To those of you expecting a punch line, I apologize for the disappointment: there isn’t one. There’s nothing funny about this, because there really are people who can’t see any difference between hatred and having an opinion…

If you express your opinion that their lifestyle is wrong and ungodly, they will accuse you of hating them. If you question their religion, they say you are being hateful. They even want to be able to call your opinion “hate speech” and make it a “hate crime”. They want to take you to court for expressing an opinion which they disagree with. Are they not being hateful themselves?

Is it even good logic to accuse you of being hateful? To me, it’s about as logical as a boy accusing his parents of being hateful if they say he’s wrong to act in a certain way.  We can discuss whether a certain action is really right or wrong: that’s healthy, but to blast away any debate by accusing your opponent of being “hateful” is rude, childish, selfish and arrogant.

If I tell you that I can love you as much as I can love anyone else, but disagree strongly with your life-style or your religion, and you still insist that I am being “hateful”, are you not accusing me of being a liar as well as accusing me of being hateful? Where then is your love for me? Are you not strongly disagreeing with me? So how is it that you are being “loving” when you strongly disagree with me, but I am being “hateful” when I strongly disagree with you?

Whatever happened to free speech? The same people who have pushed and shoved for free speech and for freedom from moral constraints are wanting to take away my free speech. More than that, they want, by law, to “educate” (a euphemism for “indoctrinate”) all people into their way of thinking, and thereby (they hope) to wipe out any opinion contrary to theirs.

I’m not here condoning bullying or violence., because that’s  always wrong – but there are already laws against that kind of thing: are some people more equal than others?

It’s interesting that some people will say I have no right to say that their kind of love is wrong. I agree that love is not wrong. But I’m not talking about love.  Is love sex? Are “love” and “sex” synonyms, as in the 1960s hippy definition? Is it not possible to love someone without having sex with them? If I decide that I love my neighbor’s wife, is it then alright for me to have sex with her, or should there perhaps be at least some consideration over whether having sex with her would be right or wrong? Would it be hateful for you to express the opinion that it would be wrong of me to have sex with her? Should I trash your opinion and accuse you of being hateful? Should I take you to court on a charge of “hate-speech’?

In the concepts of “hate crime” and “hate speech” are we not talking about “thought crime” – George Orwell’s frightening term for any expressed or perceived disagreement with the politically correct view of things? There are a growing number of viewpoints which are being defined as hateful, because they don’t align with political correctness. Certain religions, for example, are above scrutiny and are being given government protection from criticism (but not Christianity). The West, in its enthusiasm to become open, inclusive  and fair, is surrendering its own right to question, to assess, to analyze and to criticize. It’s giving away its own freedom to think. It’s inviting tyranny.

I have a t-shirt which reads:

“THINK…it’s not illegal yet”.

I’m going to have to throw it away soon.

You cannot make a free society by legislating freedom away. Make your argument if you must, but don’t attempt to enforce your lifestyle or your religion and push it on the rest of us with the weight of the law, and hypocritically call that “freedom”, and don’t accuse me of being hateful just because I refuse to agree with you.

And by the way, feel free to disagree with me…. I can take it.

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