My principal concern in ‘Making Sense of Political Toleration’ was not to present a neutralist theory of toleration, but to make sense of toleration in contemporary political circumstances and, in particular, to counter Newey’s efforts to render the idea of political toleration nonsensical.Footnote 1 My remarks on the neutral state were something of an aside, designed to correct a widespread misunderstanding of the relationship between neutrality and toleration. Nothing in my argument on how we should make sense of political toleration turns on the feasibility or desirability of a neutral state.

In his Reply, Newey focuses principally on his ‘symmetry claim’ – the claim that he defends at length in Virtue, Reason and Toleration – that, ‘where two civil-society groups come into conflict, each side can level the charge of intolerance against the other’.Footnote 2 A democratic government, faced with that conflict, is left with no tolerant option; it can decide only which of the two demands for intolerance it should concede. Hence, Newey concludes, ‘political toleration’ in democratic circumstances is impossible.

My main argument against Newey’s symmetry claim was, and is, that it misrepresents the ordinary run of cases in which toleration is at stake. Using the example of abortion, I argued that it is reasonable to say that the pro-lifer who seeks to prevent someone’s having an abortion is, in so doing, not tolerating that person’s act. It is not similarly reasonable to hold that the person who has an abortion acts intolerantly because she acts contrary to the wishes of the pro-lifer. If we insist that A acts intolerantly of B in acting contrary to B’s wishes about how A should act, we are driven to absurd conclusions. As I pointed out, it would mean that we should deem the Christian intolerant for not complying with the Muslim’s wish that he should convert to Islam, and the Muslim intolerant for not complying with the Christian’s wish that he should convert to Christianity.

My use of the abortion example in no way implied that the pro-choice position was right and the pro-life position wrong. We can hold that the pro-lifer is right to regard abortion as intolerable and right not to tolerate it; but that does not entail that, if abortion is permitted or if someone has an abortion, the pro-lifer suffers intolerance. Perhaps, as Newey implies in his reply, it is the aborted foetus that suffers intolerance so that the pro-lifer can claim to be acting in defence of toleration, but that is a very strange way of characterizing the act or the wrong of abortion. If it is a relevant complication, we can avoid it by switching to cases where no analogous complication arises. For instance, if one group seeks the freedom to engage in consensual homosexual acts in private, while another seeks to prevent that freedom, should we say that those who wish to engage in homosexual acts exhibit an intolerance that is symmetrical with the intolerance of those who wish to stop them engaging in those acts? Again, that seems wilfully perverse. I have yet to encounter the opponent of homosexuality whose complaint is that homosexual conduct is intolerant.

To spare myself the charge of using examples that exploit liberal sympathies, I shall state the same point using the case of paedophilia. If a group seeks the freedom to practise paedophilia while others seek to prevent that freedom, it is the opponents of paedophilia who seek intolerance. It is simply implausible to hold that the paedophiles themselves act intolerantly (presumably, in Newey’s symmetry thesis, intolerantly of their opponents) in practising, or seeking to practise, paedophilia. Of course, the opponents of paedophilia are entirely right not to tolerate it, but it does not follow that what they oppose must be itself intolerant.

Newey’s symmetry thesis does not, therefore, withstand scrutiny. There may be, of course, cases in which two groups do register mutually intolerant demands. Catholics may demand the suppression of Protestantism and Protestants may demand the suppression of Catholicism. But even in that case, the government has, on my argument, the tolerant option of conceding neither demand. The case of an Orange Lodge marching through a Catholic neighbourhood is undoubtedly more complex, but there is no reason why we should accept that that complexity infects every case, or even the general run of cases, in which toleration is at stake.

