Tolerance doesn’t mean liking what other people do. It just means not interfering with them.
If neither of us can get the upper hand, then it is sensible to institute a non-interference policy. But if one of us could get the upper hand, tolerance becomes something we do out of a more sociable moral conviction.
Tolerance is a core American value, because of its importance in the founding of the country. As such, people on all sides of the political aisles have generally espoused it, at least in theory. Even people who are very strict in their personal opinions about how people should conduct themselves can agree, generally, that we should tolerate people who disagree with them.
Difficulties with tolerance:
1. Some groups/people are more tolerant of each other than other groups.
2. Tolerating people who don’t tolerate you back is generally a bad idea.
3. Some groups/people do things that other groups find really heinous.
4. Third parties who did not consent to be part of a society, like children, can still be affected by it.
5. Mistaking tolerance for a primary value rather than a meta-value. This leads to people trying to force other people to be tolerant, which quickly starts looking like intolerance.
These suggest some practical limits to tolerance, even though I generally argue that people should be more tolerant.