would you just like to be tolerated?

This is another cartoon addressing marriage equality and LGBTQ themes. Tolerance is not the same as acceptance. Equality is more than tolerance.

Tolerance means putting up with something, enduring it, allowing it to be present in your world. It’s something that’s done from a position of power, from a position of superiority to that which is tolerated. We are now realizing that this posture is very very problematic. You can observe a prime example of this problematic posture in Rick Warren’s position that tolerance does not mean approval. As if tolerance was the high road. It no longer is. Warren’s position exposes the difficulty: tolerance is not approval. Who wants to live under those conditions?

I will even venture that it won’t be too long before acceptance becomes problematic because it also suggests allowing something from a position of power and superiority. As in, “We will accept you into our world!” It might do for now as one world provides many of the freedoms, rights and privileges that the other doesn’t. But soon acceptance will be perceived as a lofty pronouncement from a position of dominance that is no longer held or even real.

If our vision is not large enough to include everyone on the same equal plain then our vision is too small.

(***I personally want to invite you to The Lasting Supper, an online community dedicated to providing a safe place to exercise your spirituality on equal footing with others. It is non-confrontational, open, informative and fun. This Friday night we are having a hangout where one of our members is talking about her escape from Mark Driscoll’s Mars Hill church. I welcome you to join us.)