What if he were Muslim?
North Carolina GOP Lawmaker Calls For Bringing Back Public Hangings, Starting With Abortion Providers
By Marie Diamond (Thinkprogress)
The last legal public hanging in America took place in 1936 in Owensboro, Kentucky. The “event” attracted 20,000 people and turned into such a sickening spectacle that many credit it with ending the practice in the U.S.
But one North Carolina Republican believes that as a country we’ve grown soft since banning public hangings and is calling for them to reinstated as a deterrent to crime. If Rep. Larry Pittman had his way, “abortionists, rapists, and kidnappers” would be first in line for the gallows:
Republican Rep. Larry Pittman, who was appointed to the District 82 House seat in October, expressed his views in an email sent Wednesday to every member of the General Assembly. [...]
“We need to make the death penalty a real deterrent again by actually carrying it out. Every appeal that can be made should have to be made at one time, not in a serial manner,” Pittman wrote in the email. “If murderers (and I would include abortionists, rapists, and kidnappers, as well) are actually executed, it will at least have the deterrent effect upon them. For my money, we should go back to public hangings, which would be more of a deterrent to others, as well.”
As ThinkProgress reported, last year Republicans in South Carolina, Nebraska, and Iowa pushed legislation that would essentially legalize the murder of abortion providers. Such radical sentiments have been echoed by prominent conservatives like Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK), who said during his 2004 campaign, “I favor the death penalty for abortionists.”
January 28th, 2012 at 3:06 pm
Why not hang the people who started 2 illegal wars? How many people have they murdered on both sides? How about the warmongers (american and israeli)? They’re guilty of planning the premeditated murder of extreme amounts of people. But I go off topic, if this were a Muslim suggesting it in the US the howls of outrage would be deafening
January 28th, 2012 at 3:07 pm
The GOP is getting more and more repulsive at the time. It’s also more proof the GOP is like a Christian Taliban. That lawmaker needs to be locked up in a mental asylum.
January 28th, 2012 at 3:58 pm
Yes, loony Pittman and the right wing extremists want all babies born(since they want abortionists dead) so that they can later work (child labor which is what Newt wants) to pay the rich with their hard-earned money (any job since they don’t want people protesting for better jobs) and then drafted (since no reasonable person will volunteer anymore) to illegal wars to either die or return without a job, no health care, and no food stamps. Yes they want their country back! Only the rich, white fundamentalists will survive and the poor will become their slaves. I don’t need to be a psychic or genious to predict this.
January 28th, 2012 at 4:20 pm
Seriously??? That’s his solution??? good god what is with people??? :/
January 28th, 2012 at 4:41 pm
Public hangings? Excellent campaign fundraising idea. At five dollars a ticket they would make a killing….errr I mean they would raise a lot of money.
January 28th, 2012 at 6:00 pm
I gotta disagree with this guy.
If there is anyone worthy of the death sentence and hanging, assuming that he wants kidnappers and rapists included, then it is the political elite who are war mongerers. They have blood on their hands. Abhorrent as those crimes are, murder is worse than rape and kidnapping.
One sick logic of the Republican Right wing Christian extremists is their fanaticism against abortion. I could accept this coming from someone who regards life as sacred and doesn’t call for war, or the killing of innocents, but how do these people who are always calling for collective punishment, wars here and there, bombs and collective punishment, consider abortion a bigger crime?
January 28th, 2012 at 6:12 pm
Well it was always very popular in the Middle Ages Farlowe… then again people didn’t have TV or the internet back then. Maybe a live stream and put it on Fox News? Could be a sort of weekly segment thing, adds on either side and some breaks as they clean up the mess… I think it will work! Hey we all watch grown men charge into each other trying to get a bit of leather over a line don’t we? Or if you watch ‘American Football’ that will be ‘girly men who can’t play rugby in case they get a boo boo’ but the thing is still there. Mindless violence sells!
Not to me though, I like the cricket…
Jack
January 28th, 2012 at 8:18 pm
Abortion is murder…..but I am not too sure about bringing public hangings back….
January 28th, 2012 at 10:04 pm
In Islam, abortion is legal in cases of incest and rape. Even Islam, in its most extreme form, is too the left of the crazy Christian right.
January 29th, 2012 at 1:34 am
Senor,
Well personally I am agnostic but I do not think that abortion should be allowed, even in cases of incest or rape. It is not the child’s fault in those cases but rather the fault of whoever raped the woman. Also, in cases of incest, the child still deserves a right to their life….
January 29th, 2012 at 1:41 am
Personally I am not opposed to public hangings, but they should not be a source of entertainment…
If anything the people should be terrified and be thinking: “Boy, I sure don’t want this to happen to me” so that they will feel less of an inclination to commit the crime….
