Stinkypantz:
Ever thought, that maybe people on both sides are aware of the other person's argument so there's no need to elaborate?
I didn't bring it up; hell, I don't really know why a story about a backwards-misogynistic-religous-zealot-dog made someone immediately advocate the death penalty as a solution when such a solution is (sorry avishai), statistically speaking, nonsence.
I do respect you StinkyPantz, but you didn't have to "roll your eyes", just like I didn't have to do StatisticsBoy. I felt the need, you felt the need, me bad, you bad. I'm happy to leave it at that.
teenyuck:
When men are taught from an early age that women are worthless, they treat women as worthless.
Absolutely. This is not an intrinsic feature of Isalm. Yes, there are misogynistioc sura in the Quran, but we've all read the Bible haven't we? The main difference is that the Quran was written for an audience not too dissimilar to the Israelites, but was 'written ' 1,000-1,500 years afterwards. All the cultural changes that have changed Christianity from the misogynistic faith of the Jews to something that many people now regard as egalitarian have simply not had time to occur in Islam; we are seeing what happens if you try cramming 1,000 years into 200 years; people with a (to us) backwards culture with Reeboks and Cell phones.
The Christian church was as backwards in their treatment of women as many Islamic countries are now. In some areas (cotraceptive rights, e.g.), some Christian faiths are still backwards with regard to their consideration of people and their devotion to 'the letter' of their faith's law, rather than 'the spirit' of their faiths law. Banning condoms is not as dramatic as killing someone with a knife, but both end up with deaths and certain faiths refusal to adopt them kills FAR more people than honour killings; it's just a bureaucratic diffuse evil than a single man with a knife evil.
.. but for now, here, Pim Fortyn's statement that 'Islam is a backwards religion' is applicable to many of its adherants - unfairly perhaps to liberal Mulsims, but then liberal Muslims are as new a thing as liberal Christians were a few centuries ago. Trying to make it about religion rather than education is stopping one's ears to the pain of an awful lot of Christian women down the years.
And when I say education, I mean START EARLY; you can have a life-long misogynist if you get a boy young enough, no matter how many letters he eventually can stick after his name.
I'm glad your mum got out of that ghastly situation' one thing I feel from the very tips of my toes is that women who kill a spouse who has consistantly abused and terrorised them should walk away from court free. In Britain they've recently overturned a few cases where, shamefully, women were jailed for killing abusive spouses. There's a growing recognition that cutting the bastard's throat while he sleeps is sometimes the only way a woman feels she can escape the cycle of abuse, and is not the cold-blooded pre-meditated murder it has previously been seen as, but is rather a desperate act of self-protection.
Room 215:
The USA, for one. Sorry, but you walked RIGHT into that one; the USA won't even sign certain International Conventions as they want to remain the right to execute people for offeces commited whilst they were minors - a right that is exercised. Don't believe me? Go to Amnesty International. You might quibble over 'murder' (Simon actually said 'killing'), but if someone isn't competant enough to take out a loan before a certain age I don't see how they can be considered culpable of homicide before that age, and a judicial killing would be just as much a violation of life as whatever they did (or did not do). Judicial executions aside, as avishai points out, China (and India to a certain extent) unfortunately still value men better than women, and practise infanticide.
Then we have the deaths caused by religiously motivated doctrines on medicine; obviously an 'honour killing' is incomparably more evil, but the deaths caused by AIDS that could have been prevented by condom usage by the parents, the deaths caused by over-population caused by not using contraception, and the deaths of children due to parents withholding specific life-saving mediucal treatments can result in child that is just as dead in the name of faith.
Stacey Smith:
The lack of a death penalty certainly doesn't cause these men to murder women. I favor the death penalty but I know it won't deter them either. They are obsessed with their hatred of women. The fact that women are property to them is obvious. How dare a woman oppose them?
I'd feel better knowing they have been put to death for their crimes. Must be that revenge thing.
I agree with you as regards such men's motivation and the lack of deterent the death penalty would provide due to the motivations of such men.
I also think you're being remarkably honest; I think it's quite acceptable to admit that you'd feel better if they were put to death for their crimes; I might not agree, but I understand what you say and don't view it as 'bad' (not that you neccesarily care what I think).
I just can't get people who try to make a case for the death penalty on grounds OTHER than it makes them feel better, or to be precise, I've seen no case for the death penalty on the grounds that it reduces murders that stands up to examination.
If you (not you Stacey, I mean 'one') can't make a case for it on grounds of benefits in terms of reduction of murders or other benefits, but aren't happy to admit it makes you feel better... well, that's a quandry for you to resolve.
