When the 2026 Super Bowl crowned lust with a “love beats hate” banner, it exposed a divided America, and the object of our worship in plain sight.
This editorial ran in the Tuesday 24 February 2026 edition of the Moscow-Pullman Daily News.
The 2026 Super Bowl halftime show ended with a massive banner proclaiming, “The only thing more powerful than hate is love.” It sounds profound, but it is vacuous. The message was clear: object and you’re on the side of “hate”, applaud and you’re on the side of “love
That is not how language works, and it is not how morality works.
“Love” and “hate” are transitive verbs. They mean little until you name the object. Love what? Hate what? Without the direct object, the verb is just a halo or a pitchfork.
That is why slogans work. They spotlight the verb and hide the object.
Love becomes a magic word: hang it on a banner and the content is untouchable. Hate becomes a curse word: slap it on critics and you never have to answer them. The question is not whether we love or hate. The question is what we love and what we hate.
A man can love righteousness or love pornography. A nation can hate injustice or hate the truth. Same verbs. Different objects. Everything changes.
Love and hate are not the problem. Disordered love and misdirected hate are. Love God, hate sin. Get the objects wrong and you can baptize almost anything with a virtue word.
Progressives insist they are on the side of love. Love of what? Abortion. Sterilizing children as “affirmation.” Porn in school libraries and drag story hours for toddlers. Open borders. Defunding the police and demonizing ICE. Compelled speech and forced vaccination mandates. The verb is love, but the object tells the story.
And the Super Bowl halftime show is a perfect example of how that trick works.
When the NFL gives us explicit lyrics, sexualized gestures, and simulated sex acts, then tries to cleanse it with a banner about love, do not stare at the verb. Name the object. Call it what it was: lust packaged as entertainment, then wrapped in “love” so nobody is allowed to object.
The banner says love beats hate. Fine. Love of what we just watched?? Love of neighbor, where people are more than bodies? Love of children, where you don’t pipe explicit content into family living rooms? Love of marriage, modesty, and restraint? Or love of self, lust, and transgression?
What millions saw was not abstract “love.” It was love aimed at sexual display. That was the point. This was not tasteless entertainment that slipped past the producers. It was intended to provoke.
That raunch is catechesis. It trains us in paganism: the body worshiped, restraint mocked, and the private dragged into public spectacle. Paul confronted the same spirit in Corinth, where vice was public and celebrated. That is not love. It is inversion.
There was another message: it was entirely in Spanish. We were told to call it a cultural moment. But this is the US Super Bowl. On this stage, a non-English national moment is another shove toward globalism, and another downstream fruit of Biden’s open-borders posture. Language is allegiance.
Then comes the trap: criticize the show and you’re accused of hate; want modesty and you’re called a prude; want boundaries and you’re painted as hateful.
But disagreement is not hate. Moral clarity is not hate. Protecting children is not hate.
Now for the part nobody wants to say out loud. We are not “one people” anymore in any meaningful sense. We share highways, zip codes, and a flag, but we increasingly do not share a moral vocabulary. One side calls restraint repression and calls license liberation. One side calls corruption “authenticity.” One side calls debauchery “love,” then points at anyone who disagrees and calls them hateful.
A city divided against itself cannot stand. At some point you stop pretending the divide is cosmetic and admit it is fundamental. This is not a minor policy dispute among neighbors who share the same first principles. It is a clash of worldviews that define good and evil in opposite ways.
So no, I will not accept the banner as a moral verdict. I will not let a vacuous slogan launder what was plainly shown. I will not call it love because a stadium told me to.
Love is not a banner. Love has an object. For Christians, the highest object is God in Christ. When that object is replaced with self, appetite, and spectacle, the word love remains but its power is gone.