“We want to be left alone” turned into their boots on our necks
Our turn to yell 'leave us alone, go bugger each other quietly', but of course they will cry homo-haters at us.
Indulged in this for a time, error goes on to assert equal rights. Truth and error are two balancing forces. The Church shall do nothing which looks like deciding between them; that would be partiality. It is bigotry to assert any superior right for the truth. We are to agree to differ and any favoring of the truth, because it is truth, is partisanship. What the friends of truth and error hold in common is fundamental. Anything on which they differ is “ipso facto” non-essential. Anybody who makes account of such a thing is a disturber of the peace of the church. Truth and error are two co-ordinate powers, and the great secret of church-statesmanship is to preserve the balance between them.
From this point error soon goes on to its natural end, which is to assert supremacy. Truth started with tolerating; it comes to be merely tolerated and that only for a time. Error claims a preference for its judgments on all disputed points. It puts men into position, not as at first in spite of their departure from the Church’s faith, but in consequence of it. Their recommendation is that they repudiate that faith, and position is given them to teach others to repudiate it, and make them skillful in combating it." (pp. 195-196)
From: “THE CONSERVATIVE REFORMATION AND ITS THEOLOGY as represented in the Augsburg Confession and in the history and literature of the Evangelical Lutheran Church” by Charles P. Krauth, D.D. (1871). [Note date]