Recently, a blog-article was brought to my attention in which Jaci Lambert, who self-identifies as “a conservative preacher’s wife”, explained why she does not feel threatened by Target’s newly-reiterated restroom policy. And as you might guess from this opening description, in many ways, this blog-article was very much a breath of fresh air. Unlike so many who identify with the “conservative” label, she’s not pressuring Target to switch to a policy that would cause untold amounts of harm to transgender people. And it certainly is a far cry better than those who make a point of sending men into the women’s restroom to ‘protest’ Target’s policy, and even harassing Target customers as part of the effort to make people scared of giving trans-folk the safe, gender-affirming restroom access others take for granted. (Speaking of that – isn’t there a term in the English language for what you’re doing if you commit acts of aggression in an attempt to scare society into acting a certain way?)
At any-rate, among all things I’ve seen written on this matter by people who identify themselves as “conservatives”, this blog-article was extremely refreshing – and unique in that I was able to read it through without my stress-level noticeably rising. Kudos to her for that. However, for all the good things that must be said about this article, it was far from being beyond reproach. For starters, even though she possesses enough rudimentary common-sense to prevent her lack of understanding of transgender issues from translating to anti-trans hostility, it is still evident that she has little if any understanding what Gender Dysphoria is all about when she characterizes it as being [sic] “if a man identifies as a woman”. Still, as she has been called out plenty on account of this mistake on her part (which, in her case, I am convinced is an honest mistake and not a sinister one) it is not this particular misunderstanding of hers that I wish to focus on here.
Rather, the error on her part which I intend to focus on addressing here is her misunderstanding of the value that progressives supposedly place on the word “tolerance” – a misunderstanding that she expresses in the following quote from her article:
The thing is, though – progressives do not embrace tolerance for the mere sake of tolerance itself. Rather, the position progressives stand by that is labeled “tolerance” is the proposition that it is wrong for society to mistreat a class of people simply on account of those people being different. It is a notion that is at the very core of what is these days referred to as “liberalism” – the notion that the safety and dignity of vulnerable people is something worth guarding. And when the threat facing that particular class, thus rendering them vulnerable, is mistreatment on account of being different – a behavior known as “intolerance” – in those situations, the progressive (a.k.a. “liberal”) reaction is to demand a cessation of such intolerance – in short, to demand tolerance.
Put simply, the tolerance demanded by the left is nothing more than respect for people’s right to live their lives in peace, even if they are different, and even if others are uncomfortable with the way in which they are different. Never has the left advocated an interpretation of “tolerance” that would give anyone the right to commit violence on another class of people, or to violate another group of people’s basic rights.
If you are a member of a fundamentalist religious sect, or any religious group at all, nobody on the left wants to threaten you with violence. And yes – the left maintains that you have all the right to get on with your life with the same rights and protections that everyone else enjoys. There is no intolerance for you whatsoever there. However, the left will also stand firm and insist that these same courtesies be extended to minorities who are different from you – that their right to these same courtesies are held by the same tenure that you hold these rights – that their rights are their own, and do not depend on whether or not you approve of them or of any particular thing about them.
If allowing you to violate these rights of other people is the kind of “tolerance” that you are demanding, then it is sheer spite to suggest that what you are asking for is in any way the same thing as the “tolerance” that the left is demanding for marginalized minorities. On the contrary – the “tolerance” that the left demands for marginalized minorities is something that you take for granted, and which the left does not in any way wish to take away from you. As a matter of fact, is someone were actually targeting you just for daring to get on with your life minding your own business because something in your religious beliefs or practices, despite not harming anyone, makes you in some way “different” or “out of line”, liberals would be the first one to fly to your defense. Liberals would come to your aid without caring in the least bit if you agree with any of their political points-of-view. They would aid you out of the conviction that you have the right to go about your lives minding your own business, despite being different, without being mistreated on account of it. As a matter of fact, if any of your civil liberties is threatened, liberals will come to your aid even if you are their biggest, harshest critic.
However, if what you want is to be permitted to infringe upon those same rights held by others, then the only reason liberals won’t extend to you that kind of “tolerance” is because liberals don’t extend that kind of “tolerance” to anyone at all. The LGBT community does not receive that kind of “tolerance” from liberals either. Nobody does – and nobody should – because the only way to guarantee everyone’s right to be themselves and mind their own affairs without being mistreated for it is if nobody is permitted to violate that right as held by anyone else.
