You would think that one of the qualifications to be on a city’s human rights commission, no matter how big or small that city might be, is that you could reasonably pass as “tolerant.”
This doesn’t entail actual toleration, mind you, although it does require one to actively pretend to it. Think, instead, of the kind of air-quotes “tolerance” that still slaps a “Coexist” bumper-sticker on the back of a Prius in 2022, the kind of “tolerance” that makes sure to write detailed Facebook posts on all seven days of Kwanzaa no matter how puts-mayonnaise-on-mayonnaise white it may be. (No posts on Easter, though.)
In fairness, dear reader, I cannot claim to know or have had professional relations with Diane Loud, an erstwhile member of the Dedham, Massachusett, Human Rights Commission. I don’t know what she drives or what bumper stickers might be on the back of it — but I can venture a guess that, at the time of her appointment, she was considered “tolerant.”
I confess, too, that I’m unaware of what her social media feed looked like on any of the seven days of Kwanzaa. I do, however, know what she posted on Facebook about Christmas — and it’s why she’s 1) out of a job and 2) the latest object lesson in why tolerant and “tolerant” are not nearly synonyms.
According to CBN News, Loud was forced to resign last week after an unhinged Facebook rant aimed at Christians in which she called God a “magic sky daddy” and said those who were upset at the decision to not display a Christmas tree in a public library only “claim to believe in Christ and Christmas or whatever happy horses*** you’re trying to hide behind.”
Dedham, a suburb 30 miles southwest of liberal Boston, first made war-on-Christmas news last week after a supervisor with the Endicott Branch of the public library protested against town supervisors telling her to keep the Christmas tree in storage this year.
“I was told that, when people, I use the word ‘people,’ walked in that room, it made them uncomfortable,” branch supervisor Lisa Desmond told local talk radio, according to WBZ-TV, CBS Boston.
She also took her story to Facebook.
“I have never posted a negative post on Facebook,” Desmond wrote in a Dec. 2 post. “That is, until now. I found out today that my beautiful library will not have it’s Christmas tree this year.”
“When I asked, I was told ‘people’ were made uncomfortable last year looking at it. I’m sorry WHAT? In my 28 years at the Dedham Public Library, I have never heard a negative comment.”
The sentiment in Dedham seemed to be on Desmond’s side:
“I think we should have symbols of everybody. It’s the holidays; we should be celebrating to get through these dark times, and I think a lot of people are really stressed out for good reasons,” said a parent who is a weekly visitor to the library, according to WBZ. “It’s time to relax and reset before the new year. I say have more items of celebration.”
Loud did not think it was time to “relax and reset before the new year,” alas. In a now-deleted Facebook post, she claimed that Desmond and others had “put the lives of the library staff in danger” and wished “great suffering” upon them.
“You are too cowardly to have an actual conversation, an interaction, so you do what you have done time and again: sent in the unhinged goons who don’t even have a connection to Dedham but who have an avid connection to hatred and bigotry. then you’ll sit back and pretend innocence and surprise, even though you knew g*****n well what you were doing,” she wrote.
As for Desmond herself? “F*** YOU,” Loud wrote. “You knew what you were doing. You spent days batting aside the people who asked you to ratchet this back ‘Everyone will tell you I’m the most inclusive person ever!’ Everyone will tell me that you are a selfish f***ing b***h who does not care about anyone but herself. For a tree? For a m***********g TREE?
“You have put people’s lives in a lot of danger. A LOT of danger. For a m***********g Christmas tree.”
Yeah — we need to be protected from all the crazy, intolerant people who might see a ranting bigot online and be inspired to act against groups they don’t like!
(For the uninitiated, the current buzz phrase for this is “stochastic terrorism,” which Dictionary.com defines as “the public demonization of a person or group resulting in the incitement of a violent act, which is statistically probable but whose specifics cannot be predicted.”)
And it’s not just Desmond who reaped Loud’s invective, because of course it wasn’t. Addressing others — “whoever the f*** was behind this” — she wrote:
“I hope this is worth it. All. I hope the fact that you — who claim to believe in Christ and Christmas or whatever happy horses*** you’re trying to hide behind — are the least gracious, most hateful, most disgusting trash in the world,” she continued.
“Is this what you think your magic sky daddy wants? Where in the bible was this again? In closing, I would like to add a final round of F*** YOU, YOU PIECES OF TRASH. I hate each and every one of you and I do wish great suffering on you.
“You are terrible, terrible people,” Loud concluded. “And you did it all because you didn’t get your way. You are despicable.”
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