The DO on Tolerance 

I'm a bit late, but I have an excuse: I'm currently working on another entry for the Donktionary®, which will hopefully be posted later tonight. I'm having trouble coming up with new words, but it's looking good so far.

Anyway, there are a couple things I want to cover in this post. First of all, our friends at the Daily Orange have provided another great letter to the editor for me to make fun of (and I'm actually providing a link this time). Here's the original: Letter: 'Tolerance' not enough for LGBT community (you may have to sign up to read it online). I'll just do the usual quote/response minifisk. Let's begin:

The response to the recent Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court ruling has caused me to question something. It seems that more and more often, we are hearing the word "tolerance" in reference to attitudes toward the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered community. Although this might sound like positive language that is taking a step in the right direction, I find it offensive as a member of the LGBT community to simply be "tolerated."

That's always a good start. I think everyone can see where this is going already: tolerance is now considered offensive, so even suggesting that homosexuals are different will soon be considered bigotry. Hooray for freedom of speech. I hope this guy represents a minority opinion.

...one dictionary definition of the verb "tolerate" is "to put up with something or somebody unpleasant." So, when the word is used in reference to LGBT people, it implies that our community is in some way unpleasant, which furthers an oppressive message that we are somehow inferior.

FYI: The entire planet is not obligated to like you just because you're gay. Why is that so shocking? It must be nice to belong to a protected group so you can say that you're being oppressed when someone doesn't want to be your special friend. Seriously, not everyone likes homosexuality (not "homosexuals," per se). That's just the way it is.

...This goes to show how far away we still are from acknowledging, accepting and appreciating LGBT people as human beings.

This is yet another subtle jab at "fundies" such as myself, I believe. I don't view homosexuals as inhuman, and I don't enjoy people implying that I do. Also, I certainly think they're morally inferior, but that doesn't take away from their humanity. As Dubya once said, "we're all sinners." If someone disagrees with you, it doesn't follow that they think you're not human. If that were true, then I could say the author of this letter is calling me inferior because I don't agree with him. See how it works?

And until certain heterosexuals can stop using their privilege to deny the 1,049 federal rights and protections that they enjoy to 10 percent of their loving, tax paying, fellow Americans, I guess I'll just have to "tolerate" them.

And of course, he closes with the classic misconception that homosexuals are being denied some sort of right. Once again, I will point out that same-sex marriage laws apply to EVERYONE, not just "LGBT people" or whatever they're calling themselves these days. The only difference is that heterosexuals don't want to marry individuals of the same sex. If we legalized everything that someone wanted to do, we would have chaos. And by the way, that "10 percent" crap was disproven years ago. As I understand it, only about 3 percent of the population is exclusively homosexual, and it's 6 percent at the most (fun fact: in my dorm, there's a board with various "facts" about the world's population if it were reduced to 100 individuals, and one of the "facts" is that there would be "11 homosexuals." Exaggeration, anyone?).

I think that's about enough of that. I've decided to go ahead and start a new post, since this one seems to have run on again. I'll be back.

Posted by CD on December 2, 2003 06:45 PM
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