Opinion: Marco Rubio needs a vocab lesson on same-sex marriage and intolerance

It’s so easy — and popular — to claim to be a victim these days. The latest victims, as U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) would have you believe, are people who try to stop same-sex couples from being able to marry. As he put it in a speech Wednesday at Catholic University of America in Washington, supporters of same-sex marriage are intolerantly picking on those who are trying to stop the wave of recognition for gay rights.

According to the Associated Press:

“There is a growing intolerance on this issue,” Rubio said of those who back same-sex marriages. “This intolerance in the name of tolerance is hypocrisy.”

The real problem, in my book, is using the loaded word “intolerance” to mean “people who won’t back off when I try to keep them from having rights.”

There’s a big difference between fighting someone’s intolerant viewpoints and practicing actual intolerance toward them. Have Rubio and others who fight tooth and nail to keep another couple from marrying — a marriage that would in no way harm them — lost a job because of their beliefs? Has their position on gay marriage caused them to be denied an apartment rental? Or have they been rejected for a marriage license for their heterosexual union by authorities who support same-sex marriage?

Until such truly intolerant things happen, Rubio should confine himself to saying, “There is a growing unwillingness to accept my viewpoint as gospel and allow me and others who think the same way I do from taking away others’ rights, and this really bothers me.” He might not like people fighting for their rights, but he is hardly the victim of their intolerance.

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