I don’t expect anyone to accept things they don’t like. But I don’t see tolerance in the abstract as cowardice, or weakness. Rather I see it as a mark of moral strength: only someone secure in his own beliefs can tolerate. Tolerance is an important form of civility; indeed, tolerance is why the West is powerful and most other parts of the world are weak. Their differences really do divide them. Ours, generally, don’t. Or at least they did not back when we had the good sense to keep the state small.

In the modern era of big government, tolerance has become more difficult because people don’t being forced to give money to people they would otherwise tolerate.

You’re right that there are some things we should not tolerate, and to tolerate these them is the mark of a coward. The question is how we determine those things. In any case I don’t think homosexuality is one of them.

People are free to be as homophobic, sexist or racist as they like. They are also free to make all the homophobic, ethnic, religious or racial slurs they like. But if I am at a national convention, I expect a certain decorum from the guests of honor. I don’t want to hear them talking like someone I met at a bar.

I think she is doing the politically correct Republicrats a huge favor — she runs out front and makes a target of herself, giving the sanctimonious group-think groupies an instant island of high ground to leap to, so that they can make an ostentatious display of their rectitude by joining in the obligatory denunciation, making proclamations of their own lock-step adherence to the politically correct dictates of the day (“Look at me, I’m a compassionate conservitude too!).

Some of us understand that people don’t get to choose their fetishes, but at the same time we understand that fetishes are not a rational basis for a philosophy of family structure or politics. And no amount of conditioning will make the details of any fetish any less disgusting to those who are not similarly afflicted with it.

The fact that a disgust factor exists that is not polite to mention invites conformists to ludicrous extremes of hypocrisy. This opens an irresistible opportunity for humor. Of jokes that are tasteful, and jokes that are tasteless, the latter seem to get more mileage. If we must tolerate the likes of Al Franken, then this comedic orgy of idiocy should also include an Ann Coulter.

A salute to Mr. Huggins for bringing his perspective to the argument. The Gracie Allen visual made me snort into my coffee. Thanks for that!

–John Danforth–

There is a longstanding trend in the West to include people politically, and as a part of society and the community, if their condition, whatever it is, was inborn.

In many people’s opinions, and also IMO in the fast-encroaching scientific concensus, being gay (at least), and also probably lesbian, is established in people in utero. It, too, is inborn, similar to being black.

If you find racism, or sexism, offensive, then perhaps you might consider why that is, then see if the same reasoning does not apply to homophobia.