Yuyutsu, please know while we differ often and I sometimes fail , to understand you, I think you are a kind and nice person.
But gee unless I got you wrong I think you said the nastiness here is between believers and not believers.
Bloke some of the biggest haters are from both camps.
But overall too many CLAIM to be true followers of a God.
But produce pure hate nearly every post.
Now as you have heard me say if humanity invented a single God, one promising/threatening you WILL be born again, within the race/faith you harmed in this life, we could wipe out much hate.
Haters hate, re-read the posts, think on it, old age for some PICKLES THE BRAIN, brings about pure hate their own younger self would despise them for.
Sadder still some have ALWAYS had hate as their default position.
The threads good intentions remains truly the best result of the new legislation
SOME posters here prove it can never ever work
Hate, surely even the worst haters understand it is a worthless feeling?

Belly,
there's a huge difference between Hate & drawing attention to inadequate skill & mismanagement !
What is generous to the taker is mismanagement to the provider & vice versa
Hate usually radiates from those who had easy for too long. Then, when they're asked to pull their weight they become snakey !

Yuyutsu,

You ask, "Why would you like to remain as one "nation" with such people with whom you have so little in common?"

Well, let's stick with the people on OLO I have little in common with. There is not one person, no matter how much they irritate me, or how much I dislike what they say, that I am not happy to co-exist with in our country. Real life is not like social media. Social media is an amusement; life is a serious business in which we all have to get along. There are what?, about a dozen posters here, who waffle on about things they never mention in real life relationships, unless they are complete nutters - in which case they would be avoided like the plague.

We wouldn't recognise each other in real life as the same people who post here because such hot house language is not used in face to face social interaction. I don't go around quizzing people about what they think of SSM, religion, their sexuality, or who they vote for. In turn, nobody has ever interrogated me on such things. Only people with no social graces at all cannot find areas of mutual agreement with other people. And, if you know that certain areas are touchy with some people, avoid them. If you can't find more common areas than touchy ones with other people, your life isn't worth living

Dear Belly,

«But gee unless I got you wrong I think you said the nastiness here is between believers and not believers.»

I try to be as accurate as I can. What I said was: «between those who consider themselves "religious" and those who do not»

In most cases, those who consider themselves religious are also believers in God - but I can see some exceptions to this rule, for example Buddhists.
Then vice-versa, there are those who do not consider themselves religious, but still believe in God, for example certain criminals who count themselves as beyond the pale to be associated with God.

But yes, if we limit ourselves to this forum alone, then the correlation between believing in God and considering oneself as religious, seems complete.

«But overall too many CLAIM to be true followers of a God.
But produce pure hate nearly every post.»

Exactly, which is why I placed "religious" in quotes.

«Now as you have heard me say if humanity invented a single God»

What humanity invented (and keeps inventing) are IDEAS ABOUT God.
Humanity invented the electric light-bulb, which means that previously it did not exist and subsequently it did - but could you say the same about God? What kind of God has a beginning? Ideas come and go, but God is not the ideas that people have about Him/Her/It.

«one promising/threatening you WILL be born again, within the race/faith you harmed in this life, we could wipe out much hate.»

Unfortunately, hatred overcomes logic and common sense, so those blinded by hatred would fail to draw the necessary conclusions and act by them.

«SOME posters here prove it [(the new legislation)] can never ever work»

I agree with them. Love cannot be legislated!

«Hate, surely even the worst haters understand it is a worthless feeling?»

They do not. Hate blinds them.

Yuyutsu/Individual, both have points I agree with, please try to remember my born again days was total love total belief in a better world to come
Ended after total betrayal, of everything I had wished for believed in and trusted.
Hate is no answer, to anything, a long night no sleep or very little found replays of the John Howard defeat, the year Joe, not Bob Hawke, beat him'
Found again, a failure in one state, to face reality, to understand some times the firmer a view is held the further from reality it gets
Some dislike every view so much, they ignore a perfection is never an option.
And that middle ground is often the only real change people will take
Love, total love is perfection.
But liking enough to hear and see other views is maybe achievable, some times

Western society is a civil society where diversity of ideas and debate is able to arrive at better outcomes. That is why we have a Government and an opposition, so that proposals are thought out to improve a situation. We need parliaments with civil ideas not social ideologies.