"Tolerance"
Discussing TheYeti's viewpoint, Jay has some thoughts on tolerance:
I think that tolerance is not a good thing for a different reason: If I "tolerate" homosexuals in my community then what I am really doing is saying, "I Hate You and would persecute you if I could, but because I 'tolerate' you I will contain my rage and not do anything about it." It is a way of allowing hatred to fester rather than dealing with it head on. "The sin is in the thought, not the act."
People describe Canada as a "tolerant" nation, which says something not only about Canada but the people describing the country. Tolerating something, as Jay suggests, means that we think something is abnormal and wrong but either we don't have the energy to oppose it or there are forces constraining us from opposing it. There are things I tolerate amongst my friends—like certain people's behaviour towards people other than me, something I don't have the right to be upset about in the first place—because bringing up the subject comes at the cost of the friendship. (A true friend would bring it up, you say? Well, in my experience, bringing it up oft loses both sanity and friend.) Tolerance means putting up with something that you look upon with disdain because the cost of making a fuss is greater than shutting up.
Tolerance also brings up the specter of "zero-tolerance". A recent article in The New York Times discusses zero-tolerance policies at schools, and zero-tolerance policies are something I need to develop an opinion on if I'm ever going to become an educator. We constantly hear news stories about students doing provocative (though not exactly revolutionary) things, and school administrators suspending them for those things. Although this may tend to contradict my view on tolerance as expressed above, it's occuring to me more and more that the concept of "zero-tolerance" is the problem and not the solution.
