this post was submitted on 11 Dec 2024
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Tolerance is a social contract: if all parties abide by it and tolerate the others, it holds. But if a party breaks it by denying some other (compliant) party tolerance, they forfeit their own right to receiving tolerance. They must not be tolerated, if that social contract is to be upheld.
Bigotry and tolerance are opposing forces. You cannot value one without rejecting the other. Bigotry must be as repulsive to you as tolerance is important. If you're fine with bigots, that means tolerance isn't that important to you.
From the perspective of those on the receiving end of bigotry, that looks a lot like enabling the bigots: if you could take a stance against it, but won't, you're complacent at best and complicit at worst. "I don't care enough about you to compromise my unwillingness to take a stance."
That isn't the same as people who grew up with rigid gender norms (like most of us) and are in the progress of deprogramming. You can despise the mentality they were raised with, but if they're actively trying to separate from it, that hate doesn't need to extend to them. Nobody takes issue with people trying to change for the better.
We take issue with the raging mask-off "I'd rather creep on kids and elect a rapist than allow transgender kids to use the validating bathroom" bigots, which is what the post was about. They're not "in an evolution", bigotry is a part of their identity.
If and when they change course, they'll fall into the previous group and we'll be happy to help them. But until then, they're the enemy, and anyone justifying their bigotry is an enabler.
What does that have to do with the topic? Universal Healthcare is in the common interest, so even if I for whatever reason wanted people whose ideology I reset to be denied basic human rights, it wouldn't serve me to deny them healthcare.
And I don't want to deny them basic rights. Awful humans are still humans. They should be granted food, water, shelter, healthcare, opportunities to contribute to society just like everyone else. Denying these on ideological grounds would both risk wrongly catching the "allies" and deny the "opponents" the chance to reform.
Besides, bigotry is easily bred from misery - it's easier to tell someone "those guys are to blame" when they're suffering than to convince them those other guys are somehow bad when everything's fine. Providing basic necessity and the opportunity to prosper would rob intolerance of one of its contributing factors.
Literally nobody disagreed on that. The questionable bit is this:
If "your own way" is confined to your head without negatively affecting anyone, then I don't give a shit either. Think what you want, but act with decency and respect.
When "your own way" involves death threats and oppression, that's where we get problems.
There really is no "maybe" to the question of "Should bigots be allowed to act on their bigotry?" It's a yes/no question. Two options, mutually exclusive. "Okay, you're allowed to advocate for the killing of trans people, but only on Fridays and Saturdays" is still allowing bigotry.
We can debate what counts as bigotry, but it doesn't matter if you're not willing to oppose it anyway. Apologism is endorsement, in that it obstructs efforts to combat it.
Hopefully the world will outgrow that need. Hopefully we'll reach a point where nobody has to condemn anyone any more. Hopefully there will come a time where we can all abide by the principles of mutual respect, where nobody calls for the death of gays, heathens, infidels, jews, commies or any other group any more.
Hopefully we'll reach a world where we can all tolerate each other.
But that's not the world we live in. The world we live in contains people making those calls. As long as bigotry exists, I will oppose it. As long as there are people defending it, I will condemn them.
If you want that world, get on board and fight for tolerance. Otherwise, kindly shut up and get out of the way.
I've made a point of differentiating between those that act on intolerance and those that don't. How do you consider me to be lumping those together?
I'm not a badass. I don't want to fight. I've spent forever on the internet trying to debate, to explain, to reason, and I'm still doing so here.