Tannishblog

I found the following inflammatory paragraph in this article. Just for kicks I substituted just two words via Edit > Replace.

But for the anti-gay-marriage activists, homosexuality is something to be fought, not tolerated or respected. I found no one among the people on the ground who are leading the anti-gay-marriage cause who said in essence: ”I have nothing against homosexuality. I just don’t believe gays should be allowed to marry.” Rather, their passion comes from their conviction that homosexuality is a sin, is immoral, harms children and spreads disease. Not only that, but they see homosexuality itself as a kind of disease, one that afflicts not only individuals but also society at large and that shares one of the prominent features of a disease: it seeks to spread itself.

Pretty heavy stuff, wrought with emotion and politically weighty, but not anything we don’t take for granted. The Anti-Gay bias is rampant and all-too-common. In the world of genteel, $50 dinners-on-the-town, polo shirts and Dockers, such blatant hatred and intolerance is politically correct, dinner table conversation. The same demographic wouldn’t dare speak out loud about blacks the same way, but gay bashing is fair game.

Now let’s take the same sentences and change the subject:

But for the anti-Christian-marriage activists, Christianity is something to be fought, not tolerated or respected. I found no one among the people on the ground who are leading the anti-Christian-marriage cause who said in essence: ”I have nothing against Christianity. I just don’t believe Christians should be allowed to marry.” Rather, their passion comes from their conviction that Christianity is a sin, is immoral, harms children and spreads disease. Not only that, but they see Christianity itself as a kind of disease, one that afflicts not only individuals but also society at large and that shares one of the prominent features of a disease: it seeks to spread itself.

Would this be printed in the NY Times? Hell, no! (Pun intended) Millions of angry Americans would blast the paper with hate mail, email bombs and would flame message boards with anti-Times effluvium: And rightfully so.

But what’s the difference, really? The paragraphs are essentially the same; only two words were changed. The underlying theme of hatred remains the same, the intolerance is left intact, the carefully selected verbiage of the original report is unchanged. By substituting the subject from one accepted viewpoint, to another, unsanctioned view changed the whole meaning.

My point? Hatred is dangerous no matter the context. Intolerance has no place in our hyper-connected world, in our shrinking globe of over-crowded humanity. As my wife tells the school children she works with, “Don’t say anything to others you wouldn’t want said about yourself or about your mother.” Good advise, no?

People are outwardly different, true, and sometimes the differences make us uneasy, but we have no more space on this tiny world to exercise hatred of others; our world is just too small. The luxury of intolerance is anachronistic and should be abandoned as the ancient philosophy it is. Despite our outward differences of culture, skin-tone, language or beliefs, we are all human beings. That makes us the same. To insist otherwise is to ignore reality, to be narrow-minded and intentionally ignorant of inescapable fact.

All people want happiness. All people need to love and to be loved. We all feel pain, fear, and loneliness. The entirety of humanity feels a common set of emotions, experiences and motivations. Even our quest for spirituality, however varied its outward expression, is rooted in the same emotions, the same needs. Inwardly, all humans are the same. To ignore these truths is to ignore our common heritage, our commonality of purpose, which is to make a paradise of peace out of this world.

To draw imaginary lines of race, ideology or culture around people is to give in to fear. To demonize alternate religious expression is to restrict the fulfillment of human capabilities. To become stagnant, closed and insular is not a healthy lifestyle regardless of scale; it is as bad for individuals as it is for societies. Yet such tendencies are in vogue in the New America of the Religious-Conservative Agenda.

This is not about gays, Christians, or conservatives; this is about the future of Earth. As an emerging global society, we have expressed ourselves in ways that are destructive to our future. As a progressively integrated society, our evolution of the tools of warfare far exceeds the development of the tools of peace; our predilection for conflict far outstrips our preference for solidarity. In light of this, it’s easy to see where we are leading ourselves in our collective blindness of fear, hatred and hostility. Will we survive ourselves? Not unless we change our conventions, beginning with seemingly small things like intolerance.