In sum, public hangings should serve their functions as a deterrent, not as a source of entertainment.
January 29th, 2012 at 2:10 am
http://www.chomsky.info/articles/20100702.htm
January 29th, 2012 at 3:25 am
QualifiedAgnostic Says:
Abortion is murder…..
If abortion is murder, it would not be legal.
January 29th, 2012 at 3:49 am
Senor,
Also if a mothers life is in danger, and a doctor says one or either will survive, it is allowed then too, usually if the mother is not able to make the decision (in hospital for example) her closest relative, husband probably has to make the decision.
I believe they permit it because the soul doesn’t enter the fetus, for a while. However these beliefs differ amongst differing madhabs in Islam.
In any case, it is permissable, not mandatory, so ulitimately if a Muslim woman feels that she doesn’t want an abortion even if she was raped, then she doesn’t have to have one.
But you are right about the Christian Right. They views on abortion, marriage, sexuality, adultery, family life differ greatly from Islam, primarily because they do not regard what they call the ‘old testament laws’ as binding. If they did, they would be following laws similar to what the Jews do, observant ones anyway, (Halacha) which is almost identical to Sharia.
Even the most conservative Muslim madhabs are liberal compared to the Christian Right, if you look at the practices and rights, however these same people say the it is Muslims who are oppressing, because of superficial things like niqab and hijab, thinking of it as some kind of oppression.
January 29th, 2012 at 8:24 am
I wouldn’t mind public hangings for rapists, murderers, kidnappers and child molesters but this being the “what if he were Muslim” segment, I agree if it was a elected Muslim representative saying this, this would have been a case of severe Muslim Sharia.
January 29th, 2012 at 12:27 pm
> “In Islam, abortion is legal in cases of incest and rape.”
I’m not so sure in case of incest, but I was definitely taught that only one case of abortion can be legal in Islam, and that is in case the life of the mother is in danger, in such case thus the mother is allowed to prioritize her own life over that of the baby. Therefore I don’t think abortion is legal in Islam in case of rape, I don’t even think it’s legal in case of incest. I think in case (God forbid) rape or incest happens, and the mother don’t want to, nor can’t take care of the baby, then giving him/her for adoption will be what she’s suppose to do(Islamically).
January 29th, 2012 at 12:45 pm
and these idiots are fearful of Sharia?? These guys want hangings now? Next they’ll want stoning and beheading…we should be fearful of these extremists!
January 29th, 2012 at 1:28 pm
Black Infidel,
Just because it’s legal doesn’t mean it isn’t murder….
It’s legality depends on other things. To say that it does not constitute an act of murder is like saying that racial segregation does not constitute an act of racism, since that was at one time legal too….
January 29th, 2012 at 2:36 pm
Qualified Agnostic: Do you realize that almost everyone carries at least eight lethal genes, and that the offspring of an incestuous mating stands a good chance of being a freak? You’re right, it’s not a child’s fault if it is born of a mismating, and that is why no child should be forced into a life that is certain of a life of abuse, privation, deformity, abandonment, or infanticide. If you can’t tell the difference between an egg and a person, watch what you eat for breakfast.
January 29th, 2012 at 2:39 pm
Abortion isn’t murder if the fetus doesn’t have the soul. Now it’s debatable as to when it has a soul, after 40 days? after 2 mths? after 120 days? To me, 120 days seems too late to abort unless your life is in danger.
January 29th, 2012 at 2:45 pm
Geji, I do not know the legal technicalities on every school of thought, but I do know contientious Muslim physicians performed abortions on Bangladeshi rape victims in the wake of the Indo-Pakistani war. This was not for the sake of the victims alone, though their hardship was great. Babies born live in such cases often had their brains dashed out at birth, or were instantly drowned, or- in the worst cases- were dismembered as they screeched, sometimes by their own mothers, as they were seen as nothing but an enemy garrison left by the oppressor. The rivers and streams stank with them, and for some time after, it was the better part of valor to avoid fish.
January 29th, 2012 at 2:49 pm
watch what you eat for breakfast”
ewwwww…lol
January 29th, 2012 at 6:10 pm
Reynardine,
1) Just because there was incestuous sex doesn’t mean that the child will be deformed. Also even if it was, corrective surgery/therapeutical aid and services can enable the child to live a good life. The child still has a right to their life. Also, I don’t exactly know if addressing these children as “freaks” is exactly appropriate either. There is no such thing as a freak-we are human beings who deserve dignity, respect, and a recognition that our lived are sacred.
I am not talking about the egg….I am talking about the zygote. Once the egg and sperm fuse together, then life has come into existence and from there must not be destroyed since it is sacred.
