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Comment by INvidiA | Hacker News Reader

But that's the issue. If someone simply sees homosexuality as a something that isn't "approved by God" or something of that nature, and they in their minds are just going along with God's law, are they really hating something? I've heard many anti-gay marriage people say that they have no problem with gay people but that they just oppose gay marriage.

Is that cognitive dissonance? Almost certainly, but is it hate? I don't think so.

We throw around the word "hate" too much and doing so loses a lot of the nuance bound up in human attitudes.

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Hate is one of those blinding emotions/states of mind that causes people to deliberately sabotage the thing-hated. Simply opposing a practice cannot be said to be hate unless the hate is what is driving the opposition. Opposition is not sabotage, even though it may seem so to the one opposed.

You had just said it: they oppose the institute of marriage, which is not only a traditional way of announcing the union of two people (let's for a moment accept the fact that maybe marriage is only a Christian creation), but is also a legal way of exposing it.

Now please tell me how opposing the gay marriage is not in any way a sign of hate towards gay people that bars them from certain legal liberties? You could try to sell this point of view as a "kind" point of view, but your conginitively dissonant ignorance still makes you hate people as a result; even if you are not conscious about it.

Some believe that people who get abortions oppose the "institute" of life (since we don't know when life starts, we can't say it doesn't start before 9 months). Is it possible to oppose a practice one believes is barbaric without hating the person who is practicing it? Of course it is-- if you understand human nature. No one is their behavior-- so, the most logical thing is not to hate a person for a single element of their being. Since we can say that most people are logical, we can say that most people don't hate others on the basis of one element.

You're playing the redefinition card rather than accepting that abortions of one human being are never your own business, and the set of values you have accepted when you had accepted "God" in your life have been created centuries ago when we knew close-to-nothing about medicine.

How would you define "hate"?

Engaging in discriminatory, derogatory and demeaning behaviour actively. That comes from hate. The experiences of the person featured in the linked article, that could only come from hate.

I think people that oppose gay marriage do so because of hate. But found a neat little loophole out of being called hateful by claiming that they have no problem with gay people.

My reasoning is this: taking any kind of stance on any subject requires some kind of motivation. If you are moved to spend energy on something, you are motivated by some need to do so. If you oppose something that does not directly affect you, the reason is most probably hate.

As someone raised Southern Baptist but not currently identifying as so, I can attest that when I once peacefully opposed homosexuality, it was 100% out of a trust that God knew what he was doing and that I should trust him, despite my own personal ignorance.

The belief that others can only oppose groups of people out of "hate" stems from a strong lack of empathy and understanding for people on the other side of the issue.

> If you oppose something that does not directly affect you, the reason is most probably hate.

Either that, or you are serving something percieved as greater than yourself.

Yes and no. Sure, 'hate' is probably the wrong word, and may be counter productive in many cases. And you're right about the empathy; everyone likes to apply labels that mean they don't have to feel.

On the other hand, accusing the people you oppose of being demonic Satan-spawn looking to corrupt our youth and destroy our lives and country, of being the baby-molesting other that causes nightmares, well, that probably isn't caused by an excess of good feeling.

That reduces hatred to a never applicable triviality.

Hatred at its core is causing others to suffer in service of the things that live in one's head. Emotions can be hateful, so can ideas.

I agree with you, friend.

Most everyone understands that people are not their actions. You can believe a behavior is wrong without hating the person behaving in that way.

It's a very simple formulation.

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