On the other hand you’re a competent adult and as long as there’s no third party harm how you fuck up your life is your business.
That’s tolerance.
This applies to sexuality, gender claims, work choices, paint colours and anything else we might want to think about. Approval is different:
Providers of sex education in schools are teaching children that prostitution is a “rewarding job” and failed to advise a 14-year-old girl having sex with a 16-year-old boy that it was illegal.
Outside organisations teaching children about sex also promote “kinks” such as being locked in a cage, flogged, caned, beaten and slapped in the face, The Times has found.
Approval is supporting people in those choices, telling ’em that they’re fine and dandy. Which isn’t to be liberal at all. Tolerance and disapproval coexist quite nicely, if it’s necessary to approve of choices made then we lose that freedom to be liberal in the first place. For forced approval means the loss of that freedom to choose.
Which is what’s going wrong here. As with so many others of those issues. The progressives have simply forgotten what liberal means.