Love the sinner, hate the sin
Nov. 1st, 2017 10:32 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kaberettSo 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.
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.
(aside)
Date: 2017-11-03 01:35 pm (UTC)There is plausible scholarship suggesting that this is meant to be a limitation on unjust retaliatory punishments (e.g. killing or maiming someone for theft), and I believe the Talmud goes into quite a bit of detail on situations where no equivalent or balanced punishment/requirement is possible.
(And yes, agreed, it's Complicated and simplification makes it get really shitty really fast.)
Re: (aside)
Date: 2017-11-03 01:57 pm (UTC)I'm aware :) I spent a non-trivial amount of time reading said scholarship, as part of when I was looking at old Germanic law codes and their very monetary ways of attempting the same balance and social organization. (As well as other models).
However my point is that no punishment is actually balanced: because of how people are interconnected, if you put a theif in jail or confiscate his property you are affecting anyone connected to him - family, friends, people who have no responsibility for the theft. Sometimes it's a huge effect; sometimes it's just inconvenience, like a boss needing to find a new employee. But either way, it's still imbalanced.
And if the person is so disconnected, then it's most likely because of life experiences that indicate they've already been runt targets of injustice. So justice is already irreparably unbalanced.
That it's better than blood feud is certainly true! As well as all the other things. My point is not "this is a bad society/immoral way of doing things" - my point is the second that wrongdoing occurs justice is terminally wounded and there's no way to actually "balance" it. Not that you shouldn't: you CAN'T. It's not possible. You just keep moving the injustice down the line.
And likewise LACK of punishment isn't just either, which is the point: if you unconditionally forgive everyone without process you inflict injustice on both past and present victims.