I generally like to rant. I tend to reserve these rants for emails to my mom or my closest friends. But today I want to rant on Facebook about a news story I saw this morning and the dangerously misguided and intolerant attitudes it is perpetuating.

J. Crew, the U.S. clothing store, recently posted an ad in which its president is pictured laughing with her five-year old son, who is dressed in a J. Crew striped top. He also happens to be wearing pink toenail polish that his mother just put on him. The pair are absolutely joyous and the picture is quite lovely. We should all be so lucky.

Apparently many people have taken issue with the ad though, and that is what has me incensed and more than a little despondent. Social conservatives are trumpeting the ad as “trying to turn kids gay”. The U.S. Media Research Center went so far as to call the ad “blatant propaganda celebrating transgendered children” as if being gay or transgendered (and, Heaven forbid, celebrating it!) is the problem but being intolerant and hostile to a child isn’t.

Has it really come to this? A little boy who is clearly happy, healthy, loving and loved can’t have some fun with his mother without millions of Americans speculating on whether he’ll be “man enough” when he grows up? Never mind that if the five year old in question was a little girl dressed in a hard-hat, dad’s tie or an NFL, NBA or MLB jersey there would be nary a word about gender roles, what frustrates me is that even those who acknowledge that this uproar is ridiculous are often missing the point. Several liberal responses I’ve read have said “painting a child’s toenails won’t turn them gay”, as if the intolerant masses should breathe a sigh of relief that this woman’s son still has a chance to grow up “normal”. Where is the voice that says, “pink toenails are irrelevant because being gay or being straight are both perfectly fine ways to be”?

One’s character, one’s ability to be a productive, loving, compassionate and inspirational citizen are not determined by the sex of the person one prefers to sleep with. The gay teen suicides that garnered so much attention recently can find their source in the attitudes espoused by those opposed to this ad. And it’s a slippery slope of intolerance from “concerns that he will be mocked” to the anti-gay witch-hunts we see in places like Uganda.

Intolerance in the guise of tradition, in the guise of “family values”, or religion or “what’s best for the kids” is simply intolerance. It’s hateful, it’s destructive, it tears at the fabric of communities and we all deserve better than that. If we all make acceptance and inclusiveness our priority, ten pretty pink toes on a happy child don’t matter at all.