Liberal Intolerance

January 2007

The opening years of the 21st century demonstrate how Enlightenment ideals of tolerance and personal autonomy cannot be taken for granted. Fundamentalists are resurgent in the Muslim world, while evangelical Christians now pull the levers of superpower in Washington, DC.

Whenever factions imagine themselves in possession of absolute truth or the one and only way to please God, the resulting intolerance is sure to bring oppression. That is why the American Founders sought to keep religious certitudes out of necessarily uncertain, ever-compromising secular government. People should be free to run their own lives with whatever religious fervor they desire, but they should not be able to force their neighbors to conform to their own peculiar pieties.

While it is easy for most of us to recognize the threat posed to democratic society by religious zealots– whether they brandish crescent or cross– modern liberalism itself has all-too-often promulgated its own intolerant creeds. The noxious notion has arisen that if some idea or behavior is judged bad by “good” liberal-minded folk, it should be suppressed, often with the authority of the state or the coercive means available to ever-more powerful corporations.

Two cases from opposite sides of North America illustrate the threat posed by such sclerotic liberalism.

Last October, dozens of Canadian postal workers in Vancouver refused to distribute a pamphlet they deemed “homophobic.” The material in question was a religious tract of right-wing Christian claptrap about how homosexuality leads to death, how tolerance of homosexuality brings God’s wrath, how we must return to traditional morality or risk the fate of Sodom and Gommorah. The offended postal workers asserted that Canada Post should not allow delivery of such “hate mail.”

Though postal management eventually saw to it that the mail was delivered, many in the gay community applauded the striking workers, deeming them heroes for stopping– at least briefly– the delivery of anti-gay screed.

But those postal workers are not heroes. Indeed, by arrogantly thinking that they get to decide what postal patrons can and cannot mail, and what postal recipients should and should not read, they assume the role of censors. What would they think of other postal employees, who imagine themselves every bit as pure in heart, refusing to delivery pro-gay literature? Suppose fundamentalist postal workers judged The Guide to be “anti-Christian” or to be “hateful” towards their own worldview: should they have the right to proclaim their political views by refusing to deliver the magazine? Of course not. Delivering a piece of mail does not signal that one endorses its contents.

It is a vital principle that mail carriers, internet providers, and telephone companies must not filter the content being delivered to suit the dominant morality. As gay people, we recognize the harm done when majoritarian standards are allowed to silence minority views, even if they be offensive to many. Tolerance is indivisible.

Another example of liberalism gone awry comes from Massachusetts, where a 30-year-old man is suing lawn-care company Scotts for firing him after his urine tested positive for nicotine. Though he never smoked at work, his urinalysis was evidence of his violation of company policy forbidding Scotts’s employees from smoking anywhere, even in their own homes. The company maintains it is simply trying to promote workers’ well-being and hold down healthcare costs.

Smoking is undoubtedly unhealthful, but it is unwise to allow employers to assume the role of omnipotent nanny, even in the service of “health.” Should overweight people fear losing the jobs they do well because some do-gooder thinks they should shed weight? Should sexually promiscuous gay men be forced to keep it in their pants or risk being fired, since they run a higher risk of contracting disease than their abstemious colleagues?

As with the censorial postal workers, Scotts– and other busybody employers– have usurped roles properly left to individuals in a free society. No government entity, no employer– no matter how ostensibly well-intentioned– should have the power to decide what individuals write or read, what they choose to smoke or eat, or how they elect to spend their free time. Freedom means being allowed choices others deem unwise.

Tolerance is the means by which we arrive at a free society. Thus, any threat to tolerance, from fundies or from “liberals,” demands resistance from those who cherish freedom.

Pasted from <http://guidemag.com/magcontent/invokemagcontent.cfm?ID=880125C5-CBFB-4D04-B2F06D9C2D28CA75>