This was partly inspired by a post by Updike in this Pit thread in which he accuses the SF Board of Supervisors of hypocrisy for simultaneously proclaiming their city’s “tolerant” reputation and condemning an event sponsored by a Christian youth organization for the organization’s anti-gay and anti-abortion stances.
Note that the Supervisors did not actually do anything to prevent the gathering - they just made a public statement of disapproval.
Updike’s point is presumably that this statement was evidence of intolerance on the part of the Supervisors.
Later on in the thread, I disagreed, in somewhat harsher terms than I intend to here.
Anyway, I’ve seen the alleged point raised before, in this and other forums, that publicly disagreeing with ideas that one, uh, disagrees with is a sign of intolerance. Mostly, I hear this from the right-wing, anti-homo crowd, but I occasionally hear it from progressives, too.
Pulling out my broad brush, I guess the former tend to see it as some kind of rhetorical “gotcha” - meaning that they feel rather clever for finding a way to expose the alleged hypocrisy of their idealogical opponents, who are known for promoting “tolerance,” whatever than means. The latter tend to do it out of their sincere belief that in order to protect vulnerable groups, one must, among other things, keep their feelings from being hurt. So in the stereotypical progressive world view, a Christian group that makes public statements to indicate their disapproval of homosexuality, without working to do anything that causes any tangible harm to gay people, is intolerant, ipso facto.
I disagree with both notions. Nice little neo-Nazis who go to their meeting and seig heil or whatever, but are perfectly kind and polite to the Jews, Black people, etc that they meet in their day-to-day lives, are not intolerant. Neither is the Green city councilmember who makes a statement to the effect that he wishes Falwell, Robertson, et al would just shut the hell up already.
I realize that “what if you’re so intolerant of intolerance that you become intolerant yourself, ma-aaan?” is one those way out ideas that we used to sit around the dorms and talk about while baked out of our gourds, but can we draw a line someplace?
Thanks.
PS: I dunno if it’s okey dokey to bring Pit concepts to GD; I thought the ideas behind the discussion in question were interesting enough to merit a more respectful debate. If I screwed up, I’m sorry.