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Tolerance should be granted to homophobes...as well as homosexuals

Gay rights are back on the agenda after a gay couple, Michael Black and John Morgan, were prevented from taking up a booking they had made at a B&B in Berkshire: the owner, Susanne Wilkinson, had disapproved of their relationship for religious reasons. The row was further inflamed last weekend when Shadow Home Secretary Chris Grayling sympathised with Wilkinson's views.

Is such dislike of gay sex always an unacceptable prejudice? Or should homosexuals learn to tolerate the limits to other people’s tolerance of their lifestyles?

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Gavi Mensch
There seems to be a huge difference in the interpretation of the word. When we talk about tolerance in the case of tolerating a gay couple in a B&B (or where ever) we are talking about people, not us, not somebody else, but just human beings, we are discussing all of us, humans, like in 'not animals'. The question should be if gay people are supposed to be tolerated by everybody and the answer is yes, they are human beings. That should be the logical end of the discussion. And then there is another question, should gay people be tolerated in a B&B, someone's (not so) private house, with rooms for rent? How can you say you refuse gay people because of your religious ideas, your B&B is not a (private?)church, it is a place where people stay overnight and they have to pay for it, they are customers. If you are allowed to refuse human beings on the ground of their sexuality, where does that leave the rest of us, with even visible differences that might not agree with the ideas of the B&B