Life, in New Orleans & Iran

October 2005

This issue, our main story examines the execution in Iran of Mahmoud Asgari and Ayaz Marhoni, killed by Iranian courts for alleged sex crimes with– or perhaps against– another teen boy.

There has been much sloganeering and muddle-headed thinking about the Iranian executions. Many critics cite the case as exemplary of “Islamo-fascism.” Others decry the killing of teenagers, with the implication that the execution of adults is morally acceptable. Some suggest that if the charges of “raping” other teen boys were true, then the death sentence is understandable. And many GLBT groups have rallied against the killings because those executed were presumed to be “gay.”

But does it matter what country did the killing? Would it matter if those accused were “guilty”? Could the teens who were hanged possibly have thought of themselves as “gay”? What difference should that make, anyway?

Ironically, perhaps the revelations in this issue’s News Slant, about the devastation caused by hurricane Katrina, can bring some clarity to the discussion about the Iranian executions.

Most shocking in Katrina’s aftermath was the contempt for life shown by lead-legged federal officials. As we are now learning, thousands of hurricane victims died en masse, abandoned on roofs and wharves, awaiting– for days– the help that came far too late. The same administration and Congress that shut down the federal government for a week while trying to score political points “defending” Terri Schiavo’s life, had little time to protect New Orleans’s underclass from the predictable results of a powerful storm. The result was a failure of the basic tenet of civilization: the vulnerable will be protected in times of crisis.

Indeed, the commitment to protect the weakest among us is what defines civilization, sort of a social formulation of the Golden Rule: if we were trapped by rising flood waters we’d want our fellow citizens to help us– thus, we help fellow citizens when they are similarly threatened.

Enormous social benefits flow to a people committed to caring for each other. When we value the lives of others as on par with our own, we become less fearful and more human.

Such a social safety net, wherein everyone’s life is affirmed no matter how poor or wretched they may be, has an analogy in the legal arena: civil liberties and due process. Protecting the politically vulnerable from the capricious brutality of government is akin to protecting the economically vulnerable from the capricious brutality of nature.

No hurricane victim in New Orleans deserved to die, even if it was foolishness rather than destitution that led them to not heed evacuation warnings. A civilized people rescues and protects its threatened citizens– it does not watch them starve while clucking that they should have known better.

And no one accused of any crime deserves to die, no matter how despised they may be. It does not matter what age they are, nor what their sexual predilections may be, nor what country they’re from, nor how heinous their alleged crime, nor whether they’re guilty or innocent: a civilized people does not sanction the killing of its citizens. Allowing the state to pick people to murder is a retreat from humanity– not because often the “wrong” people are often killed, but because there are no “right” people to kill.

Life is uniquely precious. Let us fight for a society wherein everyone’s life is protected from both the hangman’s noose and the government’s murderous neglect.

Pasted from <http://guidemag.com/magcontent/invokemagcontent.cfm?ID=2867AA1F-4250-4AD1-A89351DB27C7EA42>