Love the sinner, hate the sin

[kaberett]

So I seriously need to work this out some more, but given that I'm still struggling to make words happen, here's a sketch:

I grew up as a small queer Catholic, who had to be closeted about both the queerness and the Catholicism, and was made very ill indeed by fighting my way clear of love the sinner, hate the sin.

And my sticking point with rehabilitative justice is routinely "okay, but what about the people who know exactly what they're doing and are doing it for fun and are categorically uninterested in stopping?" Of whom I have known... several. And I think at least part of my problem there is my pseudo-allergic response to anything that looks even superficially like love the sinner, hate the sin, where if you're just kind and loving and gentle with people for long enough they will Realise The Error Of Their Ways and that They Were Wrong All Along, because of how toxic and gaslighting that can be.

Which brings me back around again to the thing I've been attempting to write a post about and failing since shortly after my "I am twitchy as fuck about the rhetoric I'm seeing around antifa, here's why" (thank you for your engagement and input on that, various, it was enormously helpful and I haven't stopped thinking about it), in the general vicinity of talking at cross purposes, and I haven't managed to actually pin it down yet but I'm still intending to. But this I can sketch, around ideas-that-turn-toxic and abusers-will-abuse-anything and baby-and-bathwater and examining-my-motivations, so. Here's a sketch.

Comments

[lunabee34]

I was raised in a Protestant, Evangelical environment, and I heard "hate the sin, love the sinner" a lot growing up. It was almost always in the context of homosexuality, so that phrase always gets my hackles up; I think (generic) you can hate stealing and still love someone who steals. I do not think (generic) you can hate homosexuality without also hating at least part of a person who is homosexual. I also heard it in the context of my own choices; my parents hate that I became a liberal, that I rejected their religion, etc., but they claim to still love me. And I'm sure they do still love me, but hating my "sins" feels an awful lot like actually hating me.

I don't think this use of the phrase is exactly what you're talking about, but it's my experience with it.