My understanding of Gavin's motive is that the hard fork is purely ego driven. There's no urgency to change block size. He just wants to be dramatic and make his personal mark on it. But controversy, technical-wise, is that some Bitcoin users may have their coins lose compatibility with the new implementation. In a sense, it may be Gavin and Hearn's attempt to hijack the Bitcoin name and implement their own coin or make changes to the protocol.
Everything you said is inaccurate. The reason there is a debate is because there are a lot of people on both sides of the blocksize increase, Gavin is not even close to being alone on wanting to increase the limit. He does not want to be the one to make the call on what happens. If you haven't watched a recent Q&A with Gavin and Mike you should, they specifically discuss the blocksize issue at the 27 minute mark https://youtu.be/RIafZXRDH7w?t=27m50s
Also no one is going to lose any coins unless you are a miner receive block rewards and you start mining on the "wrong/old" fork.
good answer. how many people have bitcoins? maybe some 1 million? how many watch these videos and understand the debate? only a few hundred i guess.
and that is the reason for the FUD
I am yet to watch it but I am pretty confident I'd be one of the ones who won't understand!