We can't be pacifists in the culture wars

Conservatives tend to be Christians and as such we believe we should forgive those who have done wrong but have repented. Though in fairness even the non-Christian conservatives tend to be forgiving.

Applying that to the case of James Gunn who posted a lot of very evil tweets about raping children a number of years ago but who claims to have changed it would seem that we should forgive and forget.

However in a society where one mildly racist tweet by Barr results in her losing her job and where Trump is excoriated over consensual infidelities that occurred a decade ago it's not obvious that forgive and forget is what is best.

If we allow every conservative who ever makes a mistake and repents to be banished from public life but forgive every leftist we basically are being unjust to the conservatives.  If we are to forgive then all who repent must be forgiven.

Trump is being attacked because of his offensive, albeit consensual, infidelities that occurred a decade or more ago. At the same time the people who told us that Bill Clinton's nonconsensual sexual harassment was irrelevant in the past are now only mildly chastising him.

Milo made a very inappropriate comment about sex with teenage boys which he immediately apologized for.  None the less he was banished.  Given the severity of his offense his banishment was probably good for society.  But then why should we allow someone else who made comments about sex with 3 year olds continue to be accepted just because he said he's sorry?  While both are amazingly reprehensible talking about sex with 3 year olds shows a far more warped person than talking about sex with 16 year olds.

Ask yourself this; if a Catholic priest had tweeted what Gunn tweeted and then years later said he was sorry would the same leftists who are demanding we forgive Gunn forgive the priest and say that he should be allowed to continue his life with no long term impacts?  Clearly, and correctly, they wouldn't.

While we must personally forgive those who sin and repent we are not required to let them go on as if they hadn't sinned.  It's not hating rapists to say that we don't think that they should be able to avoid jail time just because they say sorry.  Similarly few people object to requiring sex offenders to register.

It's easy to see what the standard of the left is.  People who make sinful choices like sexual infidelity or seemingly supporting molesting children are to be condemned if they don't support  the left's agenda but forgiven if they do.  There are occasional exceptions, such as Weinstein, but those are only tactical moves where the left sacrifices a person in order to attack Trump.

Essentially the left has declared that any offense they don't like is cause for immediate banishment from polite society while any person that they like can be excused from that punishment.

That's an intolerable situation.

Everyone has to be held to the same standard.

So if Barr can be destroyed because of one late night tweet even though she apologized then Gunn should also be punished for many far more horrible tweets even though he apologized.

Or if Gunn can be forgiven then Barr should be forgiven too.  This is the system that Christ calls us to.

While each case has to be examined individually it's not Christian to accept a system where what matters most is not the sin or the repentance but the political ideology of the offender.

In some sense it's like a spy exchange.  If we forgive some leftist then the left must forgive a conservative, assuming both are truly repentant.

If we continue to allow the left's standard to stand then it will encourage them to be even more evil because they know all they need to do is say sorry and they will be forgiven while simultaneously refusing to forgive conservatives who truly repent.

In a sense it's like the Bible story about the servant who owed his master a huge amount of money. The master showed mercy but then the man turned around and showed no mercy to someone who owed him money. Upon hearing of this the master revoked his mercy and punished the evil man.

Our Christian instinct is to be merciful to leftists but when those leftists turn around and show no mercy to conservatives we are no longer required to treat them better than they treat others.

It's a sad situation we are in but it's not of our choosing.  Conservatives have always been willing to forgive leftists who truly repent. For example in 1992 the Clintons went on 60 Minutes and admitted that Bill had cheated but that he'd repented.  As a result conservatives said we wouldn't vote for him because of his policies but that we wouldn't hold his past, supposedly repented of, transgressions against him.

Similarly today if we can be convinced that Gunn is truly repentant--and remember that the left has viciously attacked the Catholic Church because some Bishops believed psychiatrists who said that gay priests who were attracted to teenage boys had been cured-- then we should forgive him; so long as the left behaves the same way to conservatives.

We are in a war for the soul of America.  If we allow leftist evil to go unpunished we aren't doing the right thing. Why we are to forgive those who hurt us we are not required to let those who hurt others go unpunished.