This column addresses the intolerance stirred up when U.S. District Judge Robert Shelby ruled that Utah’s voter-approved ban on same-sex marriage violated the Constitution’s guarantee of equal protection under the law, overturning a two-thirds vote of the state’s residents.

Two flurries followed. Gay couples quickly descended on county courthouses to seize a license and get married in hallways. Meanwhile, a cry of “Foul play!” rose from the throats of many of those two-thirds voters as well as from state leaders, right up to Gov. Gary Herbert’s office. To the observant, multiple lessons in tolerance have appeared in the weeks since.

Lesson 1: A person’s perception is his reality. The perception of many Utahns is that a U.S. District Court ruling handed down on a Friday afternoon before the busiest holiday week of the year — the most difficult to work through the court system week of the year — felt like a sucker punch, exhibited intolerance for the good faith intent of the majority of the state’s citizens, and only further alienated that population. Whether or not the ruling’s timing was coincidental doesn’t matter; folks believe what they believe. A long, thoughtful pause by those behind the ruling will produce the obvious realization that tolerance and understanding have possibly been set back decades.

True, the tiny minority who sought the institution of marriage achieved it. But at what cost to their cause and the future of their like-minded acquaintances?

Lesson 2: Pay attention to history. Utah is a state built on a legacy of people who understood, probably more than any other state of people in the nation, what it meant to be rejected for their marriage practices. Exiled to the desert, away from those who persecuted them, they developed a society based on their beliefs. Yet decades later, to obtain statehood, they outlawed their own polygamous practices — at terrific personal sacrifice to their families. It should be no stretch to understand the resilience of the present day rejection of a marriage practice that goes entirely contrary to everything the majority population — many of them descendents of those founding fathers — still believes and defends.

It’s not an issue of simple intolerance. It’s a matter of deep-seated disagreement, based on historic moral values.

Lesson 3: The opposite of a “tolerant” person is not an “unenlightened” person. Assessing someone who disagrees with a held position as intolerant and unenlightened is a harsh judgment that suggests the person just hasn’t made enough effort to learn the “truth,” or is too stubborn or too archaic in his thinking, and that time and continued attempts to “educate” him will eventually produce an acceptably enlightened person. That point of view lacks tolerance.

Lesson 4: No one has ever successfully demanded tolerance. Tolerance is earned. Clamoring and out-maneuvering, by their very nature, will not produce tolerance. They do, however, historically produce the opposite.

Lesson 5: Intolerance cuts both ways. I have an acquaintance who’s been a friend of a gay man since high school.Even though her personal beliefs are contrary to his lifestyle, they enjoyed their friendship. In recent online chatter she agreed, as she should be able to, with someone who wrote a statement aligning with her core beliefs.Within the hour, her gay friend, who has always been aware of her position, wrote to tell her he was disappointed in her words, and was sad they couldn’t be friends anymore. His intolerance destroyed their diverse friendship.

Lesson 6: Tolerance isn’t guaranteed. People still have the right to refuse to tolerate something they find intolerable. That’s when the opportunity arises to show true strength. Pure tolerance includes tolerating the intolerant.

These lessons in tolerance reveal something of our characters, both collectively and individually, from all sides of the issue. Since we all claim this state as our home, it’s imperative that a solution is reached. Hopefully it will be a tolerable one.

You can contact D. Louise Brown at maven_55@yahoo.com.