The Pink Flamingo :: Life, the Death Penalty, and Retribution

Have you done any serious channel surfing on the movie channels lately? If you have a weak stomach like I do, it is enough to sicken you. Even during the day, when allegedly, things should be ‘child friendly’, it is nothing but carnage. I’ve reached the point, at night, when I finally put this blasted blog to bed and I try doing the same (says a heck of a lot about my social life, doesn’t it) I grab a book and do some channel surfing. At night it is – vile. Why must we be treated to a constant barrage of dismemberment, decapitation, disembowelment and the “F-word” and this is just on South Park. (FYI, I’d never seen that vile creation until last night when I turned the channel a couple of minutes early for Reno 911).

There are video games that promote death. Young people today do not, I do believe, comprehend the difference between the actuality of life and death because their minds have been so clouded by these games. They do not comprehend that death is final – unless horribly confronted by it in their own personal experience. In games, movies, television death is never final. You see the actor in their next feature.

This is reinforced by our conservative culture’s increasing demands to use the death penalty. We are the only modern, civilized nation in the world that resorts to capital punishment. If you compare numbers and violence in other parts of the world, aside from terror, we have a violent culture. Is part of it because of our proclivity to punish by death.

Unlike many others who are wringing their hands and crying their crocodile tears that the sky is indeed falling, I was relieved when the SCOTUS declared capital punishment for child molestation unconstitutional. I was relieved for several reasons, the first being I am pro-life. I do not believe we have a right to take another life except in time of war or self-defense. As a survivor of child molestation, I breathed a sigh of relief when I heard the law was declared unconstitutional. I did not need that burden to be added to the others.

Have you noticed the only people we usually hear from when discussing this extreme punishment for child molestation are adults who were not molested as children? I think there is a very good reason for this. Adult survivors have enough to deal with. Don’t force this on us and think you are doing us a favor. You aren’t. Instead, you are doing just the opposite, making our lives a true living hell. I think the knowledge that the elementary school principal who molested me had been executed because of me, would be enough to cause me to consider suicide.

There is one horrible little fact people never mention when punishing child molesters. These people deserve punishment for what they have done to the most innocent of the world. There is no ‘cure’ for this psychological disorder and addiction. The only way to insure the safety of society is to remove them from the society of children – forever. They cannot be cured. They cannot be rehabilitated. It’s too bad we don’t have a punishment available to the world of Babylon 5 – death of personality. That would solve the whole problem.

Did you know there has never been a child molester who was not molested as a child themselves? Not every person who was molested as a child becomes a molester themselves, but ever child molester was a molested child. This one fact alone should preclude any thought of the final retribution of society. A child molester is a very damaged individual. For that one fact they deserve a millimeter of sympathy – and no more.

I don’t think there is an answer as to why most of us who were molested do not to on to be abusers ourselves. Don’t think we aren’t undamaged. A goodly many go on to become drug addicts; alcoholics, or engage in very risky sex practices. If you conduct a study of the younger (very much younger) prostitutes who are walking the streets of this country, you will find that most of them had been molested or raped by someone who should be protecting their innocence.

Child molesters come from a background of multi-generational abuse. Unless the abuse is stopped, and rarely is, the child who is molested from a multi-generational background of abuse is going to go on to abuse children, often their own. And their children will go on to do the same thing. Capital punishment isn’t going to stop the multi-generational abuse. Only intense intervention, and I happen to thing, a person’s personal relationship with Christ, is going to put an end to this.

The only reason I do not ‘out’ the person who molested me is because of his son, who was a friend of mine in the third grade. That magnificent miracle of Salvation and the Grace of our Lord has intervened. The multi-generational history of abuse was ended with the son. The abusive father is now dead, thank heaven. His abuse is dead. His son is now a very well known spokes-person for the abused child and for intervention. I cannot divulge his name and hurt him any farther.

BUT – if the person who had molested me, this man’s father, had been put to death for what he did to me, the son would never have sought help. The horror would have been visited upon yet another generation. Quit demanding retribution and allow us to heal.

A truly enlightened culture would step in and force intervention in these families. A truly enlightened culture would quit demanding death for everything. Before long, if this continues, we’re not going to be much different than the Taliban. Just kill everyone for everything. I truly believe the demand for death, for execution coarsens us, and turns us into the very thing we are trying not to become.

I had the misfortune of watching a few moments of Mel Gibson’s Apocalypto. In many ways it is the most racist movie I’ve ever seen in my life. It is racist because once you watch just a few minutes of this movie, you see the vile nature of the Mayan culture, the dependency of death, and the grotesque nature of their society. It portrayed that society as dependent on death – as grotesque. Life was not important. Death was everything. Indeed, the culture was portrayed as almost demonic in nature. I truly believe this is what cultures who demand death and retribution become. Death leads to more death. It does not lead to punishment. It leads to more death.

How can we demand an end to abortion if we constantly demand adults be put to death – to take their lives as retribution? The Lord will take care of that. We are to forgive those who do things to us the way we wish to be forgiven by our Father in Heaven.

As a survivor, I struggle to keep my life ‘together’. It is much easier today than it was fifteen years ago when I was on the point of suicide. When I was that fragile, if I’d known I was responsible for a person being executed for what happened to me – and my testimony, I would not be here today.

Allow us to survive and rebuild our lives. We cannot do this with a constant reminder of the past, and constant appeals, court cases, and interviews portraying the soon to be departed as the ‘victim’ of the system. We all know you are trying to do what is right, but this time you are very, very wrong. This isn’t your fight. It is the fight of those of us who are struggling to survive every day of our lives.

The clip that O’Reilly showed of the legislator in Mass. isn’t far off the mark. While this person would do everything to destroy a victim, what he doesn’t realize is we do this to ourselves. Do you good people who want retribution know what a death trial will do to victims and their families? Do you even care. It seems to me you are so caught up in your own feelings of some pathetic version of corporate guilt that you don’t actually give a damn about us. If you did, you would understand how difficult the struggle to survive is.