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the sanctity of life
Oct. 17th, 2005 07:58 pmOK, so I live in DC. Which means that I get to see political ads from Maryland and Virginia. There's a candidate in the Virginia governor's race who apparently doesn't believe that the death penalty is justice. His opponent is using this as the basis for an attack ad, using grieving relatives of crime victims to tug at our heartstrings and make us cry out for justice. (It's such an obvious tactic, it's kind of insulting, actually) What they don't seem to understand is that this makes me want the other guy to win. Because I don't believe the death penalty is justice, or moral. It's vengeance, which makes people feel better, but it doesn't make us safer, it doesn't make us more civilized people, it doesn't bring the dead back, it doesn't act as a deterrent and it basically doesn't do anything to actually further the cause of justice, it merely makes the system appear tough. The problem is that the death penalty is almost never given to people who confess, as they make deals and get life in prison. It's those who plead not guilt and who are convicted that are sentenced to death. And it costs us all lots of money in appeals. And it costs us all in goodness too. When I was a child, I saw some tv movie about someone who was falsely convicted of a murder he didn't commit. I don't remember much about it, other than that he was black and some of it was racially motivated, and that it left me with the thought that if it's possible to mistakenly convict someone, that means that it's possible to wrongfully execute someone, which basically makes the state a murderer.
On top of that, it makes the argument that some lives are worth more than others. And they're not. All lives should be equal before the law. I know that sometimes it's not that simple, that sometimes we have to decide between two lives, and we make choices, based on any number of things. But in principle, if we believe that life is sacred, that means all life is sacred. Christians who advocate the death penalty seem to forget a few things: Jesus was a victim of capital punishment, we are called not to judge others, and we can all be forgiven. The death penalty is a statement that we believe people to be beyond redemption. Which, for a Christian would seem to defeat the central tenet of the faith, since Christ's death is supposed to redeem us all, so we can't be beyond redemption, and if we are beyond redemption, then his death on the cross was just another one of billions of historical examples of needless violent deaths. For those of us who aren't Christians, the death penalty should be similarly morally and ethically abhorrent. One of the fundamental philosophies of the American experience is that we all can have a second chance, and raise ourselves up. Beyond that, if we are using capital punishment to punish those who take the lives of innocents, but yet we cannot guarantee that those we execute are guilty, we are hypocrites of the worst order. It's brutal punishment, and it's not befitting a land that claims to be a land that celebrates justice. We criticize those nations that exact other forms of corporal punishment, but yet we do it too. Our president claims that he wants us to have a culture of life, but yet he was governor of the state that executed the most people of any state in the union. That's a culture of revenge, not life.
Every Sunday at my church we say that we affirm the inherent worth and dignity of all people, and that we are called to express our faith through acts of justice and compassion. The death penalty is neither just nor compassionate.
On top of that, it makes the argument that some lives are worth more than others. And they're not. All lives should be equal before the law. I know that sometimes it's not that simple, that sometimes we have to decide between two lives, and we make choices, based on any number of things. But in principle, if we believe that life is sacred, that means all life is sacred. Christians who advocate the death penalty seem to forget a few things: Jesus was a victim of capital punishment, we are called not to judge others, and we can all be forgiven. The death penalty is a statement that we believe people to be beyond redemption. Which, for a Christian would seem to defeat the central tenet of the faith, since Christ's death is supposed to redeem us all, so we can't be beyond redemption, and if we are beyond redemption, then his death on the cross was just another one of billions of historical examples of needless violent deaths. For those of us who aren't Christians, the death penalty should be similarly morally and ethically abhorrent. One of the fundamental philosophies of the American experience is that we all can have a second chance, and raise ourselves up. Beyond that, if we are using capital punishment to punish those who take the lives of innocents, but yet we cannot guarantee that those we execute are guilty, we are hypocrites of the worst order. It's brutal punishment, and it's not befitting a land that claims to be a land that celebrates justice. We criticize those nations that exact other forms of corporal punishment, but yet we do it too. Our president claims that he wants us to have a culture of life, but yet he was governor of the state that executed the most people of any state in the union. That's a culture of revenge, not life.
Every Sunday at my church we say that we affirm the inherent worth and dignity of all people, and that we are called to express our faith through acts of justice and compassion. The death penalty is neither just nor compassionate.
