Hate Has to End
Beloved Community, I pray that this moment may be the beginning of the end of hate. Hate has to end. I offer my reflections on the horror in Orlando and I invite yours.
With deep sorrow,
Mary Elizabeth Moore
Dean
14 June 2016
Words fail, silence fails, actions fail. No words can describe the tragic shooting at Orlando’s Pulse Nightclub, where people went for an evening out and, instead, met death. No words can express the horror that left 49 people dead and 53 wounded. Some words will even amplify the hatred that permeates United States culture and paves the path for violence against the LGBTQ community, or for blaming Muslims for terrorism. Hatred kills, and it hurts everyone. Yet, we can turn our society around and move a new direction. Hate has to end!
Words fail. We cannot describe the horror of this tragedy in words, and many of our words actually create a false reading of the tragedy. Sandro Galea, Dean of Boston University’s School of Public Health, argues that the language of “a ‘lone’ gunman” is misleading in a society in which senseless hate combines with access to guns without governmental intervention. He concludes: “Omar Saddiqui Mateen, was by no means alone. He was aided and abetted by our inertia.” I would add that our language often perpetuates prejudice and fuels more violence. When people describe the shooter as an “Islamic terrorist,” the words fuel a public perception that terrorism and Islam are intimately connected. Such words ignore repeated terrorist acts perpetuated by Christians and people of other faiths. One year ago, the mass murder in an African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina was committed by a man who claimed to be Christian. Words have limits. Too often they oversimplify and distort public opinion in favor of some people over against others.
Silence also fails. When people are silent in the face of bullying, demeaning taunts of LGBTQ people, racial slurs, or threats of violence, the stage is set for escalating hate and escalating violence. My own denomination, the United Methodist Church, has singled out one group of people – those who identify as LGBTQ – as “incompatible with Christian teaching.” When people disagree or act against the discriminatory policies, they are silenced by legal charges or threats of charges, while the vast majority of the denomination are silent with their views. The potency of those “incompatibility” words, combined with silence regarding their social effects, perpetuates anti-gay sentiment and gives silent assent to violence against those whose gender identity or sexual orientation does not fit the dominant pattern. Silence creates spaces for words and policies to continue unchallenged. Similarly, the mass of data indicating a link between the availability of guns and the number of fatal crimes in the United States is met with silence. Yet, silence does not make problems end; they continue with cruel repetition.
Actions also fail. Actions to change governmental or church policies become ideological “stand-offs” between those who claim to be more liberal and those who claim to be more conservative. Their mutual scapegoating feeds a culture of scapegoating, while having little effect on policy. Instead of reducing hate, actions to change policies and laws soon create different political camps that throw all of the blame on one another. Being firm (even rigid and unbending) in one’s actions is even lauded as a strength in political diplomacy. People settle into the stand-off and stop acting for real change.
If everything finally fails, what are we to do? We cannot close our eyes to the massive deaths of LGBTQ peoples, African American peoples, immigrants, or any other human community. We need words to wake us up, but words cannot be our ultimate response, lest they be empty. We need silence in which to pause and listen, but silence cannot be our final response, lest we ignore the terrible work of hate. We need actions with which to enact gun control and to disrupt policies that reinforce hate-filled prejudices and discriminatory policies, but actions cannot be our only response, lest we become self-satisfied.
We need to dive deeply into our communal soul and see where hatred dwells. We need to probe our personal hatreds. We need to repent – turn around – so that our words, our silence, and our actions will fall on fertile ground and displace hatred with compassion and genuine justice.