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Tolerance used like a hammer

In the brilliant TV comedy series Community, there is an episode where dean Craig Pelton (Jim Rash) and Pierce Hawthorne (Chevy Chase) are attempting to come up with a mascot for the fictional Greendale Community College.
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In the brilliant TV comedy series Community, there is an episode where dean Craig Pelton (Jim Rash) and Pierce Hawthorne (Chevy Chase) are attempting to come up with a mascot for the fictional Greendale Community College.

After discarding all animals and their names because "some of these students have been called animals their whole lives," the dean and Pierce decide that they will call all Greendale teams the "human beings."

The plot moves on to the obvious problem - what defines human beings? After all, a mascot for such a team name cannot have any real distinguishing features, lest any particular group or ethnicity at the school feels underrepresented or discriminated against. Thus, Pierce and the dean begin to categorically reject definitive features of skin colour, body shape, even gender. As this madness goes on, a fellow student sees their machinations on the drawing board and states the obvious: "congratulations, you guys have made 'not being racist' racist!"

This last line was reiterated in legalese recently when the Appeal Court of B.C. sided with Trinity Western University against the Law Society of British Columbia.

The five justices unanimously agreed that the LSBC had erred when it denied TWU's proposal to build an accredited law school, saying "This case demonstrates that a well-intentioned majority acting in the name of tolerance and liberalism can, if unchecked, impose its views on the minority in a manner that is in itself intolerant and illiberal."

Or, to borrow from Dan Harmon's Community, "congratulations, you guys have made 'being tolerant' intolerant!"

I've tried many times in the space to convey to those with the ears to hear that regardless of the banner flown over a given project or people, intolerant behaviour can be found in any demographic, regardless of self-described identity or original intention. What the Law Society of B.C. attempted to do when it stymied TWU's proposal to secure accreditation for its law school was "illiberal" to put it nicely - and fundamentally unjust, even fraudulent, to put it accurately.

Tolerance is the new all-powerful word. To be accused of intolerance is to be accused of witchcraft in Salem circa 1690 or being a "Red" in 1950s America. The LSBC and many vested parties attempted to all but bluntly state with malice aforethought that because TWU holds traditional biblical beliefs around marriage and sexuality, it ought not to have a law school. Regardless of what one thinks of those beliefs, this reasoning is obviously flawed, even wicked.

In our own community, via the Ness Lake Bible Camp controversy, we have witnessed the pervasiveness of the idea that all must conform to a single set of beliefs about sexuality and gender, which is itself an intolerant and illogical concept.

That any authority can dictate beliefs within the private sphere or freely associated communities is the definition of intolerance, closely resembling the theocratic, absolutist state that adherents to these causes supposedly detest.

TWU's victory is an important affirmation for all people - especially those who don't agree with their beliefs - that freedom of conscience and freedom of association are rights worth defending.

Our democratic traditions and free society are always at risk, but there is no greater threat to our freedoms today than political correctness and the self-serving sanctimony of its rent-seeking purveyors. By comparison, social justice warriors make terrorists look benign.

At the end of the episode, Greendale Community College chooses to represent its "human beings" with a dull, grey version of those green-men suits seen at Canuck games, adding sharpie eyes and mouth for features.

It is a poignant portrait of perfect, all encompassing "tolerance" - an inhuman looking creature with no culture to celebrate or even denigrate.

If you wish to live in such a world, be my guest, but for those of us who still believe in souls, it's clear yours needs saving.