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    "...but they aren't ALL hateful."

In fact, I would venture to say that an extremely FEW are hateful. There has been too much caricaturing on both sides. I am fairly certain that 95%+ of people on both sides of the issue are actually very caring, intelligent people (and yes, even on the pro-Prop 8 side like myself) who do not treat each other differently.

You are right. I put the emphasis there not to condemn them, but it seems like a majority of comments equate pro-Prop 8 with hating homosexuals. I actually agree that few people out there are hateful.

It tends to be the 5% on either side that makes the rest of us look bad.

> I am fairly certain that 95%+ of people on both sides of the issue are actually very caring, intelligent people

I would be very surprised if on this, or any other, divisive political issue, 95% of the people on any side (much less both sides) were "very caring, intelligent people", or even "above average" in either (much less both) the "caring" or "intelligent" domains.

That's almost as ridiculous and cartoonish a characterization is saying that they are all hateful and mindless.

I guess I try to give people the benefit of the doubt rather than classify them negatively. True, maybe it's not that high, but one can hope. :)

It should be patently obvious that 95% of people are not "above average", and that when considering two independent attributes, it is a statistical impossibility that 95% of people are above average in one of the two.

A class of twenty students is given a test. One student scores 90 and the other nineteen score 100.

95% of the class scores "above average".

Not sure why you're downvoted when you're completely correct. Kind of odd we have supposedly technical people on here who confuse median and mean.

I had another comment today to attract a few surprising downvotes. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7535793 Perhaps everyone's still a bit grouchy over the Mozilla thing? :-(

Holy math fail batman! You are completely wrong. Learn to distinguish between mean and median before you try to lecture us on 6th grade math.

Most humans are caring, intelligent beings. That statement has nothing to do with mathematical concept of an average.

This is pretty clearly a "right to swing your fist ends at my nose" situation. If your parents aren't attempting to limit homosexuals' ability to live as equals with non-homosexual humans then, yes, they shouldn't be persecuted for their beliefs. However, if they donate to political causes that are anti-gay-marriage, or march in support of those who do, or sign petitions asking for the right to marry to be repealed...

If you're uncomfortable with associating the word "hate" with "against gay marriage", consider what opponents of gay marriage are trying to stop:

* A person easily being able to be present at the deathbed of their lifetime partner.

* Joint custody of children.

* Tax breaks.

Well, no. That's not what people who are against gay marriage are trying to stop.

Those are all different issues, and you'll find different percentages of people for and against each of them. Lowest against the deathbed issue, highest on the child custody issue, for example. Then the concept of redefining the term "marriage", which is yet another different issue.

Conflating all these issues is not helpful in the discussion. People's feelings on these topics are complex, and you really have to talk about it with that complexity to have any meaningful insight.

Here's the full list of the issues, for those interested: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rights_and_responsibilities_of...

You may be right that supporters of Prop 8 wished to deny those benefits (hospital visit rights, joint custody, tax bracket, community property), but Prop 8 itself did none of the above. Gays (but not straight couples, at least until age 62) could enter into domestic partnerships that provide all the same benefits as far as the state is concerned. Regardless of Prop 8, gay couples wouldn’t get the federal joint filing due to DOMA at the time. Prop 8 was not about those other rights, it was about the words “marriage” and “spouse”.

Do they donate money help fund laws to remove people's rights? Thats big thing, its one thing to be against gay marriage its another thing to fund campaigns to ban it. Obama is against gay marriage, but he has never taken any action to prevent gays from getting married or recognizing gay marriages. Thats the key difference. If the former Mozilla CEO just tweeted he's against gay marriage, i am willing to bet he'd still have a job.

Double standards here. You wouldn't be against anyone who donated to the cause because you think it's 'right'.

Now substitute 'gay marriage' with 'legalizing drugs'. See where your argument is going?

"He's wrong because he doesn't agree with me and took action to oppose it". If people never took action to push their beliefs then we'll still have slavery in USA.

We're a democratic society, and people are free to voice their opinion or donate to campaigns that support their beliefs as long as it is legal.

The damage done by the Drug Wars is arguably worse than that done by bigotry against gays. It costs more. It imprisons vastly more people. It is supported by official government propaganda. Many more people die because of it.

If I had the choice of herding the narcs or the anti-gay bigots onto a leaky barge and towing them out to sea, the narcs would go first. They are materially more dangerous, and the anti-gay bigots are far more likely to see the light.

Legalizing drugs isn't about oppressing a minority. Outlawing Interracial marriage would be a better analogy. The same arguments are being used which cite religious beliefs ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miscegenation ) .

"Legalizing drugs isn't about oppressing a minority."

Given the significantly enhanced incarceration rates of african americans for drug use, even though their actual drug use is not significantly greater than white americans, I've often thought that Drug Laws have precisely been about a coded way of continuing to oppress minorities, without having to be obvious about it.

I was impressed when Rand Paul came out and made it known that he believes this to be true: http://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2013/06/24/rand-paul-m...

"Legalizing drugs isn't about oppressing a minority."

Banning drugs has historically been, at times.

Is Obama actually against gay marriage or does he just think it is politically expedient not to support it?

He supported it in the 90s, then was "undecided" again for a while, then flat-out against it, then changed his mind again in early 2012 and is now in support of it.

Interestingly, as FiveThirtyEight showed at the time, he waited until there was more than 50% support among Democratic voters before finally coming out in support of it this most recent time. (That tipping point happened a couple of months before he announced the "evolution" of his believes.)

