After the crazy rantings of Sally Kern spread like a rash all over the internet, many of the good folks in the comments section have responded (in broken grammar and syntax, usually) to the flood of criticism and outrage by accusing progressives and gays of being intolerant of Mrs. Kern's right to free speech. A representative example of a great many similar comments:
"I don't see anything she said [sic] is soo [sic] bad. Why is it okay for the gay community [sic] can voice their belief but get [sic] offended when the straight world takes a stand and accuses us as [sic] a hate crime.. By the way the gays need to read the bible [sic] front to back and see it [sic] stand on gay people. I teach my children that being gay is unaceptable [sic] and a sin against god. [sic] I'm proud to be a straight woman and proud that I am raising god fearing [sic] law abidding [sic] staight [sic] citzens. Yes I am ANTIGAY. I applause [sic] Rep Kern for being true to her beliefs and not allowing the gay community to bully her. "
This is an extremely common response by the right wing when their bigotry is exposed and reflected back to them. They move from aggressive crusader to aggrieved victim at the slightest whim, and without any hint of awareness or irony. The question then becomes one of how to discuss this issue of being "intolerant of intolerance" in a way that makes sense and allows no room for misunderstanding.
Dan Savage, the popular gay sex-advice columnist who writes "Savage Love", has addressed this issue many times in the past. While I don't normally consult sex-advice columnists when it comes to political and ethical thought, he makes excellent points with which I agree wholeheartedly.
Being intolerant of intolerance is not the same as being intolerant. Yes, it's a crazy sentence, but think about it. Being tolerant of someone (or a group of people) doesn't necessarily mean that you like them, or that you agree with them. It means that you are willing to put up with them in exchange for being left alone in return.
For example, despite their painfully hateful and inaccurate rhetoric, I am willing to put up with Ann Coulter, Gary Bauer, Pat Robertson, George Bush, and Jerry Falwell (and their ilk) out of my respect for our first amendment that guarantees their right to free speech. I am not organizing marches on Washington to outlaw straight marriages. I am not lobbying school boards to implement an anti-straight educational curriculum. I am not running for office on the promise to introduce legislation to prevent Christian people from adopting children or holding certain kinds of jobs or visiting their partners in the hospital. I don't like most right-wing Christians or their religion, but am willing to put up with them out of a sense of tolerance.
In stark contrast, right-wing Christians don't like me either, and have no intention of putting up with or tolerating me. They're not willing to just speak their piece... they want to follow that by actively persecuting people like me. They want to make my loving relationship of 14 years invisible at best and illegal at worst. They desire nothing more than to restrict my right to privacy, my job options, my adoption opportunities, and my civil rights. The legislation that they and their elected supporters have introduced in state and federal governmental bodies over the past decades have shown this to be true without question. They also have turned a blind eye and a deaf ear to the violence that their rhetoric has engendered, resulting in a tacit support of attacks on people like me.
These facts show that anti-gay religious zealots have moved past the point where their disdain for me is protected by the first amendment. They have, for many years now, resided in a decayed moral netherworld where their bigotry, wrapped in the American flag and their interpretation of a cherry-picked and deeply messed-around-with Bible, is no longer simply free speech with which I don't agree. It is instead hate-filled rhetoric that is backed up by real attempts to legislate me into second-class citizen status. And it has often worked, thanks to the tendency of the uneducated or the down-on-their-luck to feel better about themselves and their lot in life by dehumanizing and then scapegoating a minority... a minority that is clearly identified to them by those with whom they share religious services every Sunday.
Dan Savage said it best:
Try putting it to your idiotic friends this way: Do they think violence is wrong? Of course they do. Then ask them if there are times when violence is justified. Unless they're pacifists, they'll say yes, violence is justified in self-defense.
Well, being intolerant of the intolerant is employing intolerance in self-defense. It's justified, a necessary measure for self-preservation, and is the only reasonable response to people who argue that we are bad, wrong or immoral. They are wrong, we are right, and we shouldn't be conned into tolerating them or their lies under the guise of "tolerance."
Furthermore, I'm sure your friends would not hesitate to express their intolerance for other forms of intolerance: racism, for example, or sexism. People who can't tolerate blacks or Asians or Jews are not to be tolerated. They are unacceptable, they exist outside the bounds of decent human conduct and discourse, regardless of how they justify their hatred.
The same standard applies to homophobia. It is irrational, it is unacceptable, and we should demand, in no uncertain terms (even if it brings down deeply hypocritical accusations of intolerance), that homophobia be cast out of the bounds of decent human conduct and discourse.
Remember[, once] upon a time -- a recent time -- racism, sexism and xenophobia were commonly accepted [points of view]. Ironically enough, "deeply held religious views" were often used to justify all three. (There are biblical arguments to be made in favor of all of them.) All three were defeated, cast out, because people in the West made it clear that they would no longer tolerate them. We didn't stamp them out, of course, but we've come a long, long way, and it's clear where we as a society, however imperfectly, stand on these issues.
The challenge for us, for our movement, is to continue to battle the same forces of intolerance that once argued for the subjugation of women and the inferiority of African Americans until homo-hatred gets added to the list of biblically-justifiable-but-no-longer-acceptable biases. (my emphasis)
It also goes without saying that any criticism of the religionist "neo-know-nothing" movement in America today will result in the simpering, whimpering complaints of progressive Christians, saying "We're not all like that, you know." Yes, I know. What I don't know is why they're saying that to me instead of to the bigots who claim to represent them. Why aren't the progressive Christians out there, who claim to be the silent majority, acting like frightened kittens hiding under the sofa while nutjobs like Rod Parsley and Fred Phelps and John Hagee go all over the television and internet telling their sheeple that gay people are pedophiles, bestiophiles (is that a word?), degenerates, criminals, or worse? The answer is that they either haven't been presented with enough of a stimulus in their personal lives to create the impetus for action (the more hopeful response), or that deep down in the dark corner of their souls, they actually agree just a little tiny bit with the homohaters (the more realistic response).
It also is true that the haters will bring up the argument that their hate speech is simply "free speech" and should be tolerated as such. Yes, they are welcome to say whatever they like. What they should be careful to realize is that free speech does not mean speech without consequences. The consequences can and should include social isolation, political ridicule, and other such comeuppance. And what Mrs. Kern should realize is that her hate speech does have consequences... her free speech is not free when GLBT people have to pay for it in blood and fear.
So... yes. I am intolerant of intolerance, and for good reason. I will not be lured into accepting homohatred as an acceptable point of view out of a fundamentally flawed and insanely hypocritical accusation of bigotry, no matter how much those accusations might give my little liberal bleeding heart a prickly heat rash. I'll continue fighting back, and will never allow homohatred to be a point of view that some rhetorical mumbojumbo posits as morally equal to mine. Sally Kern and her ilk are railing against a societal sea-change that has already happened. There's no going back. I'll keep bitching, and time will show that I'm on the right side.
