Don’t say hate
“I want every member of the LGBTQI+ community — especially the kids who will be impacted by this hateful bill — to know that you are loved and accepted just as you are.” – President Joe Biden
If I tell my children, “No dessert unless you’ve eaten your dinner first,” is that hateful? What if my son says, “Meat and vegetables don’t make me happy like cookies and cake do. Sweets are what I like”? Does my forcing him to eat what he doesn’t like mean I hate him?
In the parlance of the Left lately the answer would likely be Yes. Because to them, loving a child means affirming everything they say about themselves and granting them unhindered exposure to everything our perverted culture says about itself. According to them it’s “hateful” to protect young children from sex talk that would confuse and embarrass them and compromise their innocence. Not just unwise or misguided, but hateful.
When opposing a position you don’t like, and you don’t have a good argument for yours, you attack the person or persons holding it. That’s called an ad hominem argument. So the people in Florida who support what its detractors inaccurately smear as the “Don’t say gay” bill are charged with being motivated by hate for wanting to keep young children from harmful sex talk and protect parents’ rights. They know they can’t rationally and reasonably support their opposition to the bill so they demean the people in favor of it.
These days, in the eyes of many, hate is behind every conservative position, opinion, and bill. If you don’t want children being taught that they’re racist then you hate black people. If you want unborn children protected from abortion then you hate women. If you want the freedom to state the obvious fact that there are only two genders and a person cannot change theirs, you must hate trans people.
Hateful used to be a pretty strong word reserved for those with genuine animosity toward others. Today it can describe someone with an “un-woke” opinion. It used to be that if animosity drove someone to murder, it was reasonable to assume hate was a factor. Today we single out only certain murders and other misdeeds as “hate crimes” to magnify the perpetrator’s culpability if we believe he or she has violated accepted thought norms. Are “thought crimes” not far down the road?
How much better our discourse, and our world, would be if instead of calling each other names we respectfully and rationally engaged with the arguments. If we presented our case with facts and logic, and considered the logical facts presented by our opponents. Crazy, right?
Don’t say hate. Say, I disagree with you. And here’s why.
