TAKE IT OR LEAVE IT... By Jim Stiles BEING INTOLERANT OF INTOLERANCE If you do not live in Moab, and certainly if you reside outside of Utah, you are probably unaware of an ugly incident that occurred here on New Year’s Eve. Two young local men allegedly assaulted an interracial couple with racist epithets and one of them, Jaric Robison, was charged with a third degree felony, based on Utah’s new hate crime law. _a Whether the man is found guilty of the alleged crime is up to jury of his peers to decide. The fact that the incident underscores a nasty racist and bigoted underside to this community is undeniable. A few weeks after the incident, stories ofan underground white supremacist subculture in Moab persist. They are fueled in part by a circular that recently made its way around town in defense of Mr. Robison. In part the inflammatory rhetoric from the National Alliance in Hillsboro, West Virginia . proclaims: “The Leftists are celebrating the fact of the Nonwhite America in the future. The so-called right-wing is ignoring it. But it is coming, and we are all going to die like a bunch of dumb grasshoppers, if we do not get White America fired up soon. : When I was growing up, there was a television commercial, where there was a cartoon bear who was promoting fire safety. The slogan was, Smokey Bear says, ‘Only you can prevent forest fires!’ However corny that sounds, it is fundamentally true. Only you, collectively and individually, can prevent the Winter slaughter of our race. You CAN prevent it. You must prevent it! LDS Church It is easy to blame intolerance and bigotry on ignorance, but it’s too easy an explanation. Too many people who know better spew the same kind of vicious intolerance that contributed to Stuart Matis’s unhappy life and awful death. I have an ex-friend who has always worn intolerance on his sleeve like some black badge of honor. The man is educated, makes a more than comfortable living, and has been given all the cultural and social opportunities that anyone could ask for. He has, in essence, lived the "American Dream." And yet, he used to sit in front of the television, watching the nightly news, foaming and frothing at the mouth with predictable precision about the "goddamn niggers and queers." It was his mantra. f "Tell me," I asked, during one of our last encounters, "how have homosexuals and A frican-Americans made your life worse? You seem to be doing pretty well in spite of them." He shrugged and refused to answer but I persisted. “Let me ask you this," I continued. I was now more intrigued than amazed by what he might say next. "What would you do about the AIDS epidemic?" He glared at the tv screen for a few seconds and then snapped, "I'll tell you what I'd do. I’d take all the people infected with AIDS and put them on a small island in the South Pacific and I'd drop a nuclear bomb on them.” We no longer stay in touch. “WE MUST SECURE THE EXISTENCE OF OUR PEOPLE AND THE FUTURE FOR WHITE CHILDREN." A few years later, after the brutal beating death of Matthew Shepard in Wyoming, one of the young man’s killers, Aaron It then urges its readers, "Show that you do not agree with ‘Hate Crime’ laws by supporting Jaric Robison. And share this put all AIDS patients in an airplane and blow it up. Many blamed his homophobia and bigotry on ignorance and the with a friend.” Naturally, no one attaches a signature to this garbage. Just a post office box and an email address. Another gutless wonder for White America. On the one hand, such vitriol seems incredible in this day and age. And certainly we have come a long way in the last four decades. I am old enough to remember when incidents like the one that occurred here on New Year's Eve were so commonplace as to be unnoteworthy as a news story. I grew up in Louisville, Kentucky and, in my mind’s eye,I can still see, as a little kid, the black people sitting at the back of the Blue Motor bus. I can even remember asking my mother why. One summer, when I was about eight, my family took a trip to Florida. Passing through Chattanooga, Tennessee, we noticed an old black man walking along the shoulder of the highway. Suddenly the car in front of us jerked and swerved to the right. The old man leaped out of the way and tumbled into the tall grass as the occupants of the car turned around in their seats to laugh and jeer. . My father slowed down and pulled alongside the man, who Whenever the people of any state, but particularly a small grave implications for Utah as well. (The campaigned actively in support of Prop 22) McKinney shared a similar sentiment--in his case, he wanted to economic and social circumstances of his life; yet here are two men, with vastly divergent backgrounds, and with the same irrational hatred. Why? I believe it is due, in large part, to our tolerance of intolerance. For every one person who aggressively and actively expresses this kind of hatred, there are ten of us who turn a deaf _ ear and a blind eye to it. We are passive participants to behavior that we know is despicable, but which we refuse to condemn. How many times have we sat silently at the table, or at a party, or at the bar, or in school, or, incredibly, even in church and endured the bigoted vitriol of some pea-brain? And we never said a word? We all have done this. I recognize my own history of guilt by omission and I am ashamed of myself for those occasions when I knew better and failed to respond. Human history is littered and scarred with its timidity and indifference. Prejudice and intolerance exist and even flourish, not because it is the predominant philosophy of humans, but because we give it permission to survive by doing nothing. we lifted himself up from the litter and weeds, brushed off the dirt NO ESCAPE TO FUNAFUTI state, accustom themselves to and the dust and nodded to us that he was alright. I will never forget his face, etched with sadness and a great dignity. It was an odd combination of resignation and defiance—resigned to the fact condemn without hearing, and that such acts would occur again and again, yet defiant that they full of this place, I’ve threatened to pull stakes and move to to applaud speeches merely because they are passionate. When they call first months of the 21st Century, we find ourselves confronting the same mean-spirited demons that have always haunted us. So while we can pat ourselves on the back for the strides we've made in the arena of human rights, we are still a primitive and would not break him. exaggeration and fury, That was decades ago. Now, in the intolerant species. virtue. Intolerance can take many forms. Two weeks ago, Stuart Matis, a gay 32 year old man in California committed suicide on Equity and moderation, crimes... the ruin of the state is at hand. the steps of a Mormon church in Los Altos. His family and friends insist that Matis’s death is not connected in any way to the March 7 vote on Proposition 22, the controversial initiative that states only heterosexual marriages can be recognized by the state of California. But the suicide note is telling. Matis wrote, "I am now free. Iam no longer in pain and I no longer hate myself. As it turns out, God never intended me to be straight. Perhaps my death might become a catalyst for some good." Perhaps. But what a tragic and desperate way of seeking acceptance and respect from a society that still cruelly mocks and Napoleon 1797 _ Tejects an alternative lifestyle such as his. And because he was a member of the LDS Church, his death and his sad legacy have On several occasions, whenI thought I’d just about had a gut Funafuti. Now I’m not sure it’s an option. Funafuti is a real place. It is the main island of a string of nine atolls called Tuvalu (formerly the Ellice Islands). The capital city on the island of Funafuti is Fongafale. In Fongafale the islanders often participate in great celebrations called fiafias. And, during the rainy season, these festivals are held in large thatched pavilions called falafones. And so, it has been my dream to travel to tiny Funafuti, to Fongafale, to be a part of the fiafias that are held in the falafones. In addition, the U.S. State Department, in its annual report on human rights, recently described Tuvalu as a country that is "egalitarian, democratic and respectful of human rights." According to the report, local officials could not remember when a serious crime was last committed on the islands. But now, thanks to global warming, Funafuti’s days may be numbered. Recently an Associated Press story warned that rising tides threaten the very existence of Tuvalu. Spring tides have _ Tisen higher and higher in the last several years. This year, the tide rose to a level of 3.2 meters (the highest point on any of the islands is 4.5 meters—-15 feet) and half of the main island was underwater for weeks.