Hate is bigger than Trump; check my inbox for proof
Some of the country’s most knowledgeable physicians can’t tell me with any certitude why I ended up losing sight in my right eye and am in danger of going blind, but one of my column’s readers figured it out. It’s because I’m gay.
“You have openly discussed your homosexuality,” he emailed me two weeks ago, and, perhaps to his credit, he attached his name, which enabled me to determine that he’s not a fundamentalist preacher from a deep-red state but an engineer in the New York City suburbs. “That is why God could not help you. You were living in flagrant violation of his Law.”
That email was especially mean but otherwise routine.
In movies, songs and greeting cards, I’m always hearing or seeing that love is forever and that it conquers all. Well, hate may be even more durable, and it has the muscle to fight love to a draw.
My inbox is proof; the evidence stretches back decades. And I’m talking in this case not about irate readers who dislike my opinions. All columnists encounter that, and given the privilege of our megaphones, we should. I’m talking about readers who detest the very fact of me, who I am, independent of any person or issue I lift up or tear down.
They’re strangers. They’ve never met me, never taken the measure of my generosity, kindness, loyalty or lack thereof. For them I exist in a category, as a type. That type is all they see, and that type is contemptible.
This is the kind of hate that President Trump counts and draws on, the kind of hate that motivated the gunmen in El Paso, Pittsburgh and too many other places. But we’re having a discussion too limited — and indulging a mind-set woefully naïve — when we make those massacres principally about him. He’s a gardener tilling soil that’s all too fertile.
It was there before him. It will be there after. And while gentler words from the White House and a better president may affect how much grows in it and how tall, the ugliness will always take root and always flower.
If you live in a certain category — black, brown, Jew, Muslim, gay, trans — you know this, and you experience events like those of the past week not just as chilling reflections of the political moment but as sad testaments to human nature. You register some of our gauziest bromides as well-intentioned delusions:
If only every white American knew and interacted with more black Americans. If only every straight person was aware and took stock of his or her gay relatives and friends. If only there were more mingling of Christians and Jews, of Jews and Muslims. If only the right leaders and the right thinking could reach and teach more people.
Well, some people are beyond reaching and teaching. Some are hardened, not softened, by exposure to diversity. As best I can tell, a few of these gunmen were plenty exposed. It didn’t dim their righteousness or dissuade them of their rightness.
It’s easy to lose sight of this, to focus instead on the hearts and minds that have been changed, on the progress that can be made. I’ve been surprised and moved by the arc of L.G.B.T. Americans over my lifetime: I’m inexpressibly grateful for it. According to a recent poll, 63 percent of Americans support same-sex marriage.
But that leaves 37 percent who don’t.
Hate has no particular profession, education level or ZIP code. Its sprawl is as demoralizing as its staying power. Emily Dickinson wrote that “hope is the thing with feathers.” Well, hate is the thing with tentacles. It holds people tight and refuses to let go.