Very brief.

I'm beginning to think that Anatole France had it wrong when he wrote "The law, in its majestic equality, forbids rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal their bread." Even the pose of law as something that is to be rigidly and impartially applied is something that is only adopted when it's not inconvenient for the privileged.

A case in point.

Son of Status Post

I slept okay last night. I mean, I got between six and seven hours in a row, which feels like an accomplishment at this point. It came after several false starts and I feel like I'm still paying off the deficit of the previous nights. I've been in the process of "waking up" since like 10 this morning. I think I'm going to be writing tonight, but it's going to be a late evening sort of time before I feel fully human.

Somewhat Random: Of Love and Hate.

I'm not the first person to say this, but love is an action. It's not just an emotion. It's a process, a pursuit. When Jesus entreats his followers to love their neighbors as they love themselves (and please note I'm not speaking towards whether Jesus was a real historical person, a real historical messiah, a character in a scriptural fan fic, or what here), he wasn't saying "Have a vague and general sense of goodwill towards your neighbor."

To love is an act that has no natural conclusion or endpoint. Once you start to perform the act of love, you never stop unless you stop loving, tautologically enough. Love isn't, ideally, a constant, all-consuming pursuit, but it's not something you can ever stand back from and say, "There. It is done."

This is not original thought. I couldn't tell you where I first came by the idea. I can tell you that I have seen it expressed most often by Christian thinkers, which brings me to my next point: hatred, too, is an action.

If somebody tells you that they don't hate a group of people, but they are engaged in acts of hatred against them, then they are engaged in a deception (possibly a self-deception) as transparent as the one Sampson of the house Capulet engaged in when he maintained that he did bite his thumb while standing facing in the same general direction where the Montagues were gathered, but he did not bite his thumb at them. 1 = 1. A equals A, to invoke Ayn Rand in the name of love. Or to return to the Bard, we might say that the act of hatred is shap'd, sir, like itself, and it is as broad as it hath breadth; it is just as high as it is, and moves with its own organs. It lives by that which nourisheth it, and the elements once out of it, it transmigrates.

In short, performing an act of hatred towards someone is the same thing as hating them.

You cannot say you love while refusing to perform the action of love and you cannot say that you do not hate while engaged in the action of hatred. You cannot even say that you "love a sinner and hate the sin", if you're willing to trample on the sinner to strike at that hateful sin. This is a hateful act.

It's two hateful acts, in fact... because in allowing the person whom you allegedly love to become collateral damage in your pursuit of the sin, you have dehumanized them. "It's nothing personal" is a common refrain from people who vote to take away rights and shove people into the margins of society (or keep them there), and those three words expose an ugly truth.

Not personal.

I judge you and your whole life, but it's not personal. I will not allow children like you to learn that they're not alone, or how to be safer, or that there are people they can talk to when they have problems that push them to the edge of despair and beyond, but it's not personal. The thought that you and your lover may be doing something I judge to be sinful horrifies me so much and I can do nothing about it so I will instead vote to restrict your rights as human beings, but it's not personal.

How can this be so, if one is even viewing those being addressed as persons? You can't love a person if you view them as a tiny vestigial appendage to their perceived sin.

Love is an act. Hate is an act. You can talk about tough love, you can talk about loving sinners, you can talk about love winning out... but if you don't perform the act of love and you do perform the act of hatred, then it's just that: talk.

Edit To Add: In response to requests... yes, feel free to link to, share, and repost this, but if you repost it somewhere please credit and include a link to the original.