The Green Party is outdoing itself with its own tolerance

My father once told me that tolerance was a great and precious British virtue, and that we shouldn’t waste it on homosexuals. Even at the time this struck me as a somewhat illiberal and unkind point of view to which I privately objected. It was easier though, back then, to hold such ‘homophobic’ beliefs because there were only eight or nine homosexuals in the entire country, so far as we were aware, and they all seemed slightly ashamed of their predilection, except for maybe Quentin Crisp and Joe Orton. It is good that we have moved on from that position to one in which tolerance is not merely by law compulsory, but that further, if you should have any quibble with any aspiration of the now vast homosexual community, you should be hounded out of your job or position and subjected to public vilification. This, for me, is the true meaning of tolerance: an absolute refusal to allow a view which runs counter to your own and, in the manner of our Deputy Prime Minister, making it clear that anyone who does hold such views is a ‘bigot’. A ruthlessness towards anyone who shows deviation from the inestimably tolerant line.

Take the case of Christina Summers, a Green Party councillor who has now been expelled from her local party because she could not bring herself, as a Christian, to support a motion demanding that the government change the marriage laws so that gay people could get married just the same as the dwindling number of straights. Ms Summers pointed out that she was fully in support of homosexual equality and civil partnerships for gay people, it was just the marriage stuff which, as a Christian, she had one or two problems with. ‘Marriage is about a relationship between a man and a woman together in a relationship and about procreation and family,’ this sad old dinosaur insisted.