Your comment didn't discuss the particulars of the article. It went straight to generalities about religion being destructive that could have been made in any of a thousand unrelated threads. That's why I called it a generic tangent. Those reliably lead to flamewars: because they're no longer anchored in specific material, people just use the occasion to repeat grand stock responses. Your comment wasn't uncivil (which we're grateful for) but it predictably opened the floodgates for many that were.

HN doesn't "allow" articles to get to the front page. They get there on their own; sometimes they then get flagged or penalized, as this one did. This story, though horrific, wasn't off-topic per se—but HN is incapable of conducting a meaningful discussion about anything so inflammatory, so in practice it ends up being so.

Edit: We disagree, but your effort to be kind is more important than that. I appreciate it.