Another Ultimate Oxymoron: Tolerance and Leftist...

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Intolerable left in Toronto: Agar

By Jerry Agar, Special to the Sun

Last Updated: August 9, 2010 7:45pm

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The intolerance of the “tolerant” left is tough to tolerate.
Recent vicious attacks on mayoral candidate Rob Ford and Ward 6 council candidate Wendell Brereton demonstrate the point.
Brereton, a former OPP officer and a pastor, doesn’t support gay marriage. He does support Ford’s fiscal policies and Ford supports Brereton’s candidacy.
Immediately both men were attacked.
One of the accusers was mayoral candidate Sarah Thompson, who slandered Ford with “prejudice and bigotry” on her web page and in the media.
“The mayor can’t be closed to the ideas of others,” Thompson told me.
When I pointed out to her 40% of Canadians do not support gay marriage, I suggested she is closed to their ideas about marriage. Thompson said, “Indeed.”
Two out of five Canadians do not hate gays and are not bigots. They just have a traditional view of marriage that differs from Thompson’s. To many people that is a starting point for conversation, but for Thompson apparently tolerance is when you agree with her.
Mayoral candidate Rocco Rossi is a Roman Catholic who has said, “God has not left City Hall, City Hall has left God.”
Deputy Mayor Joe Pantalone sees “a bigger role for faith groups in the urban area, including City Hall.”
Thompson says there is no place in City Hall for religion.
Tolerance doesn’t have to involve driving religion into the closet. No one religion can take over a diverse city.
If a Christian shows up in City Hall with strong views he will find himself in vigorous debate with 43 others who have their own views. None of them should have to park their values — of all things — at the door.
To suggest Christians should — and it seems to predominantly be Christians who are the target of this intolerant leftist view — is the very definition of intolerance.
Helen Kennedy, of the group Equality for Gays and Lesbians Everywhere, refused to acknowledge any view outside hers was legitimate. She called Ford and Brereton’s beliefs on marriage “frightening and offensive.” She condescendingly dismisses the views of four out of 10 who don’t agree with her by saying they “Just don’t cut it.”
I don’t support gay marriage but would support Sun columnist Sue-Ann Levy, who is a married lesbian, for mayor. Seriously Sue-Ann, with John Tory out, please consider it.
Religions in Canada tolerate one another not by subscribing to each other’s beliefs but by supporting the right of all people to worship peacefully as they feel called to do. That is what tolerance is.
Ford isn’t working against gay marriage. That should be enough. That does “cut it.”
I don’t label as bigots or infidels those who do not subscribe to my Christianity.
I’d far rather elect a Jew, a Sikh or a Muslim who declares his or her values than a person who pretends to have values but disingenuously won’t state what they are, while attacking those who do.
The “tolerant” left seems cold to pluralism, which upholds the right of various religious, ethnic, racial and political groups to co-exist in society.
I asked Brereton whether he would still support Ford if Ford were gay. He replied he supported Ford’s fiscal policies and that, “You look at the totality of the man.”

Now, that’s tolerance.

 Kelvin Browne: Canada’s increasing tolerance of intolerance

National Post  August 9, 2010 – 3:19 pm

 

Jack Guez / AFP / Getty Images

A scene from the Gay Pride parade in Tel Aviv on June 11.

At a dinner recently, a friend made a comment about Israel that I said sounded anti-Semitic. A few years ago, this table of successful doctors and lawyers — mostly liberal types — would have agreed with me. Not today. I was rebuked for confusing being anti-Semitic with being anti-Zionist. Being anti-Zionist was okay, I was assured, as one couldn’t condone what Israel is doing, from the settlements to the flotilla. But the interchangeability in this conversation between Israeli and Jew made the distinction between anti-Zionist and anti-Semitic questionable.
It could be that I’m just noticing a trend that’s been emerging for years, because I happen to have just visited Israel this spring. It was a fascinating experience, beginning with the group travelling — a mixture of Canadian Muslims, Christians and Jews (I’m in the Christian category, although nominally so). I now have a personal appreciation of what survival means to a small country surrounded by people who don’t want it there. Similarly, I have experienced non-media-filtered exposure to what life is like for Palestinians.
At a small dinner in Jaffa during the trip, Tzipi Livni, once Israel’s foreign minister and now leader of the Opposition, spoke about both the external and internal challenges to her country’s existence, including the outsized influence of its ultra-Orthodox Jewish population. Many who have not been to Israel can over-simplify the situation; one side is victims, and the other oppressors. This is the approach that leads to blanket assumptions about Israel, and about Jews in general — the sort of thing I heard at the aforementioned dinner.

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— Agar is the 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. host on News Talk 1010 in Toronto