… putting up with things that annoy you, as someone said. It’s easy to be tolerant of things that do not offend you or your most cherished beliefs, but the real litmus test of tolerance is being able to suffer others mocking something that you hold as sacred.
Sadly, Roman Catholics and their bozo-in-a-funny-hat jefe supremo, El Papa Ratzo, usually fail this test, as exemplified once again by the recent brouhaha raised around an art exhibit held in Italy, where a statue of a crucified frog is on display. The silly Pope itself wrote a letter calling for censorship of the frog and the head of the local council even started a hunger strike. Too bad for them, I guess, as the museum board voted to keep the frog on display until the end of the exhibit and not bend over backwards to please the would-be censors, as too often happens in Italy and elsewhere. Kudos to them!
I think I should petition the Italian government to prohibit the display of crucifixes in public places: seeing an image of a man tortured and killed in the most horrible way deeply offends my sentiments, so it’s my right to demand that it be censored, right?
I also would like certain vignettes that appeared in a certain Danish newspaper to be censored as well, not to mention the display of beef in supermarkets, as it deeply offends Hindu religious sentiments.
You can read more about the whole affair on Pharyngula. Minor nit: Bolzano (Bözen in German) is actually in Italy, not Germany, though in a region where the majority speaks German, so the confusion is understandable.
