Some Thoughts on "Hate"

We are pretty free with the “hate” accusation in this country. Some of you accused some of us of being “racists” (Yes, you did.) because we did not want to vote for Barack Obama (the young, black, ambiguous guy with nebulous ideas from all over the place) in 2008. I would not have cared if it had been Harry Reid (the old, white, wealthy Mormon guy from Nevada) running for president, I would not have voted for him because I did not agree with his ideas.

I want to examine things a little more here. My refusing to give my vote to Barack Obama was “hateful.” This fellow who wrote and sent the letter to President Obama expressing his frustration, disgust, and disdain was “hateful.” The people who expressed their personal philosophical or religious views in supporting California Proposition 8 were “hateful.” And the list goes on and on and on….

A hateful statement would be one that said something terrible. Something more than an opinion. A hateful statement would be one that wished personal harm or injury to a person or group of persons, such as wishing all of a certain group would get a disease and die, or that a person’s airplane would crash on landing, killing all aboard. A hateful statement might even be one that compares a person with a particularly heinous or repulsive criminal, like comparing the President of the United States with Adolf Hitler (not simply comparing the actions of the US Government with those of Nazi Germany).

Calling a woman who is walking into a clinic who may be seeking an abortion a “murderer” is hateful. Opposing abortion is not hateful.

Delighting in the suffering of homosexuals as they seek to find their place in society is hateful. Opposing the social normalization of homosexual relationships by redefining traditional “marriage” is not hateful.

Standing outside someone’s church and shouting obscenities at them, calling out personal insults, is hateful. Opposing the views of that church, or its doctrine is not hateful.

Throwing blood, paint, or feces on GIs returning from Viet Nam and calling them “baby killers” was hateful. Believing that American involvement in the war in Viet Nam was wrong was not hateful.

I think a good example of a hateful statement would be Wanda Sykes, the comedienne, speaking recently at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner.

Ms. Sykes, in the course of her comedy routine, said, “Rush Limbaugh said he hopes this administration fails, so you’re saying, ‘I hope America fails’, you’re, like, ‘I don’t care about people losing their homes, their jobs, our soldiers in Iraq.’ He just wants the country to fail. To me, that’s treason. He’s not saying anything differently than what Osama bin Laden is saying. You know, you might want to look into this, sir (turning to the President), because I think Rush Limbaugh was the 20th hijacker. But he was just so strung out on OxyContin he missed his flight…. Rush Limbaugh – I hope the country fails. I hope his kidneys fail, how about that? He needs a good waterboarding, that’s what he needs!”

The key there is the hoping for personal tragedy to befall the person, i.e. kidney failure. The rest of it, unless you believe that waterboarding is torture, is just opinion.

Aside from being a bad example of comedy, this is a good example of hate.

It is personal and it wishes specific bad things on the person.

I should note that, while the Reverend Jeremiah Wright’s comments about “America’s chickens coming home to roost” on 11 Sep 01 and his “damning” of America were tasteless, they do not cross the line of hate. Some of his comments about white people and Jews are obnoxious and inappropriate for a “Christian” preacher to make, but, not being a big listener of his, I have not heard him use “hate speech”.

Similarly, a white supremacist who advocates protecting the “purity of the race” is obnoxious and repulsive. When a person calls for harming others or for harm to come to others, they have crossed the line into the world of “hate.”

If we are EVER going to communicate effectively in our personal lives or in our political world we MUST find CLARITY and avoid using the rhetoric that only serves to obscure the substance of our arguments.