“National day of intolerance,” glibly chided Shepard Smith of Fox News a few days ago in reference to the latest in the culture wars: the national Chick-fil-A Appreciation Day–geez, they’re so biased at Fox. For those of you that pay more attention to the throwing of badminton matches, swim meets, or flies collecting on your dog’s latest masterpiece than to the culture wars, I’ll provide a little background. The Chick-fil-A issue revolves around remarks about gay marriage made by the president of that company, followed by a response by some mayors around the country, then followed with people in support of the restaurant with Chick-fil-A Appreciation Day. (This is still unfolding at the time of this writing, but I heard a “kiss-in” is to occur at some point. Stay tuned.)
To summarize the Chick-fil-A president’s opinion on gay marriage: he’s not for it, and for saying so, two notable mayors sounded off and said Chick-fil-A can’t set up shop in their cities. Way to show tolerance, guys!
One of them was Boston’s Mayor Menino. Thank goodness he wrote his statement down, as words have such difficulty negotiating their way out of his portly cheeked mouth that it’s quite difficult to make them out aurally, and one would be forced to Google for a transcription by those who are trained to decipher such sloppy gibberish. “There’s no place for discrimination on Boston’s Freedom Trail and no place for your company alongside it”, stated the letter by Mayor Marble Mouth, tellingly using himself as an example of discriminating against a company. Nice touch, Marbles.
From the muzzle of the other mayor in our story, Mayor of Murder-Ville, Chicago, Rahm “the Don” Emanuel, came a beauty about values: “Chick-fil-A Values Are Not Chicago Values”. This may not be so bad for the restaurant chain, because it’s not clear that the Don has a sound understanding of just what values are. Just a month or so ago, the Don pleaded to gangster’s values in the hopes that the actions they take (i.e., stabbing, shooting, raping, etc.) are taken to the alleys so as not to endanger children. It’s like saying, “Ok, if you’re going to stab him, I won’t talk you out of it. Just do it behind the dumpster.” Are these Chicago values? If they are, nice going Chick-fil-A. You’re doing something right! By the way, if you’re going to issue admonitions about such things, why not condemn them outright instead of saying take it “… to the alley”? Oh, yeah, right. That would be intolerance and discrimination against stabbers, and they’re a potential liberal voting bloc, which these days is quite large in Chicago.
The left always–yes, always–claims the tolerance moniker. But it is they, more often than not, who do not tolerate the views of other people when those views are contrary to their own, and they’re not shy about it. They’ll pull up to your drive thru while you’re earning the mandated minimum wage (mandated by them, of course, because they love to tell you what to do) and berate and bully you because the business for which you work doesn’t comport to their ideals, and they won’t tolerate that.
The poignant characteristic of today’s left is the hypocritical, selective outrage they demonstrate when one is seemingly in violation of their views. It’s as blinding as facing klieg lights in a dungeon. Wasn’t Obama against gay marriage just a few months ago? Is he hateful? Nope, he caved, err, evolved. Bill Clinton signed the Defense of Marriage Act which defines marriage as the legal union of one man and one woman. Is he hateful? Nope, that was a long time ago. It doesn’t matter. What about the Coalition of African American Pastors that just put out the statement against gay marriage? Where’s the outrage, church kiss-ins, and graffiti? Well, they’re members of a preferred minority group, so they’re a special case.
That’s the key. If you support the left’s statist vision and help their real cause (i.e. state expansion), they’ll look the other way regarding the means by which they achieve it. This is what the left means by tolerance. They’ll tolerate any means to achieve their end goal. They can really give a flying hoot about gay marriage. It’s just another means to an end; another constituency that they can con into surrendering liberties in pursuit of statism. This is how the KKK lived within the Democratic party for so long. They voted to expand the state, and the Dems opposed civil rights legislation and anti-lynching laws. Everyone’s happy.
If you’re not for state expansion into every sphere of life, then you’re a racist, sexist, homophobic bigot, and that will not be tolerated. But if you are, lynch whomever you’d like. They’ll tolerate that!