I get accused of being a hater for disagreeing with LGBT-oriented moral opinions. I’m not, any more than the LGBT activists are for disagreeing with mine. That word “hate” gets used too freely, almost always for rhetorical and political effect. It’s a stereotype, and like all stereotypes it deals death to real individuals’ real humanity.

We’re all in this together. It’s too easy to forget that. I hate violence. I’ve lost family members the hard way. I know from experience there’s way too much pain and loss in the world. Let’s not add to it by subtracting from each other’s humanness. We have our differences but we still share a common humanity. Maybe if I share some of my story you’ll see what I mean.

I Lost a Loved One to Real Hatred in Orlando

One of my cousins was murdered in Orlando. The memory of it woke me up the other morning. Too early.  2:30 AM. I lay in bed trying to shake off the haunting grief, but I couldn’t sleep, so I began writing this to try to expunge the grief.

There was more than just one tragic story to keep me awake. I say that to caution you about what I’ll be sharing.

Brian didn’t die in the Pulse shooting, yet there’s much his story has in common with the Pulse victims’. Most fundamentally, the victims and survivors share a common humanity. We all walk a tough road that may differ in certain ways, but not as much as some would have us think. For some that road ends with tragedy.

Brian lived in a gated community not far north of the Universal Studios theme park. He was out walking his dog one evening when a car raced past at high speed. He shouted, “Hey, slow down, okay!” The car stopped, and a man stepped out and shot him.

Brian’s dad and my mom were both born on homesteading land in western North Dakota, children of immigrants from Norway. There were 19 cousins on that side of our family. Brian was a few years older than me. When my brother and I were teenagers we ran a small yard work company. Brian was working in real estate then, and he hired us to clear lots and seed lawns for some new construction. I got to know him better again when he and I were both living in Orlando.

At the time of the shooting I had moved elsewhere, but I still had frequent business trips there. So it was that soon after the shooting I visited Brian at the same hospital where many of the Pulse survivors were treated. It was a short, disturbing visit, given the severity of his injuries. A couple of months later I visited him in a rehab hospital. His spirits were great but he was very weak. Not long afterward he succumbed to a shooting-related infection.

Decades later I can lose sleep over his violent death in Orlando, and the loss of two other cousins to tragic, violent deaths I cannot take time here to tell you about. So there is something especially galling to me in some commentators’ attempts to make me partially responsible for the shootings at the Orlando night club. They don’t name me personally, but they might as well have. I’m a Christian who holds to a historically common understanding of marriage and sexual morality. I’ve written a book about it. More than one writer — from The New York Times, to CNN and other outlets — has claimed that opinions like mine have created a culture of hate that’s partially to blame for the murders at Pulse.

I know the personal connection is tenuous: I lost a cousin to violence in Orlando. A lot of gays lost loved ones to violent hatred in Orlando. All the same, that connection brings home to me the twisted injustice of the accusation in a very visceral way. I struggle to understand how anyone can think it. On one level it’s incredible in view of how badly it muddles the difference and distance between the shooter’s Islamic beliefs and Christianity. Jesus Christ preached love for enemies; Islam’s founder was known for leading in warfare. In today’s world the cultural and religious distance separating Christianity and Islam is so great, there’s no reasonable way to draw a causal connection between Christian beliefs and this Muslim man’s actions.

But the charge of Christianity’s complicity is even more disturbing on another level. Christians have been painted with a reputation of being haters and homophobes. That’s a false stereotype that robs us of our individual humanity.

Differences, Yes, But We’re All Still In This Together

One reason I shared the story of my family’s tragedies was to help you see some of who I am as a person. I am not a non-person; I am a fellow human being. There’s one gay man who knows me better than any other, with whom I have spent not just hours but days. I asked him once, “Do you know that I love you?” He smiled and answered, “Yes.” That’s the reality of knowing one another as fellow human beings.

Of course I know that there are some who call themselves Christians and who actually do hate. The thing is, for all the hundreds of Christians I personally know, from lay persons to national-level leaders, I can’t think of one I’ve actually spent time with who’s like that. Every group has its extreme members, but they don’t define the group.

Yes, orthodox Christians disagree with defenders of the gay lifestyle. But hate? There are true-blue haters out there, some bent on the worst kinds of violence. We’ll have need of the word hate many times again in this fallen world. Let’s not wear it out with this indiscriminate name-calling.