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Feb. 17th, 2005 11:13 amA belief is not "just a belief", because beliefs do not exist in a vacuum. Beliefs are forged in response to experience and culture. What a person hears, reads, and witnesses affects her beliefs, and what she does, says, and writes affects the beliefs of others. Beliefs flow seamlessly into speech and action and cannot be distinguished therefrom. One person's beliefs and speech and action flows seamlessly into another's, and from there into culture at large -- where culture can be taken to be a pattern of interlaced beliefs, actions, and reactions thereto.
It's because people are not aware of the strong interconnectedness between their own beliefs, the beliefs and actions of others, and cultural patterns, that people act wounded when they are called intolerant. After all, they've never done anything to hurt anyone, it's other people. The thing is, though, that acts of omission can be just as devastating as acts of commission when there is a pattern of violence and discrimination in a culture which is taken by most people to be on some level legitimate.
The inertia that causes intolerance to remain is exactly this lack of awareness, and the consequential unwillingness that people have to admit their silent complicity in patterns of violence and discrimination.
When I point all this out, I am typically told that, well then, I am being intolerant. If all they are doing is disagreeing with something, and that's intolerance, they say, then I am being intolerant right back. The problem with this logic is that intolerance is belief plus cultural pattern. There is not a cultural pattern of tacitly accepted violence and discrimination against homophobes.
Consequently, supporting same-sex marriage is not "being intolerant" of Christians who want to believe that homosexuality is bad.
Believe what you want. Just be willing to accept the consequences of those beliefs.
It's because people are not aware of the strong interconnectedness between their own beliefs, the beliefs and actions of others, and cultural patterns, that people act wounded when they are called intolerant. After all, they've never done anything to hurt anyone, it's other people. The thing is, though, that acts of omission can be just as devastating as acts of commission when there is a pattern of violence and discrimination in a culture which is taken by most people to be on some level legitimate.
The inertia that causes intolerance to remain is exactly this lack of awareness, and the consequential unwillingness that people have to admit their silent complicity in patterns of violence and discrimination.
When I point all this out, I am typically told that, well then, I am being intolerant. If all they are doing is disagreeing with something, and that's intolerance, they say, then I am being intolerant right back. The problem with this logic is that intolerance is belief plus cultural pattern. There is not a cultural pattern of tacitly accepted violence and discrimination against homophobes.
Consequently, supporting same-sex marriage is not "being intolerant" of Christians who want to believe that homosexuality is bad.
Believe what you want. Just be willing to accept the consequences of those beliefs.
