Courage Makes A Majority

I saw this the other day, and it made my heart skip a beat.   Apparently, in Iran, two sisters are to be stoned to death for “adultery”.   I put adultery in quotes because the husband of one of the women produced a video tape of his wife talking to other men.  Not a sex tape or a some lude act, but rather she was in the company of other men.  I imagine her sister was with her since she is set to be executed with her.

Reading the short article I see that she was already tried once for the crime and found guilty of illegal relations and received 99 lashes.  So she was convicted once, whipped 99 times, but that wasn’t good enough for the savages (yes I called them savages because I can’t think of another more fitting term).   Sister got 99 as well.

After I read the article, I thought thank God that I don’t live in a country that 1) considers adultery a criminal violation, 2) can sentence people to be whipped or stoned and 3) prohibits being tried for the same crime twice.  Then I thought, where is the outrage and news coverage (the article was from a UK paper).  Remember the furor around Michael Fay, the kid in Singapore in 1994 that was sentenced to 4 months in jail and six strokes of the cane for spraying graffiti on cars.  He ended up getting 4 strokes, but the coverage was massive.  Here, these women have been whipped nearly 100 times and now will be put to death by people throwing rocks at them until they stop breathing.

Then I realize that as a country, where do we have a leg to stand on.  Nevermind our stance on torture (we use it but say we don’t) and the bogus legal status of “enemy combatants” that allow our government to hold people indefinitely without charges, denying the right to a writ of habeas corpus.  I am talking about the Death Penalty.  We, as a country still allow our own savage behavior with state sanctioned killing.  It is sick and quite frankly disappointing that we continue to allow our country to be held to the standard of the lowest common denominator.  Thoughts like, “well most of the country is supportive of the death penalty and the Bible does say an “Eye for an Eye’.”

It is all bullshit.  If we want to claim the mantle of the moral compass of the world, or the defender of human rights and dignity, we need to challenge ourselves to be better than the savage thoughts of the American Pysche.  I know too many descent people that are pro-death penalty.  The idea of revenge is powerful, but we can’t continue to call murder a crime then use it as a tool for punishment.

I always say to someone who is pro-death penalty, “do you think we ever put an innocent person to death?”  Given the consistent news of exonerated death row inmates, the answer is always yes.  Then I follow with the hypothetical, “what if the person you loved the most was that innocent person, would you still find the death penatly acceptable?”  Funny, but I never get an answer to the question.