You seem to think that the civil discussion that occurs here would carry over to these hot button topics, but I assure you that the kind of people who enjoy dragging a discussion down into the mud and participating in “flame wars” as you said will be attracted here once they know there is a discussion about one of their favorite issues.
In short, the curation of HN is what makes it great. Relaxing it would ruin this place.
The reason I asked my question in the first place was specifically because wherever else these topics are discussed, they are even exponentially more of a shit show than when they are discussed on HN. I wanted to see if there were any suggestions on getting HN-quality debate, but on more sensitive topics.
And the general consensus from responses is, basically, "no". And that consensus actually made me arrive at a fundamental conclusion I think: That it is indeed impossible to have a respectful debate on sensitive topics if commenting is pseudo-anonymous and open-ended.
Thus, I guess it may sound dumb, but it just clicked for me that it actually makes a lot of sense. It's difficult enough having discussions about sensitive topics when done in a face-to-face manner with people that have mutual trust - why should we think it's possible to have these conversations with faceless strangers on the Internet without it turning into a cesspool?