"I spoke to the sender of the e-mail, and he said, “It was just a joke.” Here lies a problem with phobias and intolerance — joking about it doesn’t make it less of an issue. When was it ever okay to joke about hatred and persecution? Was it acceptable when Jews were grotesquely drawn in Nazi cartoons? Or when Emmet Till was brutally murdered?"Well said. (Evidently, some slack-jawed jerk wrote something inflammatory in one of the discussion forums on Facebook. I’m glad my friend took him to task.) Perhaps Italian poet and philosopher Giacomo Leopardi (1798-1837) put it best when he wrote, “No human trait deserves less tolerance in everyday life, and gets less, than intolerance.”
Taking intolerance to the next level, the good (but paranoid) people of Oklahoma just approved a measure barring state judges from using Shariah Law (the Islamic religious code based on the Koran) in formulating rulings. Never mind that no American court has ever done so, or ever will. Scarier still, the so-called “Save Our State” bill passed with 70% of the vote, according to the Wall Street Journal.
It is stunning that so many presumably well-meaning folks are so clueless about the dangerous slippery slope they’re on. This tragic error has been repeated over and over throughout human history. And yet we seem to learn nothing.
Irish poet William Butler Yeats put it best: “Once you attempt legislation upon religious grounds, you open the way for every kind of intolerance and religious persecution.”
Where would we be without the poets? I shudder to think.
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