Heard of the new superhero: Tolerant Man? Of course his movies are rather boring but he tolerates absolutely everything! That amazing guy!
The recent dustup over those scratches on a Vanier locker intrigues me to no end.
It seems the territorial government’s approved safety valve for everything up to and including highway blockades and murder these days is “tolerance.” In its name we tolerate all manner of religious and non-religious activity from various cultures. So forward-thinking are we all!
Apparently the only thing left which can’t be tolerated is non-government-approved thought. And with our brand-new hate law sitting in the garage, pristine and hardly used…
Those scratches on that girl’s locker surely qualify as hate literature, but what about the same word written on snow or whispered for that matter?
Have we actually reached the point where the most forward-thinking among us cannot even tolerate a child’s thoughtless mischief? Or a religious school’s viewpoint, based on history as recorded in that ancient and divisive book, the Bible, much older than any Education Department or even Supreme Court? Must the Education Department spring from its swivel chair and save us all from a child’s scratches? Those scratches appear to have offended our beloved separation of church and state. No doubt this separation is a worthy goal considering all the different religious viewpoints we Canadians hold, yet in practice, it’s utterly impossible to achieve. But they try.
Hopefully government officials all over this land are even now pouring over Muslim, First Nation and gay/lesbian websites to see if there are other hate-inciting beliefs that need a stomping. (All websites are educational, after all.)
I strongly suspect they are not, and will continue to confine their efforts to the visible minority among us that is Vanier Catholic High.
Doug Martens
Teslin