aTypical Joe: a gay New Yorker living in the rural South
Tuesday, May 29, 2007
Barack’s “tolerance” critiqued
Another illustration of our recent substitution of “tolerance” for what once was the fight for “freedom and justice for all” comes via Greta Christina’s Blog. She’s chilled to the bone by this quote from the widely praised New Yorker profile of Barack Obama:
Sometimes, of course, there is no possibility of convergenceâ€"a question must be answered yes or no. In such a case, Obama may stand up for what he believes in, or he may not. “If there’s a deep moral conviction that gay marriage is wrong, if a majority of Americans believe on principle that marriage is an institution for men and women, I’m not at all sure he shares that view, but he’s not an in-your-face type,” Cass Sunstein, a colleague of Obama’s at the University of Chicago, says. “To go in the face of people with religious convictions-that’s something he’d be very reluctant to do.” This is not, Sunstein believes, due only to pragmatism; it also stems from a sense that there is something worthy of respect in a strong and widespread moral feeling, even if it’s wrong.
No, there isn’t.
No, no, no, no, no.
A wrong moral feeling is not—repeat, NOT—made worthy of respect by being either strong or widespread. [...]
Do I even need to explain this? Think of all the evil, harmful things in human history that have been supported by a strong and widespread moral feeling. Slavery. Clitoridectomy. Imperialist wars. Religious wars. The disenfranchisement of women. The censoring of information, and active disinformation campaigns, about birth control and sexual health. The Salem witch trials. The Inquisition. Genocides ranging from the Trail of Tears to the Holocaust. Lynchings. Putting queers in jails and mental institutions. Do I need to go on?
No, I get it. And more and more I think we have to abandon the language of “tolerance” and return to the language of “freedom” and “equality” and “justice for all.”
