Don’t Tolerate Me

Excerpts from the vice presidential debate

Moderator Gwen Ifill: Do you support, as they do in Alaska, granting same-sex benefits to couples?

Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin (R): … But I also want to clarify, if there’s any kind of suggestion at all from my answer that I would be anything but tolerant of adults in America choosing their partners, choosing relationships that they deem best for themselves, you know, I am tolerant and I have a very diverse family and group of friends and even within that group you would see some who may not agree with me on this issue, some very dear friends who don’t agree with me on this issue.

But in that tolerance also, no one would ever propose, not in a McCain-Palin administration, to do anything to prohibit, say, visitation in a hospital or contracts being signed, negotiated between parties.

My dictionary offers several definitions of the word “tolerate.” To allow something to exist, to endure unpleasant effects of something, not to suppress different beliefs or practices. As a member of a minority (liberal? Democrat? Jew? Redskins fan? All of the above?), when someone says, as Gov. Palin did in a recent debate, that she’d tolerate some class of people, in that case gay unions, I bristle. Just as I do when someone says, as if they deserve some humanitarian medal, they are proud to say they tolerate Judeos in the Judeo-Christian world, I bristle.

There is a condescending, pseudo-liberal quality to the word “tolerate,” as if the speaker deserves credit for allowing someone else — usually a minority person — equal respect. Ever hear a black say he tolerates whites? Or a Jew say she tolerates Christians, so liberal is she? To tolerate suggests one has the power and right to accept, condone or endorse another person. As we used to say in New Jersey, “Who sez so?”

Tolerate is a word that betrays a sense of superiority, of insider-dom, club proprietorship. I don’t want anyone ever to tolerate me. Respect will do.

Visit www.RonaldGoldfarb.com.