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This chapter explains why granting conscientious exemptions is almost always the outcome of toleration – and always the outcome of toleration – in cases where the exemption is granted from a law that reflects or enforces moral values. The chapter explains why the principle of toleration better explains both the practice of granting conscientious exemptions and the attitude of those who grant the exemptions. Much of the discomfort that this argument causes and much of the criticism of it, result from confusing the dominant descriptive aspect of toleration with its non-existent normative aspect; from mistakenly seeing toleration as a reason or justification; and from mistakenly perceiving it as a political or moral virtue. The chapter explains why toleration is a descriptive concept and never a reason or justification to act in a certain way, and why toleration is not a political or moral virtue, but rather either morally good, morally allowed, morally prohibited or a lesser evil – all according to the circumstances. The chapter then continues to explain why the concepts of neutrality and respect fail to accurately describe the practice of granting conscientious exemptions and the attitude of those who grant the exemptions. As to neutrality, it fails to describe the practice of granting conscientious exemptions, both because the state is not and can never be neutral, and because the argument that granting conscientious exemptions results from state's neutrality can never be coherent. As to respect, it either misses the nature of conscientious exemptions – or collapses into the definition of toleration. The chapter concludes with a conceptual note according to which the concepts of neutrality and toleration have some overlooked similarities, generally, and also within the context of granting conscientious exemptions.

By enacting equality laws the liberal state decides the limits of liberal tolerance by relying on content-based rather than content-neutral considerations. Equality laws are not and cannot be neutral. They reflect a content-based moral decision about the importance and weight of the principle of equality vis-à-vis other rights or interests. This leads to the following conclusions: First, since equality laws in liberal democracies reflect moral-liberal values, conscientious objections to equality laws rely, almost by definition, on unjustly intolerant, anti-liberal and morally repugnant values. Secondly, we should not shy away from explicitly relying on moral-liberal views when deciding whether it is justified to grant exemptions from equality laws. Thirdly, conscientious objections to equality laws should normally not be tolerated or accommodated by the state, because conscientious objections that rely on what is rightly perceived by the legislature as unjustly intolerant, anti-liberal and morally repugnant values should not be tolerated in a tolerant-liberal democracy.

Most democratic states tolerate, to various extents, conscientious objection. The same states tend not to tolerate acts of civil disobedience and what they perceive as selective conscientious objection. In this paper it is claimed that the dichotomy between civil disobedience and conscientious objection is often misguided; that the existence of a "civic conscience" makes it impossible to differentiate between conscientious objection and civil disobedience; and that there is no such thing as "selective" conscientious objection—or that classifying an objection as "selective" has no significant moral or practical implications. These claims are supported by a preliminary, more general argument according to which conscientious objection is and should be tolerated because the objector lacks the ability to choose his conscience and to decide whether to act upon it. The lack-of-choice argument, it is claimed, applies equally to all types of conscientious objection, including those that are mistakenly called "selective" objection. It also applies to one type of civil disobedience. As a result, if a state is willing to tolerate non-selective conscientious objection, it may and at times must also tolerate selective conscientious objection and (one type of) civil disobedience and to a similar degree (all other things being equal).