Sunday, August 5, 2012

Hate Thy Neighbor?


          July was a hard month.  With the 150 letters I send to the legislators every month pleading for my son and the 115 decree heat where I live, my blogging fell by the wayside.  But the plight of my son and the hundreds of thousands of registrants and their families never left my mind. 
          Added to that was the terrible news from Washington of the two men murdered because they were on the registry.  This makes concrete and definite the threat hanging over every one of the people branded as a sex offender.  Equally distressing was the on-line response to the killings.  Instead of sorrow and recognition of the registry’s implication, there was actually praise for this disturbed individual in taking two lives.  People graphically described what they would like to do to registrants.  Both the  language and level of hatred came as a shock.  Worse for me were the postings that claimed to come from Christians.  What has the Lamb of God to do with torture and revenge?  The very people that tortured and killed Jesus did so from self-righteous hatred.
          “Two wrongs don’t make a right,” is a cliché.  But it is a cliché simply because it is so obviously true.  Yes, some of the people on the registry harmed another person.  They did a terrible wrong and paid the price for that wrong under the law.  But to continue to persecute them by forcing them live with the shame, deprivation, and hazards of registration is also a wrong, especially when registration has been shown to be ineffective.  It is simply the outgrowth of hatred, and hatred poisons the atmosphere of human relations.  It brings death.