"Toleration is not the opposite of intolerance but the counterfeit of it"

Toleration is not the opposite of intolerance but the counterfeit of it. Both are despotisms: the one assumes to itself the right of withholding liberty of conscience, the other of granting it. -- Thomas Paine, American patriot, The Rights of Man ("Being an Answer to Mr. Burke's Attack on the French Revolution", part 7)

The context of this quote is a discussion on how the post-revolution Constitution of France abolished the ties between the country and the Catholic Church and replaced it with "universal right of conscience." The passage quote above continues with, "The one is the Pope armed with fire and faggot, and the other is the Pope selling or granting indulgences. The former is church and state, and the latter is church and traffic."

I would be interested in seeing some discussion on this quote. Do you think Paine is correct in his assesment? Can his observation on tolerance and intolerance be applied to areas other than religion, such as race, gender and political views?

The context you provided shows that this was meant as toleration on the part of the state.

I need to mull this over a bit more, but part of it rings true; do I need *your* tolerance, or society's?

The kind of society in which the concepts became muddy (a democratic republic) was alien to Paine.

I don't mean to go off on a tangent, but how can you say that such a society was alien to him? Thomas Paine's Common Sense, published in January 1776, was the spark that set off the American Revolution and it was Paine who proposed that the new nation by styled, "The United States of America." Paine's pamphlet series, The American Crisis, was published in late 1776 and through 1777 and served to inspire Americans to support the Patriot cause and take up arms against the Loyalists. Paine was also a pamphleteer for the French Revolution (1789–1799); for his work, he was given honorary French citizenship and served for a time in the National Convention.

How could a man who spent so much of his adult life inspiring and guiding the creation of democratic republics find such societies alien?

Visualizing it is not the same thing as seeing it work in practice.

as well, the idiocy of what I call 'reaching out to meet intolerance halfway'. Within his timeframe the bastion of intolerance was the Catholic church with its corrupt control over people's minds.

Intolerance is saying "I have the right to tell you not to be a certain way" and tolerance is saying "I have the right to allow you to be a certain way", when the truth is it is none of my business in the first place.

Do you think he is correct? And can this attitude be applied to other areas than just religion?

It just takes a willingness for people to admit to themselves "It's not all about you". Perhaps what it is all about is fear - intolerance comes from fear, while tolerance comes from "See, I'm not afraid" which is also fear. Where there is no fear, tolerance or intolerance is not an issue.

He wrote an amazing essay on tolerance- really a paean to it- in 1941.

Here's a couple of snippets:

"Tolerance is a very dull virture. It is boring. Unlike love, it has always had a bad press. It is negative. It merely means putting up with people, being able to stand things.

<snip>

The world is very full of people- appallingly full; it has never been so full before, and we all tumbling over each other. MOst of these people one doesn't know and them one doesn't like; doesn't like the color of their skins, say, or the shapes of their noses, or the way they blow them or don't blow them, or the way they talk, or their smell, or their clothes, or their fondness for jazz, or their dislike of jazz, on so. Well, what is one to do? There are two solutions. One of them is the Nazi solution, If you don't like people, kill them, banish them, segregate them, and strut up and down proclaiming you are the salt of the earth. The other way is much less thrilling, but it is on the whole the way of democracies, and I prefer it. If you don't like people, put up with them as well as you can. Don't try and love them: you can't, you'll only strain yourself. But try to tolerate them. On the basis of that tolerance, a civilized future may be built."

There are legal consequences to marriage - property ownership, etc.
So the state defines marriage, and makes certain kinds of marriage illegal - multiple spouses, same-sex, first cousins and brothers and sisters, etc.
There was somebody trying to marriage a corporation - since the law says corporations are persons, why can't you get married to your business?

It seems to be that he is suggesting a difference between tolerating something and accepting it. That is Toleration in the usage here is when you set yourself up as a source for authority and grant individuals rights because you are going to tolerate them. This sets them up as a lesser but protected group on your whim.

I suspect he was advocating manditory openness rather than a form of benevelant oversight. This would I suspect apply to how the modern fundamentalists view the nation. They insist that it must be a Christian nation that will tolerate others living in it. Tolerance in this case becomes a label equating to second class citizen.