Fair enough; let’s go with an easy example. Someone wants to kill you, and is actively trying to kill you. Naturally, you don’t want to die, and are actively trying to survive. You two are in rather extreme opposition; are you willing to tolerate their presence?

Maybe the word “intolerant” is what you disagree with. I think that word is useful because it forces us to examine situations in which we are reacting as strongly to someone as others react to us. In other words, I think it’s helpful to consider “intolerance” to be a symmetrical position, not an asymmetrical one.

If we take this abstraction and pull it back down to reality: many people are sufficiently intolerant of gay people that they actively work against them having particular rights. Gay people are generally intolerant of this view, in that they actively work against that one.

Now, personally I believe gay people should have the right to get married. But if I initially consider these conflicting positions as symmetrical disagreement, I force myself to rationally derive which one is the “bad” one. “Intolerant” is therefore a helpful, generalizable placeholder for any given pair of conflicting viewpoints, positions, values, etc.