Addressing the Intolerable

You can usually surf over to Jesus' General for a few laughs, and if you're lucky, maybe even a couple of pointed barbs while you're at it. But yesterday General JC Christian (patriot) put up a post that wasn't funny in the least. In the guise of a congratulatory letter to Stop the ACLU Coalition, he told the story of a Jewish family in Delaware forced to move to another town after they filed a lawsuit over the excessive Christian content in their local public school. The general congratulated Nedd Kareiva, director of Stop the ACLU Coalition for his successful pogrom. Kareiva responded, quibbling over the word pogrom but acknowledging that his organization's goal had been achieved in this instance.

The Stop the ACLU Coalition (I'm not linking to them--if you want to visit their site, you can find it easily enough in Google) is getting a fair amount of attention as this story spreads on the Internet, but in truth, they're only a side issue. The Jewish family had already moved before Kareiva's group put their address on its Website (JC Christian has a screen grab). The true villains are the other residents of Delaware's Indian River School District who tormented the Jewish children. Bartholomew's notes on religion has the story from a number of sources, but Jews On First! has the details. (By the way, Jews on First! has a delightfully matter-of-fact slogan: "Defending the First Amendment against the Christian right ... because if Jews don't speak out, they'll think we don't mind." Truer words were never written.)

More and more it seems like intolerance is slipping into our daily routine, and if we don't call it out when we see it, it becomes an acceptable position. Further, agents of intolerance try to argue progressives into a blind alley in which we must allow the intolerance as a simple difference of opinion. This certainly shouldn't need to be pointed out, but we should tolerate diversity; we should never tolerate intolerance.