Tolerance

I've been thinking a lot about tolerance this week. I'm not sure that I've come to any conclusions, but it's the thought that counts.

There are two people in my life that frequently make, in one case, racist and, in the other case, homophobic comments. Now, in the '90s it seemed like everyone just pretended that people's differences didn't exsist, whereas now it's alright (to a certain extent) to poke fun at natural variation as long as all variations are mocked equally. So, at first I assumed the candidness of their words to be this natural progression between extremes.

I was wrong. I've now come to realize that they're just racist and homophobic. The thing is that I still don't think they are bad people. I disagree with what they say, of course, and their words make me very uncomfortable, but I've come to know them before I learned of their beliefs. In my mind they are just ignorant and perhaps I can help them overcome this, but in the interm what do I do?

When I commented to a mutual friend that the homophobe's comments were upsetting me, she said that they should be more careful voicing their opinions in such a public environment, but that they had the right to these opinions none-the-less. I suppose that's what really got me thinking becuase my immediate reaction was that they don't have the right to these opinions. But that's just me being intolerant of their intolerancem and doesn't that make me a hypocrite.

I suppose this is the exact debate surrounding free speech. It is free up until a certain point. Up until people get hurt. But people are so diverse in their opinions that someone's bound to get hurt at nearly every point. So, where do you draw the line? Or should there even be a line at all? Instinct tells me there should be a line, but those are the instincts of someone firmly on the socially acceptable side of that line...

I talked about this with another friend and she said that it doesn't really matter if there are the so called "backwards" thinkers in our society because they will become less backward as the whole society progresses. Theoretically, I can see how that would be the case, but in practice it feels as though we've reached a divergent point. We may have all progressed together up until a certain state and now we're dividing into different groups of extremists with no hope of a middle ground. I suppose that this is an impossible claim for me to make since I never lived at a time where women were burned at the stake for strange behaviour.

In conclusion, there is none. Maybe I should be open minded to people's intolerances or maybe I should call them on it and have them question their beliefs. Either way I feel as though my natural instinct to shun their behaviour or angrily retort solves nothing and just portrays my own bias and intolerance...