Carrie Prejean and the “Tolerance Means Being Nice” Myth

I twittered a nasty comment yesterday about Carrie Prejean, the Miss California contestant who voiced her opposition to gay marriage during the competition's round of Q&A, and who, in the media circus that followed, was discovered to have posed partially nude for an underwear catalogue when she was 17 years old (this was before she underwent breast augmentation surgery, paid for by pageant officials). The comment caught the eye of Get Religion's Mollie Ziegler Hemingway, with whom I sparred back and forth until finally Ziegler fired across the bow with: "Good to know politely sharing your political opinions means you volunteer for a public stoning from 'tolerant' types."

Prejean is now acting as a spokesperson for the National Organization for Marriage (NOM), which is led by Maggie Gallagher, who has been defending Prejean from "tolerant types" since Boobiegate broke. Gallagher and I exchanged words in the lead-up to November's gay marriage referendums after I wrote something obnoxious about her at reason.com's Hit & Run blog. The exchange ended with Gallagher writing in an email, "It's nice to know you are just as intensely offensive to a person's face as as you are in print.  The voices of tolerance tend to be like that."

Which got me wondering: Since when did tolerance become ammunition for the right?

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