Democracy and tolerance

I'm sorry to have to keep harping on the same issues here, again and again. (I think I'll label these "roll-your-eyes posts.") But it seems very clear to me that many political liberals are unclear about the meaning of democracy and tolerance. Take, for example, this blog entry by Sarah Wildman over at the liberal mag American Prospect. She says Rick Warren's overtures to liberals concerning poverty would be great--if only he would relent on homosexual and abortion issues. Wildman attended the same Pew Forum talk by Warren that New York Times columnist David Brooks did last week, about which Brooks wrote an excellent column that I also posted on.
About Warren's focus on issues of cooperation, she writes:

But "branching out beyond the traditional issues of abortion and gay marriage, and getting more involved in programs to help the needy" is not the same thing as changing positions -- or even abandoning activism -- on the issues of abortion and gay marriage. Warren didn't want to be asked about these two issues, or even the death penalty. He only wanted to talk about poverty and disease. I admired the effort, and eventually understood why. His views on these issues make the alliance Brooks envisions very difficult; for example, when asked if members of his congregation would vote for a politician who favored gay marriage, he said "no" and added, "They're not going to vote for a guy who wants to marry a horse, either." Audible gasps all around. And a casual comment about "activist judges," sent a chill over the room. Finally, at its heart, The Purpose-Driven Life is a text directed at the followers of Jesus Christ. The rest of us, literally, are going to hell.
Yet Warren is intensely likeable. I completely believe that he wants to be a "new sort of evangelical leader," one that puts the focus on these points of intersection -- poverty, AIDS, disease generally -- but I'm not sure he has the luxury of abandoning these other issues. If Warren is a "new sort of evangelical leader," is he powerful enough to shift the conversation? Does he recognize, and does he reject, the potential tyranny sought by many evangelicals? Or is his theology at its core exclusionary and incompatible with a secular democracy? Is Warren willing to compromise to meet the goals of poverty reduction? Brooks seems to believe it's possible. I'm not so sure.

Basically, liberals such as Wildman find it incomprehensible that Christians view abortion as murder and refuse to acknowledge man-on-man or female-on-female relationships to constitute traditional marriage. She even finds it appalling that Christians believe in a heaven and hell! Yes, she is certainly welcome to her beliefs to the contrary and advocate accordingly, but can't millions of other Americans be accorded the same rights and still agree on poverty reduction? If you read her last few sentences, she makes it clear that one cannot work with liberals on social advocacy issues unless they are pro-choice and pro-homosexual marriage.
It seems someone's ideology is exclusionary and incompatible with democracy, but it's not Warren's. Duh.