Hardaway: Hating the Hater?

Tim Hardaway’s rant about homosexuality this week has brought about the usual condemnation from all the right people. He’s a “hater.” Hate is bad. However, it is permissible for his detractors to hate him. Thus is demonstrated the intolerance of tolerance.

Are we not to assume that Hardaway’s actions and beliefs are either a product of his genetics or his environment? Isn’t he the way he is because that’s the way he is? Wouldn’t tolerance of diversity compel us to accept him? Aren’t we in no place to make value judgments about him. If Hardaway were gay, the answers to all the above would be yes.

But, Hardaway isn’t gay. Instead, he committed one of the few remaining sins in our “tolerant” culture, he hated. But, what is hate, and why is it so hated?

Hate implies a strong, negative value judgment. A value judgment presupposes that the individual has the capacity to discern for oneself what is right, and the authority to say, “no” when something isn’t. In doing so, value judgments can deny the ability of a culture, the media, or society to dictate our thoughts and actions.

Hate, like just about everything, has power for ill and good, and to eliminate it, as our culture seeks to do, through the fog of “tolerance,” would be a mistake just as to unnecessarily foment it is a mistake. How many of us hate to see or hear about someone suffering needlessly? How many of us hate to see a culture where image supplants value and emotion trumps thought? How many of us hate immorality, however we may define it these days.

Let’s be outraged when the demise of a former model receives nonstop TV coverage for days. Let’s get angry when crime invades our neighborhood. Let’s hate actions that prey upon the weak and innocent. Let’s hate the part of ourselves that gets sucked into the train wreck that is popular culture and assumes its values are our own. And, at the same time, let’s stop and think twice about hating those who say a few words we happen to not like or agree with.

Like Tim Hardaway, through the use of hate and love, we must draw our own lines. As we do so, though, let’s not be fooled by the double standard that is “tolerance.”