I’ve read several explanations, but I think I need it really dumbed down to grasp it.
In: 7
You have a buddy group who go play basketball every other Friday. Two of your buddies are gay. You bring a new guy, and it turns out that he’s pretty homophobic. Maybe you tell them to leave it alone. Your two gay buddies are uncomfortable but don’t want to cause problems, while the homophobe now casually jabs at them all game long.
Next two games, the homophobe brings one of his buddies. Now the whole energy is off. They spend more time insulting the two gay dudes in your group than playing. Maybe even a fight breaks out that you break up, telling everyone to chill.
One of your gay friends pulls you aside and says that he doesn’t feel safe playing with those guys, and you tell him that he’s overreacting because it’s just their opinion.
Next time? Neither gay friend shows up, and they start blowing off messages from you. Now there’s more homophobes there, and they either drop bringing up gay people at all, or now casually say homophobic things constantly.
By tolerating everyone, the only people really comfortable in that environment will be people who are intolerant. So eventually your whole group is going to be pretty hateful. Meanwhile, if you’d kept them out from the start, it would remain chill.
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