If any harm follows, then you shall give life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burn for burn, wound for wound, stripe for stripe.
-Exodus 23:23-25
Not to disrespect the Old Testament, but what a load of crap. It's a nice idea, of course. If you do bad things, bad things should befall you. And yet if we follow the Bible, we'll have a lot of dead, blind, burned, amputees walking around. Doesn't make much sense. Same with capital punishment. Just because someone deserves something doesn't mean they should get it.
If you allow capital punishment, arbitrary lines that don't really mean anything must be drawn. Why is the rape of a 12-year old more deserving of the death penalty than that of a 13-year old? Why does an IQ of 70 mean that someone is mentally retarded and 71 means they can get a needle in the arm? And why is it that there are so many minorities on death row? And before anyone starts, no it is not proportional to the amount of crimes that minorities commit compared to white people. Everyone's a little bit racist (it's true) and yet ignoring this problem in favor of keeping a form of punishment that groups us with the likes of Saudi Arabia, Iran, and China is just adding fuel to the fire that is race relations in this country.
Point of all this: I wholeheartedly agree with the Supreme Court in this decision even if our beloved Democratic nominee for president doesn't. He can stuff it. Also, killing people is immoral no matter the reason. I don't trust twelve people who don't have the intellectual capacity God gave a donut to objectively review a case and decide without any prejudices whether or not someone is despicable enough for death.
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3 comments:
Divorcing text from its context again, huh?
What's happened to "If two men are fighting, and a woman interferes, and she is pregnant, and if, when the child is born, any harm follows [from her having interfered], ..."
Katya, you should not practise selective reading. The same Bible (Torah) says, "Do not add to it and do not remove from it anything"
Rape is a most heinous crime, akin to mutilation, flailing, lobotomy.
Yes, using a number (12 vs. 13, 70 vs. 71) is like drawing the line in the sand and willing the sea not to cross it during high tide.
But child rapists deserve the most cruel and unusual punishment.
Sorry; I did not mean to be harsh in my first comment... It's great that you've decided to start this blog; keep up the great job!
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