Intolerance is Intolerable.

Most people in the US who have been reading the gossip pages of any regional newspaper would know about “Sister Wives”, a TLC-produced programme chronicling the lives of a polygamist and his 4 wives and 16 kids.

Now, whether or not polygamy is right or wrong is not the point of this post. After watching the 2nd episode I began to wonder how a man with 4 wives and 16 kids can afford to drive a flashy car. After posting this thought on Facebook (where else) I had a slew of comments but none as shocking as one that basically ran along the lines of..”this is typical of a M***** family”.

Nope, the M word is not Mormon.

To say that I was shell shocked is a gross understatement. A mix of embarrassment, utter disbelief and anger swept over me in waves. I was embarrassed because I had many good friends belonging to this faith and my first thought was how they would feel if they read this stereotype of their faith. Anger because I knew it was untrue and a sweeping statement, something that was a response from a person who probably did not understand the cultures of a different group of people. Disbelief because this was a young educated woman who grew up in a community of different races & religion and is now living in a foreign country where her race would qualify her as a minority and she is most definitely labelled a foreigner, someone “different”.

I would imagine that someone like her would understand the whole idea of discrimination and hate. Apparently not.

Some would say that she might not have totally understood the consequences of her response but for an adult living in our diverse world today where hate crimes and intolerance pepper our headlines, that is a simply irresponsible way of saying “I don’t care” (if there is anyway more irresponsible to say that).

My first reaction was, “how does one get away with saying and believing something like that”? An absence of knowledge does not make such a comment right. If you do not understand, you should not comment. Not least on such a public platform where you never know who may be reading that comment, whether it may be an innocent remark or not. But whether innocent or not, such a remark is just wrong.

And it is no thanks to the mentalities of these people that such hate exists in the world today.