HATE, ANYONE?

This talk about Phelps diverted my train of thought from war and politics to the subject of hate. No politics today; instead, posts on hate and hate crimes, educating ourselves and our children about the haters so they may be prepared to resist negative influences.

Hate comes in all forms and for diverse reasons: sexual orientation, religion, race, looks, physical differences, and for unfathomable reasons (to a reasoning person). The next four posts deal with this subject.

Hate groups are rising in number. As our national situation deteriorates, the economy falters, joblessness increases, citizen unhappiness, anger and disaffection grows, so will the hate groups as people look for targets on which to focus their anger and personal misery. Our government may offer targets, perhaps muslims and people who look Arabic, as Hitler offered up Jews, Poles, Gypsies and other ethnic minorities to the German people. But many will seek and find their own targets, even as they do now.

Children do not always tell their parents about their day and interaction with their peers, and they are very vulnerable to peer pressure. Parents need to teach their children because children might not speak up about the negative influences to which they are exposed. If they do speak, we must be prepared with an answer. When one of my grandchildren was about 8 or 9 years old, he confounded his parents at the dinner table by asking, "Mommy, what's a queer?" He related how a classmate had tagged another child as a fag, and when asked what's a fag had replied scornfully that it was a queer. The child had gone on to admonish the other children not to play with the child tagged as fag, and said they ought to beat him up. The poisoning of young minds often begins early and children need to know how to deal with it, lest they be poisoned also. Many children who do not exhibit an acceptible degree of aggressiveness or macho traits often suffer being tagged as homosexual and subjected to persecution.

Racism is another hate-evil as is religious intolerance. Integration and education has helped a great deal to mitigate the excesses of racism but it still exists. My sister-in-law is a good and decent woman but her religion teaches that only members of her faith will be allowed in heaven. She has taught her children her beliefs and their pain and grief upon their grandfather's death was immeasurably intensified by the thought that their beloved Grandpop was burning in hell. That type of religious intolerance is mild compared to some I've encountered, but it is still destructive.

All hate is destructive, to both the hater and the victim.