Tolerance Shmolerance

The Tolerance Bug has hit! At least, it’s hit this end of the blogiverse. There was Nicole talking about anti-gay legislation—the comment thread there has become long. And then I posted something and then the Spider posted something and we’re all having a fun little tolerance party. Meanwhile, Patience has lost her patience with wiccans, in part because they are so befuddlingly intolerant of intolerance and tolerant of the intolerable.

In the comments of my last post, Andrew says this about intolerance of intolerance:

Then of course I get all tied up because I realize that in the name of my religion I’m intolerant of intolerance…

Well, that is the confusing bit, isn’t it? But I think the problem is that we’re hung up on the wrong word. Intolerance is genuinely not the issue. Liberty is the issue.

That’s why I can be unapologetically intolerant of theocrats, no matter whether they wear turbans or white suits, burqas or golden crosses.

The problem is that, all too often, we think of intolerance and discrimination as inherently bad. More often than not, however, intolerance and discrimination are very good things. That’s the point many liberals (and, as Patience points out, many wiccans) tend to miss.

Really. Think of all the things we’d have to “tolerate” if we were really opposed to “intolerance.” We’d have to tolerate people dumping trash in our water because they’re of the opinion it doesn’t really hurt anyone (of consequence). We’d have to tolerate our neighbors playing “La Vida Loca” over and over again at 3 AM. We’d have to tolerate people who believe God told them to break into our house late at night and fill our bathtub with generic-brand baloney.

If we really opposed discrimination, we’d have to have sex with anyone who asked. (Conversely, I suppose, some of us would get a lot more action, so that’s not necessarily bad.) We’d have to hire the FIRST PERSON to apply for a job, even if that person were Pat Robertson and the job was “Professor of Evolutionary Anthropology.” We’d have to give our money to every single chump who called us on the phone and asked for it.

Fortunately, like cholesterol, there’s both good and bad intolerance, good and bad discrimination.

And the bad intolerance and discrimination are those that put one class of people above another in the eyes of the legal system. The kind that says blacks are subhuman, women are subhuman, Jews are subhuman, Muslims are subhuman, the Irish are subhuman, or gays are subhuman.

That’s what we oppose. Not intolerance or discrimination in general. So no one should get hung up about being intolerant of intolerance. Tolerance isn’t the issue—liberty is.

And anyone who tells you different is just trying to distract you.