Toleration: A One-Way Street

The Shetland News features at article about a two LGBTQ campaigners demanding that a Christian church be disallowed to acquire premises from the local authority. The pair point out that the Pentecostal church does not subscribe to their preferred understanding of marriage and equality, and should therefore be denied the right to obtain premises. I was not aware we were living in the People’s Republic of China in which official state morality determines who shall and shall not have the right or gather and organise. Denying an organisation the right to permanent premises, or to formally object to its means of doing so, is to deny it the right to exist. Today's valiant equality warriors presumably receive their training in the authoritiarian regimes of the far east.

This particular intolerance is certainly out of place among the friendly and hospitable Shetlanders that I have encountered. I hope this nasty campaign attracts as little sympathy as it deserves. I saw no online evidence that the church in question objected or opposed the gay Pride event which the two had organised, complete with drag queens flaunting their wares. Often, the loudest cries demanding respect and toleration come from the people who are least willing to give it. Too many wish to be tolerated (by which they increasingly mean endorsed and sponsored), but not to actually tolerate others (an acknowledgment that people with whom we might disagree have the right to their opinions and, in this case, to procure premises.) The more stories like this I find from modern Britain, the more I sympathise with Rebecca: 

“I am weary of my life because of the daughters of Heth". 

Image by Peggychoucair from Pixabay