Unitarian Universalism--and brightside Christianity, and probably most other religions when you take what's brightest and most angelic about them--ask you to look at each human and see them as a pearl of great worth.
Each person was born a helpless, dependent infant, shaped into what they would become through pain and reward and role models and their culture. But at some point, you could hold them in your hand, and say "this person could become anything." If you had the vantage point of the future, could you hold such a creature in your hand, and wish for its death?
Jerry Falwell, who I must believe hated me, since he blamed me for the destruction of the world trade center--not me personally, since we'd never met and I haven't appeared in very many news articles, but gays and liberals in general--died today. It seems like utter hypocracy to say that I'm not glad about this, the man was vitriolic and malign, and asked others to be the same, in the name of a religion that I do have a soft spot for.
But hatred is so unsexy. *sigh* And metacognition is such a useless and silly thing. And a human is a human--though it would be v-e-r-y easy to see someone who within days of a major national tragedy uses it as a rallying point against an oppressed and grieving minority as inhuman.
