Day 74
Another uncomfortable topic I choose not to make any more uncomfortable than it needs to be...
I'm also going to do the opposite of what I did in my reflection on abortion yesterday. Today, I'm going to make it clear right from the start that I am 100% opposed to the death penalty in any form for any person for any crime.
We get into discussions about costs to the tax payers for jail cells, deterrents to criminals for their heinous acts, and ways to ease the pain of those whose loved ones have been killed, but at the end of the day, choosing to end a human life should be the only thing we're talking about. And no matter how awful the crime, no matter how many lives were taken, no matter how cruel and uncaring the criminal, why do we have the right to kill a human being because they have killed human beings?
I simply refuse to believe that taking any life in response to any death is a just decision. If something horrible happened to my own family member or partner, I would go insane with grief, but I wouldn't have the right to retribution. Martin Luther King, Jr. put it best when he said, "That old law about 'an eye for an eye' leaves everybody blind. The time is always right to do the right thing."
I respect most people's beliefs and opinions on the matter, and I respect your reasons and rights to have said opinions. I just refuse to agree that any human being has any right to take any other human being's life. I hope you'll understand I'm very steadfast in this personal belief, and whether you agree with me or not, I hope we can always choose to talk about things more than we do without just accepting the awful realities around us. May we always, as a society and as a species, choose to engage in honest, kind, philosophical (if not spiritual) discussion on this and many other topics. Keeping the conversation open is always, always, always a great place to start!
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