The mob mentality leads to situations where we round up everyone who is Japanese, Jewish, Homophobic, etc. and get rid of them.

One of these things is not like the other.

Also, there doesn't seem to be any evidence of people "rounding up" donors to Prop 8. Eich was appointed to lead an organization whose values he didn't share, and represent them to the public. He was unapologetic about this. This isn't a situation your parents or pretty much anyone else would realistically find themselves in.

No, that isn't going to happen, but the dehumanization of a person happens quickly. You can easily go from well, everyone is entitled to their own opinion to, ostracizing people. Sure the extreme example is rounding people up, but it's that slippery slope that we need to watch out for.

Our country is going in a GREAT direction and soon homophobia is going to be much like racism. It will be taboo and hopefully die out to small pockets of resistance. But during that transition we need to remember that the people on the other side of the fence are people too and we need to accept them as societal norms change. History is ripe with situations where people are turned into black sheep by society because they were on the wrong side of the fence and we (the majority) demonize them.

Rounding up, no. Bullying and purging, yes. See this list for 150+ similar cases: http://handleshaus.wordpress.com/2013/12/26/bullied-and-badg...

Today, if somebody does not support interracial marriage, they are considered as racists. Is that wrong? If somebody does not support gay marriage - do they hate gays? Why do they want to disallow marriage benefits to these people?

In other words, if somebody is advocating that certain benefits should not be given to certain group of people (and they are part of that group not by own choice), the first question should be: Who is going to get harmed if we give that benefit to that group of people? If there is no answer on that question... then...

Yes, "who is going to be harmed" should be the question, not anything about sexuality. Unfortunately most people, both pro-gay and anti-gay miss that point and continue to hold arbitrary prejudices against the sexualities and activities which don't fit what their peers tells them to believe. I can't enumerate them on HN without creating hostility but to get a feeling for the hypocrisy of strongly pro-gay advocates, see Paul Graham's "What You Can't Say" essay http://www.paulgraham.com/say.html

Here is another viewpoint:

A lot of people oppose gay marriage, because of the kids that the couples would undoubtedly have/adopt. We all agree that homosexuality is not a choice, right? Most people are heterosexual - I dug around for the exact percentage of gay people and most sources cite between 2% and 5% - and this means most kids born will be hetero. It's not an unpopular opinion to say that a heterosexual kid needs a role model(parent) from the same gender and with the same sexual orientation in order to develop a healthy and balanced personality.

I doubt that's actually a reason many people hold. It's more of an excuse. The basic reason is probably common to most anti-gays - simply that gay sex is disgusting and weird and they can't bare to imagine it. If it wasn't that, they'd be supporting gay marriage but trying to restrict effeminate males, "butch" women and single parents from raising children. The "it's disgusting and weird" reason also explains the extreme prejudice against minority sexualities even from members of the pro-gay community.

I was raised by a single mother, and had no problem finding male role models, I fail to see how this would be different to a child raised by two men or two women

It's also not an opinion borne out by facts. Many children grow up with single parents and somehow manage to live healthy, balanced lives. Many children of gay couples also are well-adjusted and do very well for themselves. While having same-gendered same-oriented parental role models generally doesn't hurt children, its also not a necessity for them to grow up to be good people.

"We all agree that homosexuality is not a choice, right?"

Scientific proof with reproducible results, please. We all agree in science, right?

"are personally against gay marriage"

"homosexuality is wrong"

"homosexuality will degrade the morality of society"

Maybe I'm really, really, thick, but how is this not hateful?

The obvious exercise would be to replace homosexuality with being black or Jewish. I'm not saying this to score cheap points, but to illustrate how I personally read this.

I'm very sorry, and I respect the fact that we're talking about people who are very dear to you, but cannot read those phrases as anything other than expressions of hatred.

Given a moral framework, the third statement is an empirical statement. Given a traditional Christian moral framework, as an example, the third statement is true. If you believe that a traditional Christian moral framework is necessary for Western civilization to continue, then that justifies the first two statements. For the United States, then, the major task is to argue that a traditional Christian moral framework isn't necessary for Western civilization to survive.

Thing is that we don't use a traditional christian framework. We throw out most of the old testament and much of the focus is on the new Gospel. Explicit line against gays lies in Leviticus, and like most of Leviticus should be ignored.

> we

who?

Just because they believe that Homosexuality is wrong doesn't mean that they are opposed to people who are gay.

Kind of like how I believe organized religion is wrong, but that doesn't mean I hate religious people. Hmm?

" The mob mentality leads to situations where we round up everyone who is Japanese, Jewish, Homophobic, etc. and get rid of them."

This is an utterly insane strawman you all are creating. We're now comparing holocaust victims, people in internment camps and people who have had a constitutional amendment passed to take away their rights to the plight of having people boycott your business for your intolerance...?

What's the next step? Compare people who had their rights taken away and then boycotted a person's products to Hitler just to complete the internet hyperbole?

It doesn't matter if people actively working to deny some groups their equal rights are hateful or not; they could be the most charming people in the world. No one is suggesting jailing the holders of said beliefs because of them. But sending a clear message that some views are downright wrong in our society and are opposed to its core democratic values isn't a "mob mentality", and such a clear message in favor of equality does not lead to unfair discrimination, and certainly not to rounding up people and getting rid of them. All it does is educate people that intolerant views are not tolerated in a free society.

You have a really high bar for hateful activity.

Unaccepting != hateful.

It's very much possible to be tolerant of something without necessarily accepting it.