THE LEADER COLUMN

LOVE THE SINNER AND HATE THE SIN



There will be a torrent, in the cybertabloids and the Heritage Press, of fucks and damns, as though raucous, baying disapproval will amend, console, heal, resurrect; sweary dictionaries will be rifled; see, readers, how righteous I am, not only would I not treat a child so but look how fluently I excoriate, was there ever any so moral as I; this will make things so much better, this will; this will prevent further child abuse; some poor, tortured terrified waif, bound and gagged, beaten and buggered, some infant smashed against the wall will learn of my thundering disapproval and be soothed, saved, renewed; hasn’t it worked ever so well thus far? Gosh, ever since the McKenzieites and their ilk raised circulations by regularly damning Myra Hindley, prodding the wounds of those sickened, accursed by grief and rage, there have hardly ever been any cases of child torture and murder, have there? That’s what we should do; leave it to Fat Kelvin and his admirers. Yes, and Page Three and Tottywatch, sexualise the infant nation, Tits and Ass everywhere, that’ll help keep the little kiddies safe.



Before the coming of Blair and Straw and Boateng, of fat, scruffy Clarke and cock-waving, Blind BullyBoy Blunkett, of the thug Reid and of Schmidt, the shameless, larcenous, sourfaced mediocrity; before the war crimes, the surveillance, the oppression, before the serial plundering of the nation by pinstripe spivs and thieving slag politicians, the old probation officers said that, it was their axiom, Love the Sinner but hate the Sin; sound, realistic men and women, modest and self-effacing, patient, going alone where Old Bill would rightly want company or back-up, engaging with those from whom the rest recoil, sought not to succour Villainy but to make us all safer by easing disadvantage and inequality and Poverty’s ensuing criminality among those made hopeless and delinquent by circumstance and by successive governments, and in graver, darker corridors it guided them, helped them make sense of the horror, the wretchedness, the despair, the wickedness that men do, helped them try to prevent, in a rational and effective manner, the violation of yet more children, which, more than increased circulation, is what we all want, isn’t it - isn’t it - or is every vileness perpetrated an opportunity to increase traffic, circulation? Love the Sinner but hate the Sin, that’s what they used to say, the people half-way to an understanding of this shit.



We need to know what makes him tick, the nonce, in order to spot him, prevent him developing, networking, proseytising, and your nonce, let me tell you, Mr Blogger, for you obviously don’t know, is not only far more numerous than you think but far more complex, keeps secrets even from himself, wears a suit, has proper jobs, businesses, careers, just like you, they are not all, as are these Baby P Three, children of darkness.

We could embrace head-chopping, woman-hating Sharia consciousness and dismember the Beast publicly, mediaevalise the criminal justice system with whips and tongs and barbs and blades and flames but it wouldn’t stop whatever it is which makes molesters, that requires thought, not ranting; considered sentencing, treatment, research; requires that we attempt to understand the repellent, acquaint ourselves with nightmare. For your average nonce proves that those to whom Evil is done do Evil in return, often, your nonce does not know that he does wrong, believes, no, really believes, that the eight-year-old tart led him on, that, McCannesque, he is the victim and not the child; your nonce, like Mr Guido Pizza, does not recognise that all children, even wogchildren, need our protection, this is a truism beyond the guilty catechisms of the noncing monsignors, this, motherfucker, is an evolutionary diktat; there are more things in Heaven and Earth, Mr Tabloid, than are dreamed of in your noisy philosophy, such as it is, vengeful, discordant, without grace or humour, chorusing disapproval without remedy, inflaming, infecting, corrupting; lynchmobbery, kill anything that begins with paed. And then the homos, kill them, too. Is right-wing libertarianism an elaborate phrase for Nazi? Let’s find groups to hate. Follow me, lads. We’re so pretty, oh, so pretty vacant, and we don’t care.



If we really care about children then we need, far more than to damn, to find out. And prevent. Those who see horror as entertainment tub-thump, shriek their own virtue at times like this, these people are double-dodgy, firstly, in that those genuinely, decently shocked and hurt by such things have no need of public display - that is what the Judge does - and secondly and more importantly, this cheap rabble-rousing keeps children at risk, drives those with monsterish urges into darker places, into developing ever more sophisticated, plausible subterfuges. It is overlooked by ranters that in the mob, even the nonce can disappear: also conveniently overlooked is another axiom - that as we have seen recently, in le palais des felons, Those who shout the loudest often have the most to hide.