To add to what you wrote, tolerance also requires disagreement with that which is tolerated. Where agreement exists the idea of “tolerance” doesn’t apply. So tolerance and acceptance are not only not the same, they seem to me to be opposites.
This is pretty much my point. However, folks have been using tolerance as a synonym for acceptance, which is not and should not be. Folks who push a black and white world say tolerance is acceptance because they feel that lines need to be drawn that cannot be crossed. Those that see the world as only shades of gray say the same, but in this case, they say attempting to draw and hold any line is useless.
Toleration is hard, it takes effort and involves risk that what is being tolerated might increase and lead to horrible consequences. The folks who fought for GOProud to be included in the CPAC this year felt the sting of that lash, as the catty and viscous nature and the plainly "gay" rights bent of this bunch was elevated to center stage so that folks could tell these weren't conservatives, but instead folks hoping to co-op the conservative movement.
Yet the nature of politics is to provide an open door for all, and assure the rights and assist in the right of each to pursue their own aspirations even if we do not agree with them, perhaps especially when we don't agree. Palin made this clear that it is a core American value that has been the source of much pain, but just like tolerance, it has its rewards that are commensurate with the cost.
The power of the Judaeo-Christian values that underlay Western Civilization is that we have some time tested worthy standards that have also been able to respond to the questions posed by our age and any other. This value set rejects "gay" relationships between men strongly, and this is at odds with many of the cultures that surrounded though this seems uncommon now, in the ancient world, gay relationships were normal. We also remember these times for their decadence, corruption, and lack of concern for the value of human life or women for that matter. Faith in God celebrates life and all that would reject life is at odds with this core teaching.
This is how we can tell that Islam is at odds with the very God they purport to worship. In that this faith calls on people to celebrate death, and impress the pain of death on those who do not submit to it. This is the way of intolerance and tyranny. This leads to a peace of sorts, that of unending oppression, misery and the depredation of the human spirit such that life only grinds on to spite those who oppress them. But, in the dark ages of Western Civilization people were similarly oppressed, so we must understand that it is not necessarily the faith, but rather how it is interpreted that either supports or opposes the freedom of the spirit of men and their ability to work together for common goals by pursuing their own selfish ends.
Only in America, did people attempt a system for governance by "flawed" people, accepting human nature and attempting to offset its worst aspects by designing a system that played various interests against each other to assure that evil ends always have a powerful opponent that can oppose and expose these actions and then call for a return to the correct path. Our Constitution tolerates evil people, it doesn't accept them. It assumes they will always exist and then puts in place a means for folks to keep their freedoms if they are vigilant.
This is the price of tolerance, the need to be vigilant and to be prepared to become intolerant when evil inclination turns to evil deeds.