There’s an inmate on death row in Louisiana who faces possible execution for raping an 8-year-old girl. I hope they kill him. Rather, a big part of me does. The rest of me, though, thinks capital punishment is immoral and the guy should serve a life sentence.
This dichotomy, or, more accurately, this personal moral schizophrenia, reared its head recently when South Carolina passed a law that allows the death penalty for repeat child molesters. Now, if I learned anything from being largely raised in South Carolina, it’s this: when the state’s “leaders” are in favor of something, chances are it’s not only a bad idea, it’s also probably small-minded and mean-spirited. Sounds like a joke, but it’s true.
Since I’ve said for years that I generally oppose capital punishment, but favor it for aggravated cases of rape and child molestation, the new SC law threw me for a loop. Had I sunk to the level of the ill-tempered crooks and goobers in the State House in Columbia? Obviously, this called for some serious soul searching.
I went online, I read, I examined and weighed the arguments for and against executing violent rapists and child abusers, I looked into my heart, and finally concluded that both of me are right. It gets complicated. But let me try to explain.
Opponents of the SC law such as Richard Dieter, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center, say that executing child molesters “would impose disproportionate punishment” — in other words the punishment would be worse than the crime. I want to know how in the world anything can be worse than raping children? To me, murder victims actually seem less tragic since they don’t have to re-live their traumas over and over. Getting rid of the kind of scum who’d violently molest kids seems like the least we can do. At least that’s my immediate gut reaction.
Actually, and here’s the crux of the dilemma, what I feel goes beyond “gut reaction.” More like an ancient, primal human emotion: anyone who gravely harms children doesn’t deserve to be part of the human race. Maybe it goes back to our deep past when humans’ survival was at stake and anyone with a grim taste for children was a threat to the continuation of the species. Or maybe that’s my justification for another ancient feeling I don’t want to admit to: blood vengeance. I don’t know.
I do know, however, that when I allow my head to outrun my gut, the careful, reasoning part of me sees clearly that “eye-for-an-eye” justice opens a moral abyss in which the tit-for-tat of revenge goes on forever, with sorrows building on top of sorrows. Ostensibly, one of the functions of the law is to bring reason to bear on, and temper, the primal feelings generated by the likes of murderers, rapists, child molesters or even South Carolina politicians. It doesn’t always work, but at the very least, the law tries to apply a veneer of civilization over our instincts for revenge — a veneer that, in many ways, is all that separates us from old Uncle Chimp.
So, right now as I’m writing this, after reasoning through my moral dilemma, I don’t think the child rapist in Louisiana should be put to death by the state. Truth be told, though, if his victim’s parents had caught up with him before the police did and had blown his head off, I wouldn’t really have a problem with that.
Like I said, it’s complicated.
Internet Hijacking Update: On June 8, the US House of Representatives rejected proposals that would have stopped AT&T, Verizon and Comcast’s plans for a “tiered access” approach to the Internet. House members turned down a plan which would have required Internet providers to offer all Web sites equal access to bandwidth. They added insult to injury by actually forbidding the FCC from writing the principle of “Internet neutrality” into law.
A few weeks ago, I reported on the importance of Net neutrality, a central principle of the Internet which gives all Web users equal access to phone lines. According to nearly all Internet experts, this arrangement has fostered the World Wide Web’s spectacular growth and wide-open creativity.
The major phone companies want to install “tiered access” plans, in which they would charge extra for the fastest connections. If that happens, sites with a big bankroll would get super-fast connections while small-fry sites that couldn’t pay the toll — say, one you wanted to start — would chug along at a sluggish pace.
Although the House caved in to the power of the phone companies’ “contributions,” there is still time for Internet users, i.e., all of us, to prevent AT&T & Co. from hijacking the Internet. The US Senate is still considering writing Net neutrality into law. If you care whether the Internet continues to be run for the benefit of all of us, or is turned into a toll road favoring big corporations, contact your US Senators and tell them how you feel. You can bet the phone company giants will be bending their ear, so be sure your concerns are heard too.
This article appears in Jun 21-27, 2006.
