My poor lexicon is not keeping up. News of the recent UNC shootings on NPR has convinced me I do not know the meaning of the word “hate.” First of all, I don’t have that part of my brain that allows me to hate anybody but myself. I count that a great blessing. But my exposure to mass media tells me “hate” is a potential motivation when people kill somebody of a different equal-opportunity/affirmative action class. That is, cold-blooded murder of a 65-year-old white male-oriented Baptist female from Canada by another 65-year-old white male-oriented Baptist female from Canada involves no hate, and so maybe it would be an act of love.

The other side of our false dilemma is, if the folks at UNC were not hate-crime murdered because they were of a different faith, they were love-crime murdered in a parking dispute. If the latter is the case, then we must call for legislation to outlaw all motorized vehicles to prevent such violence.

Why, lookie. The two big local papers are articulating our (exactly) two choices in their headlines (1, 2).