Saturday, September 24, 2011

Death-Penalty Hypocrisy: Part Two

WHERE WERE YOU WHEN THE STATE OF ALABAMA KILLED A DEFINITELY-GUILTY BLACK MAN THE VERY NEXT NIGHT AFTER THE STATE OF GEORGIA KILLED A POSSIBLY-INNOCENT BLACK MAN?

I AM TALKING TO YOU AL SHARPTON AND DESMOND TUTU.

WHERE WAS THE ANGER AT STATE-SPONSORED KILLING WHEN IT INVOLVED A BLACK MAN IN ALABAMA WHO ADMITTED HIS GUILT, WHO APOLOGIZED TO THE FAMILY WHOSE LOVED ONE HE KILLED, AND WHO MET THE GOD OF FORGIVENESS OPENLY WITH ADMISSION OF HIS SINS?

WHAT IS PHILIP YELLING ABOUT NOW? His name was Derrick Mason and he was a cold-blooded killer who forced a woman to strip her clothes off so that he could look at her titillating features just before he shot her in the face. Clearly, he deserved to die. Ooopsie... I thought you were opposed to the death-penalty?

People on the political far-left have, for years, tried to guilt-trip me into supporting a moral outrage against the death penalty. As if I am not fully capable of reaching my own moral conclusions about the value of every human life, as I learned from my personal Lord and Savior Jesus Christ?

I am a white man from the South, folks: I grew up in the part of the country where the vast majority of state-sponsored killing occurs and I know for a fact that it is applied capriciously and racist-ly. Please stop insulting my intelligence by trying to teach me something I already know. Turn the mirror back on your own face and ask yourself this: why you weren't holding a prayer vigil in the PSR Chapel this week for the white-supremacist in Texas, or the black man in Alabama who openly admitted that he was guilty? I am so tired of knee-jerk politics from both the right-wingers and from arrogant holier-than-thou left-wingers. You make a lie of the values you claim to hold by applying them capriciously, and this makes you no better than the right-wingers. Stop doing the Republicans' work for them by engaging in Republican-style moral hypocrisy.

I have spent much of my adult life, since moving to California almost 23 years ago, shouting against the Republican hate-mongering shit-machine... and yet, my siblings on the far-left make it hard for me to stand with you this week. C'mon folks, throw me a frickin' bone here. Grow a spine and stop acting like a bunch of vapid celebrity-groupie armchair-quarterbacking moral police. If you identify as liberal or radical Christians then stand up and admit to your own moral epic-fail this week. Express regret for the opportunity you squandered this week to make a powerful Christian statement against the death penalty.

Let's review:

This week there were three state-sponsored killings in three states in the Bible Belt.
This week those three states killed one white supremacist and two black men.
This week Texas and Alabama killed two men whose cases were [legally] air-tight.
This week Georgia killed one man who might have been innocent.

I pray that radical-left Christians will ask themselves one core question: if Jesus were presented with three state-sponsored killings in a two-day period across three states that are socially dominated by people who claim to follow His teachings, what would Jesus have done?

No comments:

Post a Comment