If You Tolerate This, Your Children Will Be Next

This is quite a serious subject for me, and affects so many people I know it isn't funny. So I hope I've done it justice, and I hope to god where I've inevitably slipped up in my argument, people can see the intention beyond the wording.

Reading back through this blog, it is pretty easy to work out that I am not a tolerant guy.

I used to be quite easy going until I hit 21. Following budget cuts in my personality, I was eventually stripped down to a malicious ball of spite powered entirely by bourbon creams, neat vokda and hate. The wretched and contemptuous creature now hunched over a keyboard in a dark cave of  squalor is the result of seven years in retail and five years studying politics.

I have many bile-inducing opinions, and you can pretty much guarantee that anything I express a mild interest in will inevitably turn to blinding disgust over an indeterminate period of time. And because of this, I am a perfect boyfriend for Jan Moir. She's 30 years my senior, but finding someone with the same ignorant, vomit-inducing opinions as myself has been rather difficult. Plus she's loaded, and if anything goes well with arrogance, it's greed.

Then I read this article, back in 2009. You should all be familiar with it. It was originally entitled 'There was nothing 'natural' about Steven Gately's death." Following complaints, it was re-edited to become 'A strange, lonely and troubling death..." I kind of stopped masturbating to her columns after that. That was a bit too far, Jan. I'm struggling to wonder if it was as bad as Peter Hitchen's 2009 article, entitled, "We show tolerance to 'gays' and get TYRANNY in return." Jesus, Pete. Tyranny? Why is 'gays' in inverted commas? Why are you warbling on about child hostages?

The Gays sacrifice foster babies to appease Satan and prolong their lives. If you tolerate this, your children will be next.

I'll be honest, I read most of his post and some of the stuff below that and just thought it was a parody article. It must be a parody article. Blood is pouring from my eyes and, Oh Jesus, he meant every word.

And since we're now neatly on the topic of both 'the gays' and 'bigoted vats of bubbling prejudice', I guess I can finally get round to talking about what I was going to talk about anyway. I was going to do this awhile a go. I was also going to make it good. But with the furor over gay marriage raging across every possible information medium ever, it's time to go.

I'm not going to write about gay marriage. My thoughts on gay marriage should be abundantly clear, albeit a little muddied by my opinion on the institute of marriage as a whole. I'm going to write about tolerance, and why I don't, nay, can't, tolerate gay people.

WARNING: This image may be considered inappropriate for people with insane socially backward worldviews.

 

tol·er·ance

 [tol-er-uhns] 

noun

1.

a fair, objective, and permissive attitude toward those whose opinions, practices, race, religion, nationality, etc., differ from one's own; freedom from bigotry.

Sounds pretty good, right? Even if sexuality must fall under the broader category of 'ect'. I mean, I used to be tolerant. I cringe when I remember saying 'I'm a tolerant guy'.

per·mis·sive

 [per-mis-iv] 

adjective

2.

granting or denoting permission

I stopped being tolerant because the idea of writing to every gay person in the United Kingdom, granting them permission to be gay and to continue their lives under my benevolent gaze was simply too time consuming, and also crazier than a sack full of cats. Let me break it down for you.

All views are not valid.

I cannot claim to be a proponent of social tolerance and be selective about it. If I have gay friends, and have no issue with people being gay, does that mean I should let fascists roam the streets spreading hate and fear? Ultimately, all things are not valid. It would be lovely to think they are, but they aren't. That's how politics works, you have your political self, with its beliefs and motivations, and ultimately you cannot reconcile who you are with something you find abhorrent. In that view, tolerance is just a word. It is barely an idea. Tolerance is selective.

Without equality: Tolerance is a myth.

Alright, I stole that from an article I was reading online, but it is true. If we take tolerance to be the bare minimum attitude a society should have, yet do not treat gay issues as being of equal value to other prevailing ideas, then we, as a species, are suffering from self-delusion. They are synonymous. You cannot have equality without subscribing to commonly accepted notions of tolerance. You cannot have tolerance if you do not have equality. Do we have equality for gay people? No we do not. Ergo, to call oneself tolerant is dubious to begin with. In my mind, you are subscribing to a lie.

Thanks, straight guy, for letting me live my life.

 

So what is this tolerance thing which we strive for but obviously don't have and probably don't want? Calling oneself tolerant is a construct. It is a lazy and unhelpful way of saying you're not a bigoted homophobe. It is a dismissing wave. Do whatever you want, leave me out of it. You can be as fabulous as you like, that's fine by me. Thanks for asking. I'm going out on a limb when I say that tolerance, on the surface, looks pretty good. But ultimately, it is not tolerance that society needs. 

ac·cept·ance

 [ak-sep-tuhns] 

noun

1.the act of taking or receiving something offered.

2.favourable reception; approval; favour.

3.the act of assenting or believing

4.the fact or state of being accepted or acceptable.

Even that sounds a little crude. Perhaps a political notion of 'post acceptance', might be a little bit more dignified. The Wikipedia article spells it out beautifully, for me, although I'm sure there are some bright political types who could do a better job than I. 

"Acceptance in human psychology is a person's assent to the reality of a situation, recognising a process or condition without attempting to change it, protest, or exit."

A person's assent to the reality of a situation. Doesn't that sound much better? People are gay. They will never need nor want your permission to be so. This is the reality of the situation. Ultimately, that is the problem with tolerance. Whenever I have spoken to a gay friend of mine, they have never expressed a craving for permission. They're human beings. They don't want people to put up with them. They do not want people to view their sexuality in academic terms. They do not want to settle for a legally enforced, socially informed view of tolerance that people subscribe to basically because intolerance is taboo.

As far as I've always understood it, people are all fairly similar to one another. They want you to respect them, to love them, and ultimately, to treat them as equally as you would treat others. And that is why I am not tolerant. Permission to be gay is not necessary. It is not something I can give or withhold. So there you go. Fuck tolerance, try treating people like people.