It is one thing to point out that Newey’s symmetry thesis runs counter to our ordinary understanding of toleration and yields absurd conclusions. It is another to render the concept of toleration rigorous such that it can withstand Newey’s efforts to erode the idea of political toleration. I concede that the line-drawing this requires is not always easy.Footnote 3

Intolerance is generally characterized – including by Newey himself – as entailing prevention, and toleration as refraining from prevention.Footnote 4 That is what led me to characterize intolerance as the curtailment of action or agency, albeit ‘action’ understood generously to include both inaction and the manifesting of beliefs and identities. It is difficult to see how a person’s doing x is not tolerated if nothing and no one prevents that person’s doing x. With one qualification that I shall consider in a moment, that still seems right. Suppose, for example, that I criticize a religious faith but refrain from doing anything that prevents or impedes the continued practice of that faith by its adherents. The adherents may dislike my criticism but, since I have done nothing to curtail their freedom to practise their faith, they cannot claim to suffer intolerance.Footnote 5 Indicating disapproval or dislike of an activity, while nevertheless refraining from preventing it, is the model case of toleration.

‘Prevention’ may, however, be too austere a notion to be a necessary condition of intolerance. First, we can reasonably describe as ‘intolerant’ behaviour that seeks to prevent, even if it fails actually to prevent. Secondly, given that a tolerator may take exception not to what another does but to what he fails to do, she might be tolerant in refraining from compelling, rather than in not preventing. Thirdly, a measure that aims not wholly to prevent but to deter by rendering an act more difficult or costly – by, for example, subjecting it to penal taxation – might reasonably be described as an exercise in intolerance. Even the threat of punishment deters, rather than renders impossible, the act at which it is aimed. But, at best, these points constitute minor qualifications to toleration conceived as non-prevention and none departs from the spirit of that conception.

There is, however, a further possibility that constitutes a more significant departure. Suppose that I disapprove of a person’s beliefs or conduct and, for that reason, inflict harm or suffering on the person, but harm or suffering that does not prevent, and that is not designed to prevent, the person’s continuing to manifest the beliefs or to engage in the conduct that I find objectionable. Consider, for example, the act of placing a pig’s head in a synagogue or a mosque. It seems reasonable to describe that sort of conduct as intolerant, even though it neither prevents nor compels. Here the opposite of toleration is persecution, rather than prevention.Footnote 6

In so far as intolerance might take the form of non-preventative persecution, I agree with Newey that it might occur even though a victim suffers no curtailment of agency. But there is reason to be parsimonious about the range of non-preventative conduct that we include within intolerance. Newey is right to insist upon the relevance of intention: an act will be intolerant only if it intends to inflict harm or suffering for reasons of disapproval or dislike. Neither harm nor prevention can be intolerant yet unintended. It is partly for that reason that I find representations of Rushdie’s Satanic Verses as an exercise in ‘intolerance’ as implausible, if not disingenuous.

Thus, your merely disliking or disapproving of my words or actions is insufficient to make you a victim of my intolerance. You may profoundly dislike and disapprove of the criticism I make of your religious faith, but that criticism can only begin to be represented as persecution if I voice it in order to cause you suffering. Even if I know my criticism will cause you ‘pain’ (it will ‘offend’ you), it cannot be characterized plausibly as intolerance unless that is my reason for voicing it. After all, the presence of dislike or disapproval is essential to the phenomenon of toleration and, if we deem the mere expression of dislike or disapproval to be intolerance, we really will turn the idea of toleration into nonsense. Toleration would then have to become an exercise in secrecy or pretence and those, such as Christians and Muslims, who subscribe to beliefs that are by their very nature critical of other beliefs, would be guilty of intolerance merely in virtue of holding and not hiding their beliefs. Newey describes hatred as intolerance; hatred may indeed lead to intolerance, but mere hatred is not intolerance and we should not describe as intolerant the person who endures what he hates.

There is good reason, therefore, for not holding that merely making known one’s dislike or disapproval constitutes intolerance. The issue here is whether A’s merely expressing disapproval or dislike of B’s activity constitutes intolerance. Even if we allowed that it does, it is not clear how that would save Newey’s symmetry thesis. That thesis seems to require something even more extravagant: that acting in a way that incurs the disapproval or dislike of others constitutes intolerance simply because it incurs their disapproval or dislike. Holding that A is intolerant of B merely in virtue of his saying or doing something that incurs B’s disapproval or dislike really does make a nonsense of toleration. But that seems a nonsense that we have to embrace if the symmetry thesis is to survive.