And if the mother was a victim of rape and there is also a fear that the child could potentially be abused, then the mother needs psychological help first and when the child is born give the child to adoption services….
January 29th, 2012 at 6:13 pm
khushboo,
Abortion is murder on the basis that it is depriving the child of their future potential in their lives. It is robbing life from them. Life starts when metabolic functions appear, which is at the beginning of conception.
January 29th, 2012 at 6:44 pm
A debate about abortion is a tangent here. What’s relevant to this topic is that abortion in the US is legal, and what this moron is advocating is akin to vigilantism and to impose his own justice.
January 29th, 2012 at 6:51 pm
QualifiedAgnostic
Your belief is fine for you and others who believe it. For those that do not, you cannot impose it on them.
In a nutshell, nobody should force a woman who believes what you say to have an abortion if she doesn’t want one. Your own beliefs dictate what is murder and what is not where abortion is concerned. Obviously those beliefs differ according to whether you are atheist, agnostic, or follow a religion. The differing religions have different interpretations.
January 29th, 2012 at 7:27 pm
I am sure that people who know what is right and what is wrong- regardless of their religion know what to stand up for and should know that depriving an individual of their future is evil. Sorry but that is a matter of fact, not of personal belief. If I was trying to impose my beliefs on you I would be saying stuff like “you can’t be sure whether any gods/God exists or not!” etc. But you see, I am not doing that here. What I am doing here is defending an axiom of human existence, that is a self-evident truth- that all human beings deserve a right to life and to dignity. Me speaking out against abortion is equivalent to speaking out against stuff like theft or cheating or pedophilia etc. If I spoke out against those, and people agreed with me, then why not abortion too since that constitutes murder and is thus a self evident evil as well?
January 29th, 2012 at 8:22 pm
Qualified Agnostic, I agree with you on this issue. I too believe that life starts at conception and that abortion is wrong and equivalent to murder. But at the same time, I accept I cannot change everyone else’s mind so we just have to let everyone else do what they want to do. If a woman does abort her baby, that is her choice, even though it’s wrong. All we have the right to do is not have an abortion when in the same situation and speak out against abortions when we can.
I find it interesting that despite being an agnostic, you are pro-life. I always thought atheists and agnostics had no problem with abortion. A quick google search showed me that even this community is divided on the issue.
January 29th, 2012 at 9:39 pm
JT,
Thanks. Yes, while unfortunately right now there is little we can do, we can however press through legislation to to make abortion illegal. At the same time, the wide availability of support groups for the mother, and focusing on prenatal care especially. While of course I acknowledge I cannot change everyone’s mind on abortion, just like I can’t always change the mind of those who support and engage in pedophilia or animal cruelty- but nonetheless I can support those who do wish to eradicate those evils from our society.
Yes, and I am an Agnostic. I am sympathetic to theism, but regardless of whether or not God and/or god(s) exist I cannot seem to make my mind up. Nevertheless, I am convinced that there does exist an absolute morality- an imperative universal command that we as human beings have to follow in dealings with ourselves and with others, and one of these dictates by that absolute morality is that we value and uphold life.
January 29th, 2012 at 10:10 pm
Pro-lifers are a small minority in the atheists and agnostics category.
I’m an atheist and I’m pro-choice and no problem with abortion of course. I’m also childfree(I don’t have kids and don’t want them at all). I got a vasectomy this past November.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Childfree
January 29th, 2012 at 11:08 pm
Abortionists first, homosexuals next. And they complain about Iran… lol
January 30th, 2012 at 12:20 am
Guys, Speaking of Loon Politics, did any of you hear about this?
The Tea Party, Slavery and The Inconvenient Truth, A Rant
January 30th, 2012 at 11:13 am
Muslimes should have abortions! Less leftist libtard Obots to grow up and vote for chicago jesus barry sotero the Marxist Kenyan moon rock worshiper!
January 30th, 2012 at 12:06 pm
@Will Jenks
Get a life!
January 30th, 2012 at 2:49 pm
@”will Jenks”: You’re nearly illiterate, aren’t you?
January 31st, 2012 at 4:04 pm
public hangings? are you serious? if this dude was a muslim….we would not hear the end of it. Spencer and Geller will bring up how muslims are still living in the 14th century. ugh
February 2nd, 2012 at 10:31 am
I’ll bet his a bible believing Christian. “What about thou shalt not kill” and “turn the other cheek?” These religious nut bags of whatever religion make me sick. Abortion is just such a non-issue in Europe and yes even Israel. What people do with the bodies is their business as long as others aren’t harmed.
February 13th, 2012 at 4:18 pm
I don’t see anything wrong and I don’t think this should opposed. Why is everyone so alarmed.