frogza

I've been thinking lately about the use of the word tolerance as a battle cry. I think our society has come a long way because of increased tolerance. Racism, sexism, etc. are being eroded away thanks to greater tolerance in our society. However, every stride we take towards increased tolerance finds us with a group immediatly outside the current threshold asking for society to "let them in". In many cases I'm inclined to let them in, others I'm not.

It's easy to see intolerance as a bad thing, but can't too much tolerance be a bad thing? I have done quite a bit of work with youth from troubled homes, and I've had these kids parents make appeals for society to let them in, so to speak. I have heard fathers ask to be able to marry off their twelve year old daughters and go even so far as to want society to allow them to sleep with and have children with their teenage daughters. Some of the kids I've worked with want us to allow them to settle their scores with drive-bys and gang beatings.

I've seen our societies tendancy to ride "slippery slopes" as I'm sure many of you have. For those who aren't familiar with this term, it means to continue with an idea that may have started out as good until the society in general is locked in extreme and usually damaging ideals. Nazi Germany began as saving the country from it's worst depression in it's history to the extermination of every group that was deemed as inferior. That's one of the most poignant examples of a slippery slope I know of.

So now I ask, where do we draw the line? Which groups do we say no to? Right now we see a large number of groups asking for tolerance, I think it would be good to include some but as you've seen by the few examples I have mentioned, I think some need to stay out in the cold for good. So recognizing that in general TF is a rather liberal community, what do you think?