A tolerant person also tries to accept
people no matter what they look like.
We must decide from the start that a person’s worth doesn’t depend on
physical attractiveness. Our culture
carries the implication that success belongs to the beautiful people. Millions of people believe this, and the
results are often anorexia among girls and steroid use among boys. You must decide that the impact you will have
on others come from your uniqueness from within you, not your packaging. We must also try hard to look beyond that
container that other people have that we call skin and hair and clothes. Parents with handicapped children sometimes
harbor a sense of failure, because our culture emphasizes beauty. People may cruelly regard a handicapped child
as proof of his parent’s inferiority, and they may find themselves constantly
explaining or defending their less than perfect child.
The child who will become the Olympic
athlete starts from the same point at the child in a wheel chair. Everything starts with blind luck. The beautiful girl, the bright boy, the rich
son, and the strong athlete are all lucky.
We don’t have the right to take credit for what we are born with—only
what we do with it. That’s why the
person who is proud of his ancestry is ridiculous. He did nothing to earn it. Some people are born with minimal talents and
make the most of them. Others have large
native endowments and just fritter them away.
It’s foolish to be ashamed or embarrassed of any gift that has been
given to you. Once we know that, I think
we will be more sensitive to others who through no fault of their own are born
to be different people than we are.
Sometimes a person who isn’t beautiful has an advantage of those who are
beautiful, because they know that their friends value them for their interior
qualities—qualities that will outlast shiny hair and rippling muscles.
The columnist Ann Landers reminded me of
Aunt Elsie in many ways but most especially in the clarity of her ethics. The idea that liberals are mushy relativists
is seldom true in my experience. To the
contrary, they may have a sharp sympathy to the less fortunate and a strong
desire to do something about it.
“Some neighbors moved away recently and
the women of the house sent me a beautiful letter and a lovely bouquet of
flowers,” someone wrote to Ann. “Our
children had played together for many years and she wanted to express her
appreciation for my kindness and hospitality to her family. I never knew the well, nor did I want
to. She was a fat slob who did not look
as if she belonged to our neighborhood.
Her children however were always beautifully dressed, well-behaved, and
a pleasure to have around. Her letter
stunned me. It was written in her own
hand as fine an example of penmanship as I have ever seen. Her personalized engraved stationary was in
excellent taste. Her choice of words was
exquisite. That letter was a masterpiece
of literary construction filled with praised for the matter in which I had
utilized my talents. There was even a
line about how she always admired my physical beauty and my taste in
clothes. The problem I have become
obsessed with that fat slob’s letter. I
read it over and over and cannot bring myself to throw it away. I am not a woman who has never received a
compliment in my life, but I’m beginning to wonder about myself. Am I sick?
Why do I hang on to a letter from a fat cow that I barely know? Please help me figure this out. I am puzzled."
“Dear puzzled,” Anne responded. “I suspect you feel guilty and shamed. Obviously, you have always disliked fat
people. Twice in your letter you mention
“fat slob” and once you call her a “fat cow”.
Your discovery that the women is sensitive, cultivated, and kind has
thrown you for a loss. You probably regret that you were so judgmental and
realize that you missed something but by not getting to know her. Let this be a lesson to you. Fat and slob are not one word. Many overweight people are bright, kind, loving,
and wonderful company. When you lock
them out of your life because of an irrational prejudice, you are the one who
loses.”
Tolerance doesn’t mean that we must accept
rudeness. It means, rather, that we
should tolerate ideas and people, with the presumption that any idea and person
is worth tolerating. Tolerance doesn’t
mean that we lack a point of view or that all views are equally valid. It means only that we must allow ideas to
enter the orbit of our consideration without limitation. The principle must be that we should agree
that we can disagree on everything. But
does this mean we should be tolerant to all actions or lifestyles? I’m intolerant of smokers inside my house,
but suffer smokers outside my house in quiet rage. I think the only valid principle is that we
must tolerate what we regard as intolerable if the law grants freedom for those
actions in the first place. But what if
the law and morality are in conflict? A
half century ago, blacks couldn’t eat in the same restaurant as white
Americans, and the law of the land upheld segregation. I think in such cases, we need to act on the
basis of a higher law, the universal principle that gives equal rights to all
people irrespective of skin color. Even
if such principles don’t exist, we can still act on the presumption that they
do exist. Some of the most brutal
regimes acted under their laws, but sometimes those laws are rooted not in
transcendent norms of morality but in power seeking. And it’s often wise to exercise tolerance in
the absence of our understanding. We see
this in efforts to expand the civil rights of homosexuals.
In the Gospel of John, the crucifixion
of Jesus is described in which the two Marys stood
under Jesus’ cross. Sometimes, when we
have friends in pain that is about all we can do: stand by their cross until
the end. And that is what
Much hatred is directed toward
homosexuals, and I question the moral foundation for that hate. The Bible has verses that condemn
homosexuality, but the Bible condemns a lot of things, not the least of which
is hypocrisy. Some of proof texts
against homosexuality are from Leviticus, which also has verses that require us
to stone our disobedient children.
Furthermore, claims that Jesus is a “gay basher” forgets much of the message
of the gospel that Jesus died for the least of us and for all of us.
As much as I believe we can by force of
will choose our destiny, I think nevertheless there is still much that we
cannot choose. And one of the things I
believe that we cannot choose is our sexuality.
Maybe God made gays for the same reason He made blue birds and red
birds. If it’s genetically based, we
should no more criticize homosexuals than we should criticize people with black
skins or blue eyes. If it’s
environmentally based, it’s most plausible to believe that homosexuals were
shaped by their childhood family dynamics-- again a fact of existence that
transcends personal choice. Some gays
not coincidentally come from families with either absentee or weak fathers or
fathers that are harshly moralistic, or families that are torn by divorce. They have grown up with poor parenting
models. I doubt the claim that people
chose the gay lifestyle in the same way that people choose to go over the speed
limit, because the consequences are so much more debilitating. The consequences are sometimes the rejection
by their family and church and ostracism by their community. The final irony is that conservatives who
rant most vehemently against homosexuals sometimes find homosexuals within
their own families or are themselves homosexuals. And I think it’s only fair that
conservatives that make an issue of homosexuality should open their closet so
that all the world can see what kind of people and
parents they are in how they treat their spouse and their children. They should make sure that there is no glass
in their houses before they pick up those stones.