"The first thing to learn in dealing with others is non-interference with their own peculiar ways of being happy, provided those ways do not assume to interfere by violence with ours ... The pretension to dogmatize about them in each other is the root of most human injustices and cruelties, and the trait in human nature most likely to make the angels weep."

Thus spoke William James, best known as the father of American psychology, but also a philosopher and a Christian. If the angels read the letters to the editor pages of The Indianapolis News, then they must be weeping all the time. It's a regular hate-a-rama.

These days, of course, the most popular object of hatred is gay people. But it could just as easily be -- and in other times and places, has been -- Jews, Catholics, Baptists, Mormons, blacks, Orientals, whites, Germans, Irish, Arabs -- even Republicans.

It seems as if some people just can't be happy unless they're trying to make some other people miserable. And that's sad. Obviously, it's sad for the victims of all that righteous wrath. They spend their lives being told that they're -- well, pick your favorite epithet: Gays are sick and disgusting. Blacks are stupid. Hispanics are lazy. Jews are dishonest. Whites are cruel and imperialistic. Irish are drunks. Christians are uneducated lunatics. The list of human hatreds and stereotypes would fill an encyclopedia.

It's also sad for the haters themselves. Their lives are poisoned by an obsessive need to hurt those they dislike. Their reasons don't even matter: what matters is that they have an excuse to hate someone, a threadbare rationalization that makes it "all right" for them to persecute and torment other people. And in their own lives, this takes the place of self-respect, real achievement, and even love.

How does it get started? The first and most intense hatred is self-hatred. People who love and respect themselves have no need to make scapegoats of others due to their own feelings of inadequacy. But people who are insecure and afraid need to have someone to hate -- someone to whom they can feel superior. Do you beat your spouse, cheat your customers, abuse your children, and steal money from the collection plate at church? Well, at least you're not one of them -- whoever "they" happen to be.

And they are usually pretty bad. What would you think, for example, about a religious sect that engaged in cannibalism and vampirism? Wouldn't it be disgusting and immoral? People like that should be in prisons or mental hospitals. And yet, many of these people -- called "Catholics" -- are outwardly normal, productive, psychologically healthy members of the community. It's only in church that they engage in the ritual of "eating His body and drinking His blood," which their church insists is what really happens when they chomp down on the trans-substantiated saltines and grape juice.

The point is not that Catholic rituals are disgusting or immoral. They aren't: at least, not to Catholics, for whom they have a deep religious and spiritual significance. The point is that, viewed from outside, many ways of life seem strange and threatening. But as long as they give meaning, love, and fulfillment to their practitioners, and don't involve violence against others, our feelings about them don't matter at all. We simply follow a different path. We should grant the same right to others.

Saddest of all is that so much hatred is launched in the name of the Almighty, who is the Author of Love. Mark Twain, though most famous as a novelist, wrote bitterly about the haters' interpretation of the Bible:

"I will tell you a pleasant tale which has in it a touch of pathos. A man got religion and ask the priest what he must do to be worthy of his new estate. The priest said, 'Imitate our Father in Heaven. Learn to be like Him.' The man studied his Bible diligently, thoroughly, and understandingly, and then, with prayers for Heavenly guidance, instituted his imitations.

"He tricked his wife into falling downstairs, and she broke her back and became a paralytic for life. He betrayed his brother into the hands of a swindler, who robbed him of his all and landed him in the almshouse. He inoculated one son with hookworms, another with the sleeping sickness, and another with gonorrhea. He furnished one daughter with scarlet fever and ushered her into her teens deaf, dumb, and blind for life. And after helping a rascal seduce the remaining daughter, he closed his doors against her, and she died in a brothel, cursing him.

"Then he reported back to the priest, who said that that was no way to imitate his Father in Heaven. The convert asked wherein he had failed, but the priest changed the subject and inquired what kind of weather he was having up his way."

That's the God of the haters. The God I know is one of love and forgiveness -- even for the haters.