Tolerance sounds nice, but personally, I think it sucks. Respect is much better. Go respect!
First, "tolerance" means that you think that what you tolerate is bad. With respect, it's the opposite. Tolerance is good for loud music totally incoherent with your taste. Or inappropriate behaviour. Can you tolerate inappropriate behaviour? You can, even though it's inappropriate. Can you respect it? No, because it's inappropriate. You can however respect people's freedom to choose to behave so, because freedom is good.
Second, tolerance is contradictive, as it doesn't tolerate intolerance. I just read an extremely expressive example of it today, in an article by Megan Carpentier about same-sex marriages:
(..) the opponents of gay marriage, those blind, blithering idiots who think that allowing people (...) to marry will hurt Marriage and religion and make the Baby Jesus cry and/or God smite us or whatever people like that use to justify their blind intolerance...Nothing says "tolerance" like calling someone a blind, blithering idiot, making fun of his arguments and ending the article with "fuck that guy". I personally am an opponent of same-sex marriage. Still, I respect other's people freedom and privacy and do not deserve to be called an idiot. I'd really love my views to be respected as well, or at least tolerated.
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