All we need is love

The Golden Rule comes in many different forms: 

In Judaism, the Torah states, “Love your neighbor as yourself – I am God.” (Leviticus 19:18) 

While Christians recite, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength. The second is this: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these.” (Mark 12, 30-31) 

In the Quran, Muslims learn, “Serve Allah, and join not any partners with Him; and do good- to parents, kinsfolk, orphans, those in need, neighbors who are near, neighbors who are strangers, the companion by your side, the wayfarer (ye meet) …” (Quran 4:36)  

A quote from Lin Manuel-Miranda that the LGBTQ+ community has adopted is “Love is love is love,” said during his acceptance speech for the 2016 Best Score Tony Award for his Broadway show Hamilton.

Simplified, the rule is love your neighbor. 

In this sense, neighbor doesn’t mean a person living physically close or next door to you. Your neighbor includes the person with a different skin color, political beliefs different from yours, a homeless person sleeping in an alley, a person who identifies with a gender you might not understand, an immigrant whose only crime is wanting a better life for themselves and their family, or the thousands suffering from the effects of war and famine in other countries. 

Today is National Love People Day. A day to extend love to others without expecting something in return. A day to practice the golden rule and support others. 

But why do we still need a national day to remind us to be kind to others and show them unconditional love? 

Even though COVID-19 restrictions have decreased drastically in our region, in higher populated cities restrictions remain just as strenuous as they had been since the CDC first recommended masks on April 3, 2020. 

According to CBS San Francisco Bay Area, a man was charged Tuesday with seven felony counts that included hate crime allegations for a string of violent robberies and attempted robberies in March that targeted Asian women. The crimes occurred as seven separate incidents and each victim was a Asian woman, many were monolingual Cantonese-speakers.  

The National Asian Pacific Center on Aging (NAPCA) has created an online tool that allows people to report incidents of violence or harassment in 29 different languages in order to collect data to better determine incidences of nationwide anti-Asian violence. 

According to the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the 2020 hate crime incidents statistics show that a total of 7,759 hate crime incidents have occurred in the United States, 10,952 being related offenses motivated by biases. 

According to the FBI Uniform Crime Reporting Program, hate crime is defined as “a committed criminal offense which is motivated, in whole or in part, by the offender’s bias(es) against a race, religion, disability, sexual orientation, ethnicity, gender, or gender identity.” 

Total hate crime incidents in 2020 increased by 472 and related offenses motivated by biases increased a total of 2,148 from statistics given in 2019. [2019: 7,287 – total hate crime incidents; 8,804 – related offenses motivated by biases.] 

Because we haven’t reached the end of 2021, this year’s statistics are still unavailable. 

In 2020, Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) tracked 838 hate groups in the U.S., with nine groups located in Nebraska. 

California tallied the most with 72 active hate groups with Florida close behind at 68. 

The ideologies of hate groups that SPLC include are:  

Alt-Right, Anti-Immigrant, Anti-LGBTQ+, Anti-Muslim, Antigovernment Movement, Black Separatist, Christian Identity, General Hate, Hate Music, Holocaust Denial, Ku Klux Klan, Male Supremacy, Neo-Confederate, Neo-Nazi, Phineas Priesthood, Racist Skinhead, Sovereign Citizens Movement and White Nationalist. 

Regardless of race, sexual orientation, the state of our environment or anything that makes someone different, a neighbor should be treated with kindness and compassion because they aren’t actually different from you. 

They are human, and that means they deserve love.