Tolerance

Tolerance is OK to get one through a meeting or passing scene.  It is not much of a way to focus one's way of life.  When I am tolerant, I might avoid unpleasantness, but I also avoid any encounter with the "other."  I don't have to change or be challenged in my way of seeing things.  My first encounter with gay people was seeing the "Gay Pride Parade," in San Francisco many years ago.  I do not recall meeting anyone who I knew to be gay when I was growing up.  I was obtuse I guess.  The initial parades were kind of over the top as gay and lesbian people were expressing themselves publicly for the first time.  Clothes were lacking, and costumes were weird to me.  I got as far as "tolerance."  I did not actually meet a gay person, actually meet and talk with anyone.  They were weird from my distance.  As the years of my priesthood wore on, I did meet many gay and lesbian people.  My experience of encounter changed my opinion.  My opinion had been based upon no experience outside of a parade that happened in San Francisco each Spring.  Tolerance did not challenge or change me.  I now have compassion and understanding.  I have friends who happen to be gay.  To me their sexual orientation is simply a part of the larger person.  It does not define them.  Tolerance defines in a more narrow sense.