Moving Beyond Tolerance

Mere tolerance is not enough

When Kevin Smith directed Chasing Amy in 1997, his career had fallen on hard times.

His first movie, Clerks, had become a critically-acclaimed indie-cult hit. But the follow-up, Mallrats recieved a tepid response from critics, tickets sold poorly at the box-office, and it would take years for his film to find its audience.

If not for the presence of the iconic Jay (Jason Mewes) and Silent Bob (Smith himself), it may never have had.

But Chasing Amy did more than simply revive Smith's flagging career. It imparted an important message for those preoccupied with the nature of the identity politics at the heart of relations between heterosexuals and homosexuals.

In the film, Holden McNeil (Ben Affleck) is a rising star in the comic book industry, courtesy of his popular Adventures of Bluntman and Chronic series. HIs partner in crime is Banky Edwards (Jason Lee), a spastic inker resentful of those who look down on his profession as "tracing".

McNeil has a tenuous relationship with the women in his life. When he meets Alyssa Jones (Joey Lauren Adams) he becomes instantly smitten with her. But this is a problem.

Alyssa, as it turns out, is a lesbian. Or at the very least bisexual.

McNeil embarks upon an awkward friendship with Alyssa in which he hammers out his own attitudes toward not merely homosexuality, but human sexuality in general. The relationship eventually blossoms into a romance, but eventually crashes and burns on the revelation that Alyssa had participated in some extremely "interesting" sex acts during high school.

The film eventually concludes that McNeil may not have really known and loved Alyssa for who -- or what -- she truly is. He sought out to change her, and then, having accomplished this task, became insensed when the illusory Alyssa he thought he had created turned out to be just that: an illusion.

McNeil was prepared to accept Alyssa's bisexuality, but never really accepted it. And therein lies the rub.

Many Canadians believe they can prove their tolerance for homosexuals by supporting token political causes like same-sex marriage. But tolerance alone isn't enough.

First off, the notion of tolerance has a dark undertone to it: that something may be wrong (in the numerous senses of the word) and should merely be tolerated or endured. It doesn't translate into any deeper acceptance of the individuals whom one is tolerating.

When many cities hold their annual Gay Pride festivities -- as Edmonton did today -- one can draw the distinction between acceptance and tolerance. Those who accept gays, lesbians, bisexuals and trannsexuals for who they are can be seen at these events (at the very least at the parade). Those who don't fully accept homosexuals are likely at home, merely tolerating them.

Perhaps they tolerate the presence of the LGBT crowd in their community. But given the opportunity, perhaps they would want to change them.

That is not acceptance. It's barely even tolerance. In producing a just society for Canada's LGBT community, Canadians must move beyond mere tolerance and accept the LGBT community for who they are.

It doesn't necessarily mean that one should show up to their local gay pride events. But it's a good symbolic start.

Believing In a Religion of Ideas

Religion needs to make room for ideas

If someone were to have taken a poll regarding the things that pissed Catholics off the most in 1999, Dogma would have likely topped the list.

Likewise, if someone had taken a poll regarding the things best regarded by disaffected Catholics in that same year, Dogma probably would have topped that list, too. Dogma could have topped the same list in any year.

Dogma was the fourth chapter in Kevin Smith's "View Askew-niverse" in which a series of madcap films were loosely tied together by two characters, Jay (Jason Mewes) and Silent Bob (writer/director/Hollywood's version of Mick Foley, Kevin Smith).

Dogma found the two characters cast as prophets in Bethany Sloan's (Linda Fiorentino) mission to prevent two exiled angels (Ben Affleck and Matt Damon) from undoing existence.

At issue is a New Jersey Cardinal's (the legendary George Carlin) plan to invoke plenary indulgence -- a promise that anyone who walks through the doorway of a Catholic Church will be absolved of all their sins -- to get people excited about Catholicism.

(The now-legendary Buddy Christ is also a creation of the marketing-savvy Cardinal Ignatius Glick.)

Along the way Sloane encounters Rufus (Chris Rock), the black 13th apostle (left out of the bible because he's a black man) and Persephone (Salma Hayek), who impart on her the importance of having ideas over having beliefs.

"You can change an idea," Rufus explains. "Changing a belief is trickier. People kill for them, people die for them."

Lines cut from the film explain Rufus -- actually, Smith's -- point more fully. "Life should malleable and progressive; working from idea to idea permits that. Beliefs anchor you to certain points and limit growth; new ideas can't generate. Life becomes stagnant."

Smith offers a dichotomy between belief and ideas. Beliefs, he argues, are pig-headed and stubborn. Ideas are the realm of the open-minded and flexible.

To a certain extent, Smith has a point, and to a certain extent is right. Religion needs to become much more open to new ideas -- right now, the Catholic Church needs to open itself up to some not-so-new ideas about birth control and AIDS.

Religion doesn't have a history of getting along well with new ideas. The Catholic Church's reaction to Martin Luther and the religious warfare that would spread across Europe -- particularly the Holy Roman Empire -- attest to this fact. This inflexibility is one of the things that allows fundamentalist atheist ideologues like Richard Dawkins and Bill Maher to continue painting all religion as dangerous and anti-progressive.

But Smith also needs to remember that good ideas, once accepted by the faithful, will inevitably become beliefs. Belief is the central principle of religion. Adapting positive ideas -- such as the pursuit of social justice via charity and compassion -- into beliefs doesn't denigrate them. They remain positive and progressive at their very core.

Religions -- especially Catholicism -- need to find ways to expand their beliefs in non-dogmatic ways through the adoption of good ideas. These ideas are often evident based simply on their own merit. They don't need religious doctrine to back them up -- or at least shouldn't.

That is the promise offered by Sloane -- who, at the film's end, is pregnant with the second coming of Jesus Christ -- when she answers Rufus' question about whether or not she believes by saying "I have a good idea."

Many Christians remain distressed with the continuing secularization of society, and decreasing numbers of practicing faithful.

Distress does no one any good. What the religious faithful need is to offer religions more open to new ideas, more flexible, and more able to meet the needs -- spiritual, intellectual, and otherwise -- of those who are turning away from religion.

The religious faithful need to learn to believe in a religion of ideas.