World gone wrong

Are we losing respect for human life?

As I write this I have a heavy and sickening feeling in the pit of my stomach. I am admittedly close to tears and that is not something to which I am accustomed. The day I write this, a fifteen year old boy has been declared brain dead after being shot twice by fellow student in an American high school. The killer’s reason? Authorities are suggesting that the fact that the victim, Lawrence King, was an out gay student may have been a motive. I did not know this boy, I live on the other side of the world and yet in a way I know this boy as I knew myself.

Lawrence was apparently quite flamboyant, often wearing makeup, etc. and this was an irritation to some other male students but does this justify taking his life? The suspect is only fourteen years old, how can he have learned to hate so much? How can he at such a tender age have lost the very basic respect for human life? How could a fourteen year old, barely a teenager come to the horrific conclusion that murder was better than being gay and effeminate?

These questions boggle the mind whilst the monstrosity of the crime crushes the heart. What about Lawrence’s family, what about his mother and his father, his brothers and sisters? What about his future? Destroyed in an instant, as of course is the life of the accused, but at least Lawrence didn’t take a life, he just lost his own.

What is it about America and indeed the world today, in which we have never had stronger movements for animal rights yet the value of human life seems to get cheaper by the day? If a celebrity wears fur to an event there is outrage in the media and protests by groups such as PETA, but we seem to be almost accustomed to hearing about high school shootings or suicide bombings. We don’t sign books of condolences, we don’t have moments of silence, to be honest we often don’t even have clue these things are happening.

Today there is a church in America with the sole goal of protesting at funerals of dead soldiers and murder victims because they either defended a “fag-nation” or were murdered because they were gay. These people do not believe in the great principle which has separated our period of humanity from eons past, that human life is a wondrous and sacred thing and that no one ever, for any reason, has the right to take it away.

We may take this for granted but it is an ideal under attack by both madmen and states alike. Not everyone believes human life is a sacred thing. In the Middle East women are routinely stoned and hung in the name of religion. In America too the state endorses the death penalty wholesale and it enjoys continuing popular support, those who oppose it are seen as liberal lunatics!

We must never give an inch to these blood mongers, we must never allow ourselves to forget that murder is not a normal everyday crime and we must never ever forget that human life in all its forms is our greatest gift. May god have mercy on all our souls.

By: John Dunphy