In the bloody culture wars that percolated the last decade, many beloved culture figures were permanently tinged by their unseemly, bigoted, misunderstood and/or illegal behaviour during their career, and the cultural taste of those who still enjoy their work blighted in the minds of those around them: “how can you enjoy that, after everything he did?” As a teenager, my adolescent indulgence was in Louis C. K., the comedian cancelled for sexual misconduct in 2017 who subsequently clawed himself back into the mainstream and sold out Madison Square Garden. I lost the ability to enjoy his stand-up some time ago with the realisation that the ugliness of his persona wasn’t really feigned for his art, and at any rate, his puerile, invidious comedy was really quite crass to begin with.
But recently C. K. floated back into my mind with a routine he performed on abortion protestors, the thrust of which was that, of course, abortion protestors are so ardent: “they think babies are being murdered!”
The use of the death penalty in the United States has received some scrutiny recently, with murderer Christa Pike’s failed execution in Tennessee and U. S. Secretary of ‘War’ (Defence) Pete Hegseth’s plan for the public to watch an upcoming execution. Those of us who are pro-choice and opposed to the death penalty are used to hearing these issues in the same sentence, used by some on our side against anti-abortion arguments: “how can you call yourself pro-life when you support executions?”
I feel this gives the death penalty too much credit; these two jewels in the religious right’s crown are not comparable beliefs. As C. K. points out, we can find the restriction of women’s reproductive rights unconscionable while recognising that those who oppose the termination of a foetus are doing so from a considered moral standpoint: they think it’s tantamount to murder.
In his recent piece discussing Hegseth’s promised livestreamed execution and its outraged responses, Stephen Daisley identifies the centrality of “the inviolable dignity of the individual” and “the enforcement of moral standards” in debates around capital punishment, which, he says, stem from Christianity. It is easy for me to see, without agreeing, that those from a Christian perspective would find abortion a form of murder that flouts the sanctity of human life, and is therefore to be opposed.
But these notions are irrelevant to the death penalty. Capital punishment is, ultimately, a kind of anti-morality. It satiates a primal instinct for retribution; it is atavistic, not considered. It is the kind of inhumane reflex that gets lynch mobs on the streets, that prompts indiscriminate responses in war, and that, as it happens, provokes the sadism of cancel culture. It is, in short, the surrender to our worst instincts that produces the death penalty.
Which is to say that in countering the views of the religious right, it is vital to deal with the issues as they are, and to place the death penalty on the same moral platform as anti-abortion advocacy would pretend that capital punishment is some cerebral moral standpoint, rather than the animalistic spasm that it really is.
Why, then, the outrage about these plans to livestream an execution in America? The outrage should be that it’s taking place at all. If people can watch, the death penalty’s ugly premise, already fulfilled – this fetish for violence – is seen for its gratuitous sadism. If not, we are pretending that capital punishment is some anodyne, placid crime reduction strategy.
Finding the execution of criminals repulsive, it seems to me fallacious to shield the American public from the actions of their justice system that they pay for. Let’s not drape a dark cloth around America’s most severe punishment and shunt it into a dimly-lit corner rarely to be considered. Instead, let’s gawp at this cruelty for what it is.
In short, let’s watch. So what if it’s outrageous? We should be outraged. After all, it’s tantamount to murder.
“Pro-Life Protest of Judge Sotomeyer Supreme Court Confirmation Hearings” by Gary Lee Todd, Ph.D. is marked with CC0 1.0.
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Countering the religious right: Why abortion and the death penalty are not comparable
In the bloody culture wars that percolated the last decade, many beloved culture figures were permanently tinged by their unseemly, bigoted, misunderstood and/or illegal behaviour during their career, and the cultural taste of those who still enjoy their work blighted in the minds of those around them: “how can you enjoy that, after everything he did?” As a teenager, my adolescent indulgence was in Louis C. K., the comedian cancelled for sexual misconduct in 2017 who subsequently clawed himself back into the mainstream and sold out Madison Square Garden. I lost the ability to enjoy his stand-up some time ago with the realisation that the ugliness of his persona wasn’t really feigned for his art, and at any rate, his puerile, invidious comedy was really quite crass to begin with.
But recently C. K. floated back into my mind with a routine he performed on abortion protestors, the thrust of which was that, of course, abortion protestors are so ardent: “they think babies are being murdered!”
The use of the death penalty in the United States has received some scrutiny recently, with murderer Christa Pike’s failed execution in Tennessee and U. S. Secretary of ‘War’ (Defence) Pete Hegseth’s plan for the public to watch an upcoming execution. Those of us who are pro-choice and opposed to the death penalty are used to hearing these issues in the same sentence, used by some on our side against anti-abortion arguments: “how can you call yourself pro-life when you support executions?”
I feel this gives the death penalty too much credit; these two jewels in the religious right’s crown are not comparable beliefs. As C. K. points out, we can find the restriction of women’s reproductive rights unconscionable while recognising that those who oppose the termination of a foetus are doing so from a considered moral standpoint: they think it’s tantamount to murder.
In his recent piece discussing Hegseth’s promised livestreamed execution and its outraged responses, Stephen Daisley identifies the centrality of “the inviolable dignity of the individual” and “the enforcement of moral standards” in debates around capital punishment, which, he says, stem from Christianity. It is easy for me to see, without agreeing, that those from a Christian perspective would find abortion a form of murder that flouts the sanctity of human life, and is therefore to be opposed.
But these notions are irrelevant to the death penalty. Capital punishment is, ultimately, a kind of anti-morality. It satiates a primal instinct for retribution; it is atavistic, not considered. It is the kind of inhumane reflex that gets lynch mobs on the streets, that prompts indiscriminate responses in war, and that, as it happens, provokes the sadism of cancel culture. It is, in short, the surrender to our worst instincts that produces the death penalty.
Which is to say that in countering the views of the religious right, it is vital to deal with the issues as they are, and to place the death penalty on the same moral platform as anti-abortion advocacy would pretend that capital punishment is some cerebral moral standpoint, rather than the animalistic spasm that it really is.
Why, then, the outrage about these plans to livestream an execution in America? The outrage should be that it’s taking place at all. If people can watch, the death penalty’s ugly premise, already fulfilled – this fetish for violence – is seen for its gratuitous sadism. If not, we are pretending that capital punishment is some anodyne, placid crime reduction strategy.
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Finding the execution of criminals repulsive, it seems to me fallacious to shield the American public from the actions of their justice system that they pay for. Let’s not drape a dark cloth around America’s most severe punishment and shunt it into a dimly-lit corner rarely to be considered. Instead, let’s gawp at this cruelty for what it is.
In short, let’s watch. So what if it’s outrageous? We should be outraged. After all, it’s tantamount to murder.
“Pro-Life Protest of Judge Sotomeyer Supreme Court Confirmation Hearings” by Gary Lee Todd, Ph.D. is marked with CC0 1.0.
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