by expatbrit 25 Replies latest jw friends
Here I will respectedly disagree with Jim.
I have chosen to be disowned rather than simply tolerated. For me, being tolerated by someone who supposedly loves me is not enough.
I would think that this of course would be a personal decision.
hugs to all
Joel
When someone says something along the lines of "I'm very tolerant of gay people" or "gay people should be tolerated", how do you feel?
In a word, suspicious. Whenever someone makes a point of telling me how "tolerant" they are of lesbians, gays and/or Black people, I know that deep down, they're probably bigots. If they accepted me completely, it would go without saying. They wouldn't have to put on a show for my benefit.
I don't really care if everyone thinks homosexuality is "right" or not. I just wish that the people who don't like it would just live their own lives and stay out of mine. After all, I've never heard of gay people trying to outlaw heterosexual marriage or make it legal to fire people from their jobs and kick them out of their homes for being straight.
*Rochelle.
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"Most men complacently accept 'knowledge' as 'truth'. They are sheep, ruled by fear."
-- Sydney Losstarot, "Vagrant Story."
Rochelle!! Glad to see you here. I remember you from Kent's G&L Board, which has been excruciatingly quiet for a very long time.
I make it a practice not to "tolerate" people. I either like them or dislike them for who they are as people, sexual orientation be damned.
I expect the same from them.
My gay friends are no different from my straight friends, and the issue of tolerance is moot. We like each other, and that is all that is necessary.
Sunchild,
In a word, suspicious. Whenever someone makes a point of telling me how "tolerant" they are of lesbians, gays and/or Black people, I know that deep down, they're probably bigots. If they accepted me completely, it would go without saying. They wouldn't have to put on a show for my benefit.
I see what you are saying here – and I certainly wouldn’t be friends with people who could only tolerate my lifestyle or skin color, but I don’t think it is that simple. I don’t think someone is necessarily a bigot just because they don’t approve of a certain lifestyle. Most of us were JW’s and we can understand the power of indoctrination from early age. If someone is told over and over and over again that gay people are bad, well, then most of them will probably end up believing it. I feel sorry for those people because they haven’t been exposed to the real world. I think that many would change their views if they were exposed to gay people in everyday life. Heck, most of those same people would never have any issues with gay people at all if they were never unfairly indoctrinated since before they could make their own choice.
I guess that’s why I feel sorry for people who are only tolerant, but I think bigotry is a word that should be reserved for intolerant people. At least people have a choice – regardless of indoctrination – whether to be tolerant or not. Once people broaden their horizons, it seems that tolerant people have a greater chance of becoming accepting. But these are only my opinions – I haven’t had to feel scorn of intolerance that many minority groups have had to face. I have faced rejection from my JW friends who don’t accept me anymore because of my beliefs, but again, I feel sorry for them because I know that they have only seen one side of the story.
Respectfully,
rem
Sorry to post this here, ExPatBrit, but I figured you'd be checking.
I now understand about Fred Hall (above thread "I Burn Apostate Books"). LOL You will NEVER become like him, Memorial attendance or not.
I don't think I'll "tolerate" him. Definitely won't "accept" him.
outnfree
outnfree,
Fred's harmless. He's rather amusing after you have read his stuff for awhile.
Larc (of the easily amused class)
Outnfree:
Fred's quite amusing sometimes. Some of the things he comes out with are so outrageous you simply have to laugh.....
Since I asked the question about tolerance, I've been thinking about how not to be tolerant, but in a positive sense. If tolerance does in fact imply a negative connotation to whatever I am tolerating (even if this is unintentional on the part of me as the tolerator), then how can I improve?
I came up with a kind of "ladder" of attitudes (worst first):
Hatred
Intolerance
Tolerance
Acceptance
Irrelevance
Why irrelevance? Because I think that I cannot truly claim to have no prejudice against someone, whether of a different nationality, sexual orientation or whatever, until that difference is completely irrelevant (in a negative sense) to my thoughts or course of actions with that person.
In dealing with a gay person, for instance; I may know he/she is gay, but until that is completely irrelevant in that it doesn't create any negativity on my part, I am not free of prejudice. Tolerating, or even accepting, still could point to an underlying negative.
This is not saying that differences should not be acknowledged. Perhaps another rung should be added to the ladder. Can't think of a word, but something involving celebrating differences and using them to create positivity, not negativity.
Jumbled thoughts. You'll just have to tolerate them, I'm afraid!
Expatbrit
I'm just sitting here thinking- How would I feel if someone asked "Do you tolerate small, white, heterosexual females?" This is too ridiculous! How insulting to Joelbear, et al. I love my gay friends. I love my straight friends.
Rob,
Of course we (most of us) love all of our friends here regardless of, well, anything. But I think this is not realistic for a lot of the rest of the world - at least not yet - not until the early indoctrination of prejudices in people stops. Right now I think we should encourage tolerance as a first step toward this ideal.
Even you are displaying tolerance - which is good. You are tolerating people who are only tolerant. You don't seem to be accepting of their ways, which is fine, but at least you tolerate their ideals. You don't seem to be an active opposer of such ones. Live and let live. Maybe someday these ones will be educated and will learn to accept our friends.
I hope I don’t sound disrespectful of anyone, because I really don’t think of myself as a bigot (who does). Many of my JW friends have called me a “homo-lover” because I defend my gay friends and I have tried to educate my witness friends. I just think that we don’t live in an ideal world – and we probably never will, so we should all be tolerant of ideas/lifestyles that we don’t accept – including the lifestyles of ones who are only tolerant. Now I’m not sure about if we should tolerate intolerant people – this is starting to get complicated!
rem
I think there are number of good points here. The problems arise becuase people may interprete the word 'tolerance' differently.
When we look at the world at large, I think tolerance is what we should strive for. People who tolerate gays will not persecute or discriminate against gays. Same of course with other 'differing' orientations and world views that people should happen to 'tolerate'.
I think gays will appreciate the fact that some people are brought up learning that homosexuality is the vilest of sins and the most disgusting of habits. When such people come to 'tolerate' gays, it must be called improvment. They may still have some way to go, but at least they live and let live.
It is also a fact that especially many heterosexual males who don't care about religious moralism nevertheless are æsthetically turned off by homosexuality (many religious bigots confuse the two). It's hard for these to do anything about their feelings, probably nurtured by years of living in a bigoted envirionment. If they learn tolerance, that is probably as much as you can hope for in the short term.
It's an intirely different things with friends. You don't expect friends to simply 'tolerate' you. That's not friendship.
When we're talking about stupid expressions, I think the most absurd is "gay lifestyle." What, pray tell, is that? Hmm. Personally I'm living something that could be called the urban young academic's lifestyle. Some of my gay friends live the same lifestyle. That I have sex with women is not very much a part of my lifestyle, like them having sex with men is not really part of theirs. Some gays of course live lives quite removed from what is called mainstream society, but that can certainly be said about straight people as well.
- Jan
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"Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by age eighteen"
-- Albert Einstein
