It’s a common thing to say: We cannot tolerate intolerance.
But, in reality, we not only can, but a healthy society must tolerate intolerant beliefs. In our quest to be pithy, we are missing an important distinction: We cannot tolerate intolerant actions.
I am queer. There are people who, because of their personal beliefs, think I am a destructive force for society. Their religious beliefs may lead them to think that I am bound for eternal damnation after death.
Okay.
Good for them.
I don’t honestly care if they believe that. They’re entitled to it.
Some of them also believe that they can use the force of law or the government to prevent me from living my life as I see fit. And so they act on that belief by voting for politicians and pushing for laws that would do so. If they fail, they act on a personal level by insulting or assaulting me.
I do care if they do any of that. Those are intolerant actions.
So that’s part one of the issue: We must be able to tolerate intolerant beliefs, with the codicil that, if you happen to hold beliefs that a society deems intolerant, you are best advised to keep them to yourself.
And there’s the second shoe: The real culture war is not over whether or not intolerance is to be allowed, it’s over what beliefs and actions are to be protected. No healthy society can tolerate any and all actions.
The majority of the queer movement lives by some form of the idea that all consensual intimate relationships ought to be legally tolerated by society. “Consensual” means that all parties involved are voluntarily and freely involved, and that all parties are cognitively capable of being involved.
This position rejects pedophilia, as it should. It rejects sexual assault, as it should. At the same time, as certain voices are quick to point out, our cultural value on “age of consent” has changed over time and over borders. Even in the United States, depending on the location and the relationship, the age of consent is as young as 13 or as old as 21.
This does not mean that the concept of an age of consent is silly, or that a tolerant society ought to tolerate any relationship regardless of age: It means the topic is more complicated than we can manage to express in a handful of words.
The immediate point here is: Every healthy society is intolerant of certain acts. Even subcultures that claim to be more tolerant still have their limits. The cultural battle we’re seeing right now over, for instance, queer rights is about two things: How tolerant we’re going to be, and how far people who disagree with that decision are allowed to express disagreement.
I’ll turn now to trans rights: A moderate view among transgender folks is that adults (people 18 and over) should be allowed full medical decisions over their own bodies, and that minors should be allowed medical care deemed appropriate by medical professionals. In the vast majority of cases, for pre-teens, that means only puberty blockers, while HRT but not surgery could be considered for teens. Surgery for4 minors should be reserved for only the most extreme of situations.
There are people who think that trans people should not be entitled to any gender-affirming care, no matter how old they are. They’re entitled to that belief, but the social battle right now is: How much are they allowed to act on that, through the force of law and government?
There are people who think that all transgender minors should have full medical access. They’re also entitled to that belief, but they are also a small voice within the transgender community.
And there are people who falsely believe that there is a widespread movement within the transgender community to “convert” children as young as possible. That is utterly absurd, and while I will generally point out the falsity of this claim, people are entitled to hold false beliefs.
When we enter the realm of telling people what to believe, we enter into truly dangerous waters. A healthy society must tolerate the existence of intolerant beliefs. We may address them, we may contradict them, but we cannot eradicate them.
At the same time, a healthy society must decide what actions we’re going to tolerate, and a foundation of modern US culture is the concept of consent: If I, with full knowledge and cognitive capacity, consent to an action that does not directly involve you, you have no right to prevent me from that action. You can think I’m a terrible person, go for it. You can speak about me where I can’t hear, in ways that don’t affect me. So you can, in essence, hold beliefs that are intolerant of me.
When you then assault or insult me, though, you have involved me in your intolerant beliefs, and those beliefs have then turned into actions. That is not acceptable.
What is meant by “We cannot tolerate intolerance” is that we, as a society, have decided basic fundamental concepts, and attempts to undermine those through force are unacceptable.
At the same time, the current pushback on certain issues, such as transgender rights, is not about whether tolerance is inherently good (it is) or intolerance is inherently bad (questionable), but rather about where the social line of acceptance is. Speaking as a member of the queer community, when my community weaponizing our own pushback against “intolerance”, we do and have invited in voices who want to push ideas that we ourselves do not accept.
It is, again, too complicated a discussion to be effectively captured in a handful of words.