I know someone has said something about this before on a different blog and I don't remember where it came from, but I feel that this person had a good point and I would like to repeat it. Being in college, I've been around many people who identify as Christian who have had a more modern set of experiences regarding homosexuality (as in not just some mythical evil to avoid, but rather actual people). As such, many of these collegiate Christians do not harbor the same kind of hatred for the homosexual community that their elder brethren do. However, most are unwilling to question certain parts of their religion - among them the idea that homosexuality is a sin. When confronted about this belief, many turn to the phrase "Love the sinner, hate the sin." The only problem with that phrase? It doesn't work. Here's why:
Christians do not truly apply the term 'sinner' to themselves.
Let's first define what I mean by 'truly apply the term'. When a person discovers something about themselves, they have two stages of discovery: logical and emotional. The logical stage is the first one people go through, as the logical part of their brain can come to the conclusion that they, for example, are gay. But the emotional acceptance of this logical fact takes much more time as the emotional part of one's brain is more stubborn than the logical part. Usually, it involves repeating the logical statement to oneself so much that one accepts the logical statement emotionally. It's at this point that a person not only knows that they are, for example, gay, but also accepts it and all of it's implications. Those who have truly applied a term or a label to themselves both logically know that the label fits them and have emotionally accepted that the label fits them. Those who don't truly apply the label have only reached the logical stage.
Now it would be more accurate to say that most Christians don't do so, but those who do truly apply the term 'sinner' to themselves won't be using the term 'love the sinner, hate the sin'. As self-proclaimed sinners, those who do truly apply the term to themselves will not segregate the world into the halves of sinner and Christian as so many others do, as it would do them no good. On the other hand, this form of segregation is exactly what happens when most Christians use the term 'love the sinner, hate the sin'. First off, homosexuality is the only sin that the term 'love the sinner, hate the sin' is used against. All other sins are either considered crimes in society (whether legal, as in murder, or social, as in the case of adultery and abortion) or are ignored (such as mixed fabrics and shaving). Since our society as a whole demonizes anyone who commits a crime, Christians are able to hate those who commit those crimes without any notice as it's the socially accepted norm. The other sins are ignored as antiquated parts of the bible as we've seen first hand that performing these sins do not cause any harm. Homosexuality, however, is strangely different as more and more Christians are seeing for themselves that it causes no harm, but don't want to give up their hatred toward homosexuality. As such, they try to sit the fence on homosexuality with 'love the sinner, hate the sin'. But again, this doesn't work.
Remember the segregation I was mentioning earlier? Turns out, this is a textbook example of creating an "us vs them" situation, one which never results in any good. When Christians apply the term 'sinner' to homosexual individuals, they don't apply it to themselves emotionally, so while they see the commonality between themselves and homosexuals in regard to their sinful nature, they do not see it emotionally. As such, the emotional part of their brain has segregated the rest of us from them, creating a seemingly disjoint set in which the 'sinners' are in one group while the Christians are in the other.
Now you might be asking yourself "why is this a bad thing? Can't we just get along even though we're separate?" The answer is no, as we've seen again and again throughout history. There seems to be something intrinsic about human nature that makes us treat those other than ourselves worse than we do. We've seen it with segregation of African Americans before Brown VS Board of Education, we've seen it with the burning of witches, with the persecution of Jews in Nazi Germany, and countless other times. This theme has become so common that most works in the science fiction genre involve how humans react to something 'other' than themselves, something set apart by humans due to the differences between humans and this other group, even though much is common (I would suggest reading, not watching, I, Robot; Frankenstein; and Blade Runner for good examples of this concept). As such, it's no stretch of the imagination to see that by segregating one group of people from another, we create a classic separate-but-not-equal scenario that involves at least one of these groups treating the other poorly.
Applying the term 'love the sinner, hate the sin' continues to justify the hatred that a large part of Christianity still employs. It separates us, makes us look less than human and more like 'sinner', leading to the fear, anger, and hatred we're seeing so much of in recent days from the church toward the LGBT community. Now I don't expect most Christians who employ this term to know these consequences already as the privileged majority often don't realize the cost of their privilege to the minority. As such, I am not angry with those who use said term. However, the idea that using that term makes a Christian guilt-free has been proven false, and that fact needs to be spread. Because the only way we're going to end the hatred is to end the justification for it, and that process starts with them.
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