Quote:
Originally posted by Lebell
I have no problem if someone here chooses to label me a hypocrite, because frankly, they don't know me, nor my reasoning.
I am firmly anti-death penalty, and firmly pro-choice.
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Me too!
However, I do find the death penalty difficult. I am against it in principle, but I have a (online) friend from Arizona who's sister was murdered (and raped) by an ex-boyfriend - my friend was, apart from being destroyed by it, very keen on the death penalty for the killer. I found it impossible, when I talked about it with her, to express my opinions and argue against it - of course it would be insensitive to, but more so I felt I just didnt have the right to - what are my moral judgements next to the pain of someone who's sister is torn from their lives?
Of course, I do believe, we cannot make laws out of pain and rage, and we must make them from sober consideration... so I am in principle against the death penalty.
However, for the worst killers, the man who murdered the two little girls in Soham for example - Ian Huntley - there is an emotional pull one feels for him to be destroyed. I have no desire for even the most awful criminals to be tortured or torn apart or anything like this, and society should not act out of rage, but sometimes simply to cold heartedly destroy those who have shown themselves unfit to live through actions such as raping and killing two children... (or in fact, the evidence prolly suggests Huntley raped one of the girls, and killed them both so they couldnt talk)... sometims it is hard, because all the intellectual reasoning against the death penalty says it is wrong and doesnt work, and yet you feel the world be better for Ian Huntley to cease to exist.