The Many Faces of Intolerance.

This picture shows the vigil held in Bangkok in front of the US Embassy to honour the victims of the recent Orlando shooting.  In sharing this, I am not focusing on the tragedy itself but on what laid behind it - the prejudice and accompanying hatred aimed at others we perceive as different or as a threat.

I choose this as a local story of prejudice is the story associated with this local vigil.  It is a story of intolerance in Thailand which opened my mind to another insight into my Thailand and which jolted me in my own assumptions.  Intolerance and discrimination were among the key factors that led to the Orlando killings.  They exist everywhere even in Thailand where order and beauty and happiness are always held up as existing values defining the local scene.

The Thai story in question is of a university professor in Bangkok who publicly decried the appearance of one of his students, saying that because of his looks the student should not have been admitted to the university as he would give the institution a bad name.  This same student, an activist, was a leader at the Bangkok vigil for Orlando.  I first thought that this was an anti-gay stance aimed at the student but my assumption was wrong.

On doing my homework, I discovered that the professor perpetrating the discrimination was himself gay.  He was aiming at the student whom he despised for being a known political activist who has led a stance against the present military government.   The reality is that the professor is against the student for his politics and so publicly insulted his student due to his own level of political prejudice and intolerance.  Basically, being an elitist intellectual, the professor just does not approve of a student taking an opposing political stance in society.  So he is using the students' looks as his way to publicly attack and silence the student.  The real issue is politics. The tool used by the professor was to throw personal insults in the public arena. 

The divide here is not sexual orientation but political.  I discover through this article that a way being used these days to attack your political foes in Thailand is not by reasoned argument but by name calling and referring to those on the opposite side of the fence as being gay.

Now in a Thailand presumably tolerant towards people of different sexual orientations, I am discovering otherwise and that personal discrimination is alive and well, using personal abuse to insult and put down your political foes.  Surprise, surprise!  Intolerance reigns in Thailand as elsewhere.  It just may be more subtle here.

My other insight gained from this story is that it is not always the gay person who is the victim.  A gay person can also be the perpetrator.  Intolerance and discrimination go across all boundaries.  No matter your race, religion, class, sexual orientation, gender, all people can be both victims  and perpetrators of intolerance and discrimination.