I Don't Mind Being Tolerated
Many gay men and lesbians find the idea of tolerance offensive. They want more than tolerance and they want more than support; they want gay and lesbian sexuality to be championed from the rooftops.
Imagine how the sincere religious person, still coping with the proscription against gay sex in Leviticus, will react to such a demand.
There is a difference between compromise and selling out your beliefs. So many gay people refuse compromise, as though they alone have a right to run the world. Then they're furious when right-wing zealots also refuse to compromise, as though they have the right to run the world.
I have never understood why giving up any semblance of ethics is seen as good for society.
Let's look at an example. A subgroup of people like to have sex that involves poo. Ew.
It is true that personal growth comes from taking on new challenges and trying new things. A boundary deserves to be pushed.
Still, this argument does not sway me when it comes to large chunks of fecal matter and sex. I'm not interested. And I'm not going to change my mind.
No argument from anyone about how bigoted I am matters. This is my line in the sand, my sincerely held personal belief. And no, I'm not going to champion the practice, no matter what arguments you muster.
However, I am firm believer in the concept of tolerance. I will not interfere with your hot night with a stream of diarrhea. No matter how yucky I think it is, it does not concern me, and does not harm anyone else.
In fact, if the federal government were to bring in legislation that banned sex involving excrement, I would be against this legislation. Create poo porn and sell it on the newsstand. And your Poo Pride Day is fine with me -- be proud of you are, honey!
But there is no way on God's green earth that I will take the next step and champion your sexual practice. I tolerate it.
For those who believe that my tolerance is not enough -- tough.
In turn, I will be consistent. I will tolerate the sincerely-held beliefs of those who dislike my own lifestyle. That's because I believe in freedom of thought and expression. I regret their opinions, but I tolerate them. Freedom is meaningless unless my opponents can also benefit from it.
As I said at the beginning, many gay men and lesbians believe tolerance is not enough.
But here's the definition for tolerance, taken from the American College Dictionary: "The disposition to be patient and fair toward those whose opinions or practices differ from one's own; freedom from bigotry."
Truly, tolerance is an honorable ideology.
PART II -- APPALLED? LET ME TRY AGAIN
"'Then you should say what you mean.' the March Hare went on. 'I do,' Alice hastily replied; 'at least - at least I mean what I say - that's the same thing, you know.'
'Not the same thing a bit!' said the Hatter. 'Why, you might just as well say that 'I see what I eat' is the same thing as 'I eat what I see!.'"
Lewis Carroll's lovely tale of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland held within its pages some important lessons. Like the fact that the meaning of a word is important.
My last column presented the definition of tolerance. The real definition, taken from the Hatter's, er, horse's mouth (the American College Dictionary): "The disposition to be patient and fair toward those whose opinions or practices differ from one's own; freedom from bigotry."
I received some angry e-mail from readers telling me that my paean to tolerance was wrong and offensive. That promoting tolerance is actually about allowing bigotry. Because for many heterosexuals, "tolerance" is merely an excuse to broadcast their hatred of gay people, all the while trying to mitigate their disgust by saying that they "tolerate" our existence.
And yet that's not the real definition of tolerance at all.
Why on earth would we allow heterosexuals to distort tolerance so? Why do we allow right-wing heterosexuals to control the language, and thus the very essence of the debate?
We cannot allow bigots to twist "tolerance" into something different than what it is. Their version of tolerance has nothing to do with what the word, and the ideology, really means.
Attack the concept of tolerance and you've already lost the fight, because you're letting the enemy set the ground rules.
So don't attack tolerance: rather, tell those who distort it that they're wrong. They are mangling the language.
"Most people who bother with the matter at all would admit that the English language is in a bad way, but it is generally assumed that we cannot by conscious action do anything about it," George Orwell wrote in his famous 1946 essay "Politics and the English Language."
"Our civilization is decadent and our language - so the argument runs - must inevitably share in the general collapse. It follows that any struggle against the abuse of language is a sentimental archaism, like preferring candles to electric light or hansom cabs to aeroplanes. Underneath this lies the half-conscious belief that our language is a natural growth and not an instrument which we shape for our own purposes."
As gay men and lesbians, we understand this: language is important. It can hurt us.
Orwell wrote: "Now, it is clear that the decline of a language must ultimately have political and economic causes: it is not due simply to the bad influence of this or that individual writer. But an effect can become a cause, reinforcing the original cause and producing the same effect in an intensified form, and so on indefinitely. A man may take to drink because he feels himself to be a failure, and then fail all the more completely because he drinks. It is rather the same thing that is happening to the English language. It becomes ugly and inaccurate because our thoughts are foolish, but the slovenliness of our language makes it easier for us to have foolish thoughts. The point is that the process is reversible....
"If one gets rid of these [bad habits] one can think more clearly, and to think clearly is a necessary first step toward political regeneration: so that the fight against bad English is not frivolous and is not the exclusive concern of professional writers."
Each of us, Orwell said, must be involved in fighting mental foolishness.
So give reporters and the general public the real definition of tolerance, and demand that they call right-wingers on it.
Tell them that this "tolerance" is not what they say it is. In fact, their false tolerance is a far nastier thing. And call it what it is: bigotry. And reclaim true tolerance.