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17 Jul 2006 04:02 am

Ptown Intolerance

I guess I should belatedly comment on the much-cited piece about gay intolerance toward straights and others in Provincetown. My main response is: duh. Why would anyone think gay people would be any less prone to bigotry or intolerance than any other human beings? They're ... human. Prejudice is ugly wherever it comes from, and gays are no exception. Toleration is a difficult virtue. It comes no more naturally to minorities than majorities - although minorities have often had to master it in self-defense.

All I can say is that as a longtime summer resident of this little town brimming with award-winning fudge and mannish women (in Dina Martina's immortal words), it's full of personal feuds but remarkably tolerant of group differences. We're talking Jamaican laborers, post-drag drag-queens, bearded ladies, senior transgendered people, interracial couples, straight families, Portuguese-American clans, Irish cops, circuit queens, jolly bears, cross-dressers, rabid racoons, bustling skunks, countless dogs, power-lesbians, Bulgarian students, gay families with kids, Russian entrepreneurs, ancient eccentrics, nocturnal painters, bad musicians, cult film-makers, elegant novelists, excitable pundits ... well, you get the idea. Cram them onto two streets, add summer heat, and all you get is a few random slurs? If only they could be so "intolerant" everywhere else.

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