I’ve got a couple of questions: First, Is there a difference between who a person is, and what a person does? I ask this question because I see a growing trend in American culture. If I object to a behavior or disagree with someone, I am told that I am insecure in my beliefs; that I am intolerant; that my dissent is a cloak for bigotry. In its extreme form, this view says that my objections belie an intense hatred for those with whom I disagree.

The logic seems to be: you object to my behavior, therefore, you hate me. Does that line of reasoning seem rational to you? Let’s give it a test drive. I object to the behavior my children sometimes exhibit and I am quick to correct it, but ask anyone who has seen me with my children and they will tell you the love we have for one another is obvious. In fact, the correction of my children is evidence of my love for them. So the “hatred” scenario doesn’t really hold water when speaking of objecting to a particular behavior, at least in my case.

Why am I getting into this? Because there are a number of people in this country (some of them professing “Christians”) whose inflammatory rhetoric belies a hatred for homosexuals. That extreme view has become the rule and standard by which some in the gay movement judge anyone who believes the gay lifestyle is wrong.

Social liberals have picked up on this and used this tactic to minimize anyone who attempts to enter the debate. In the process, Christians who openly dissent are vilified as hateful, bigoted, unloving, etc. The campaign has been amazingly effective in intimidating Christians, (or anyone else who disagrees) and bolstering a negative stereotype for those who dissent. The message is loud and clear: "Christians hate gays!" For that matter, anyone who objects to the gay lifestyle (or by extension gay marriage) hates gays.

What about you? Perhaps you object to my moralizing about homosexual behavior. Maybe you think I’m wrong to hold these views. Should I be as the extremists are and decide that because you object to my views, your objection means that you hate me? How does objecting to a behavior, or disagreeing about what is right and wrong become hate? To accuse you of hating me because you think my view of homosexuality is wrong would be an extreme form of hyperbole on my part. Yet that is precisely the auspices under which the radical gay movement and the cultural “elite” are operating.