Reply To: Can the severity of a sin be learned from the severity of the punishment?

No you haven’t given me pause.
(as an aside, For some reason this thread does not show up by me in the recently active threads. That’s why I missed it last response. Now I had to search it up to see if you responded.)
Assuming that לשון הרע is not worse that מאנס he becomes less of an עבריין. Absolutely.
I’m not so sure that’s true though.
I would understand from the ח”ח/גמרא that לשה”רis also worse than being מאנס in which case he hasn’t really helped himself.
But I have no problem to say, if your rubric is correct, then he has lowered his sin level by actually being מאנס her.
That’s exactly what the ח”ח stated unambiguously
It’s worse to be מוציא שם רע than to be מאנס
Mathematically that is the same as saying it’s better to be מאנס then to be מוציא שם רע
Why would I hesitate to say that.? I’d just be quoting the ח”ח!
(I just think In your example I couldn’t answer that because the details didn’t add up.)