This chapter looks at the related problems of tolerance and social control. They are related because, in some ways, they are two sides of the one coin. ‘Social control’ is a term derived from critical social work literature, where it usually refers to the tendency of social workers to impose a middle-class or mainstream morality and lifestyle on clients. In the process they use power granted by society to force marginalised and ‘deviant’ clients to conform. The relativist’s response is often welcomed by those who want to resist the tendency to social control. The idea of toleration has its origins in the English Reformation, when members of minority dissenting sects argued for equal rights of worship and conscience. This struggle for religious equality laid the basis for the doctrine we now know as liberalism. Tolerance is a virtue. Positive acceptance of difference is obviously also a virtue but it is not tolerance.