Thursday, July 19, 2012

Problems with Tolerance


Shawna did not want to talk about tolerance anymore. For one thing, she was back to the same question that had nagged at her in San Francisco: Why was Adolf Hitler wrong and the Allied forces right? Following that train of thought, if all lifestyles and beliefs are equal, as Ms. Carmona insisted, then the Nazis should have been allowed to live out what they believed. If all religious beliefs and truths are equal, then Christians should be allowed to believe that lifestyles condemned in the Bible are wrong. If homosexuals are to be praised for their lifestyle, then straights should be praised for believing homosexuality is wrong. If everyone should have the right to choose, then pro-lifers have the right to believe that abortion is wrong. And yet she knew that Ms. Carmona—and Terilyn, of course— would not agree with those statements. Their logic regarding tolerance still sounded screwy to Shawna, but she did not want to embarrass herself by bringing it up.


For another thing, she did not like where Terilyn's train of thought was leading. Terilyn believed in tolerance for everyone—everyone, that is, except those she considered "narrow-minded," people like Shawna's parents and the people at Shawna's church.


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