"Love the sinner, hate the sin" is not what we think it is.
*I try not to use academic citation and link everything to keep things accessible, but citation is particularly important here. If you're not familiar, anything in parentheses at the end of a sentence is the last name of the author I'm referencing and/or the page number within that book/article. The links are included, and I've made sure that everything I cite is publicly accessible for free.
While it's so widely used that it's considered common experience rather than an actual quote to cite, "love the sinner, hate the sin" is not what we think it is (Newswander 1).
St. Augustine wrote [a version of] it in Letter 211 to a community of nuns in his diocese who secluded themselves from the world (Teske 19). As he distinguishes their past lives "in the world" from "this present life," these were not your everyday Christians interacting on Sundays (Teske 23). Each and every one of these women had left their lives in wealth or poverty to live in a collectivist community where gains and losses were shared, whether material or spiritual (Teske 22).
As much as I support the mutual aid model of a collectivist society, people have to choose to enter it in order for collectivism to work and be ethical. Augustine's advice was created for a very specific population in a very specific situation. This population had made the choice to follow the same set of rules, one of which was to help each other adhere to those rules.
Regardless of my qualms with theories of homosexuality as a sin or my thoughts on queer clergy life, to "love the sinner, hate the sin" is simply not advice created for the general public. The systems of accountability recommended in Augustine's letter are right next to the instruction to "clothe yourselves from one wardrobe" (Teske 25). He was outlining a system of living together, as one unified entity.
It is not advice about how you, an individual, should look at or treat another individual or even another community. Yet, this is not how the phrase is used out in the world. An article published by the National Catholic Register advises people to love without condoning sin "because it destroys people" (Armstrong). Yet, we fail to connect it with the destruction caused by the unsolicited criticism of queer relationships, actions, and lives through this "counsel" (Newswander 2, 39).
The NCR article justifies its advice on the basis of several bible verses about God hating sin and verses in which readers are instructed to hate sin, wickedness, evil, and other variations. When paired with Augustine's decontextualized instruction, these might be convincing. But consider that those verses may be more about rejecting our own sin and the harm we cause, rather than condemning the sins of others.
Consider just stopping at "love."
a long academic dissertation (99 pages) but very easy to read (I recommend just reading the intro, then skipping around the find what you're curious about)
on the queerphobia of loving [queer people] despite or apart from their queerness
a Communications studies paper focused on oral histories of queer former Catholics
- a compilation of letters by St. Augustine to various congregations, translated by Roland Teske
- Armstrong, Dave. "“Hate the Sin, Love the Sinner” — Quite Biblical!" National Catholic Register, 29 Jan 2020, https://www.ncregister.com/blog/hate-the-sin-love-the-sinner-quite-biblical.
- Cheng, Patrick. ""Love The Sinner, Hate The Sin" And Other Modern-Day Heresies." HuffPost, 6 Jun 2010, https://www.huffpost.com/entry/love-the-sinner-hate-the_b_526355.
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