Real Tolerance Training: Christian = 'Intolerant'

I once had a meeting with an executive regarding one of my graphic novels that had been optioned. This exec started the writer’s meeting with a few notes to change some rough spots in the story. This is normal procedure with my work. I have no problem with making these changes, since it’s part of the game given where I’m at in my career. They pay me lots of money so I like these execs when I’m sentenced to work with them. I was taken aback by the first round of notes that went something like this, “For starters, we’re gonna get rid of all this Christian shit from the story, right?”

The exec informed me that religious imagery didn’t sell to American audiences, that it was intolerant and it definitely didn’t export. This was before ‘The Passion of the Christ’ so I can forgive his ignorance of the world’s most popular religion, but it was the word intolerant that struck me. How was the inclusion of religion not tolerant while the removal of it was?

This is my baptism into the myopic view of religion by most of my friends in Hollywood. For being multicultural, the lack of humility regarding a religion they didn’t know or understand is…is…well, these days it’s typical.

Since that time when terms like tolerance or intolerance came up, I got all cringey. They don’t know what these words mean and have a funny way of showing it if they do. Given I’ve had to sit through the standard mandatory Sensitivity Training at every major studio, I’d like to return the favor by offering Tolerance Training. Only my seminar isn’t hosted by a condescending feminist lawyer from the Big Apple, so the threat level in the room has already gone down to yellow, maybe even blue.

Just to mix things up so we can get to know each other, let’s play a drinking game! Drink a slug of Old No. 7 for every Hollywood friend on Facebook who belongs to a “Stop Prop H8te” group. There’s no winner of this game but when half of my friends are this naive I prefer to Facebook under the influence.

It’s not hateful or intolerant to vote that marriage should remain between a man and a woman. Tolerant isn’t a position, it’s how you treat people who hold positions you hate.

It also isn’t tolerant to believe that all ideas have equal merit. This is an irrational position I’m embarrassed to even bring up. But there are those who have claimed that if I judge a position as bad that I’m being intolerant. Can we agree that eating cute kittens alive for the fun of it doesn’t have as much merit as cuddling them? But to say that all ideas have equal merit is self-refuting because I could propose this idea “all ideas have unequal merit” and you couldn’t judge the statement as false if the first idea were true.

I hope some of you disagree with this post. Because this will be a perfect opportunity to practice true tolerance. The act of treating a political opponent with dignity and value used to be considered a high art form in debate. You can tell a lot about a person who treats someone with dignity and value whom they deeply disagree with.

We can’t practice tolerance with people we agree with so you get no credit exercising your mustard-seed amount of tolerance on your own camp. In fact, the more we disagree with each other the more tolerance must be exercised.

It’s kind of like when Uncle Jerk gets drunk at Thanksgiving and starts telling vagina jokes in front of the kids. We love him, we tolerate him, and we try to trick him into playing XBox upstairs so the rest of us can eat before hearing the punch-line that’s going to keep us from eating cranberry sauce ever again. The more you and I disagree, the more we have to practice robust, artful tolerance. To get really good at it you actually need some people who hold positions you don’t like. Start with a few conservatives, Sarah Palin, the Boy Scouts or Uncle Jerk.

All people are created equal, but all ideas are not. People should be tolerated, but ideas ought to be judged, weighed and accepted or rejected. We treat each other with civility because we are all creatures made in the image of God. But our ideas are not made in the image of God, so there are philosophical grounds to disrespect some ideas. Which is why I can be tolerant and still call your ideas of Global Warming a complete fraud.