Death Penalty

My first year at Wasson High School I was introduced to one of the most heart breaking plays (that makes me cry every time) I have ever seen and it is called, The Laramie Project. This was a big deal at the time since my school is located in the fourth my conservative city in the United States of America, Colorado Springs. My drama teacher fought many years to bring this play to my high school because of the important message of this play.

The story is about a college student named Matthew Shepard who was a gay student whom was taken out into the middle of no where to be beaten, tortured, and left for dead tied to a fence. A jogger found him in a coma and an ambulance rushed him to a hospital where he died six days later. After this tragedy the community rallied around this death to get justice for Matthew Shepard. Once they found the two men, Aaron McKinney and Russell Henderson, whom killed him they were arrested and convicted of two consecutive life sentences. These two kids pleaded guilty to avoid the death penalty but the death penalty was sought. This makes sense since even this boy was gay he was white. The Authors of Queer (In)justice points this out in their novel saying that a similar case brought different results. In this other case the young man was black not white and there was no press pressure to make sure justice was served.

You maybe be wondering how this connects to the death penalty and it applies to it because as we can see that if you are white and gay a person would receive justice but if a person is black and gay they will not. Then we flip it to a person being considered for the death penalty and then sentenced to death. In Colorado right now there are three men on death row and they are all black. We had just a had case where a white man, James Holmes, who went into a movie theater and killed or injured so many people. He did not receive the death penalty. This shows the bias of the death penalty when sexual orientation is not involved but once you add sexual orientation into the mix a person is going to be more likely to be given the death penalty. For example, in Queer (In)justice there are two women Bernina Mata and Wanda Jean Allen.  Bernina Mata a Latina lesbian who killed a white male and Wanda Jean Allen a African American lesbian who killed her lover. They are both given the death penalty because of the their race and their sexual orientation. They do not fit into the binary of normal and normal behavior. Bernie a Latina women killed a white man making it so much worse for her because she killed, what society likes to think, the superior race. If a person of a non white race kills a white person they are almost always to be given the death penalty due to the biases of a judicial system. This shows up when it is not an LGBTQ case. So add in sexual orientation a person will almost always be given the death penalty because as the authors of Queer (In)justice put it, "sending a homosexual to the penitentiary certainly is a bad punishment." Which is a lie because sending a person to jail is not fun, it will not be a good time. It is a horrible place to go and to say it will not be a bad punishment because they are gay (implying they can have all the sex they want with other men) is false. They are going to be targeted and more likely hurt than to have a good time (i.e. sex). Sending people to their death is not a good option. 

So, how should the LGBTQ responded to this issue? The death penalty is a touchy subject because many people believe in it, a life for a life. But is it really affecting those who are the minority of our society. It is not only an injustice to those who receive it but to the families of the murder and the victims. I know it seems wrong to look and the murder or the family of the murder but is important. Many of those who receive the death penalty are not right in the head take for example Wanda Jean Allen, whom I mentioned earlier, when she was young she was hit by a car and later in her life stabbed in the temple, which damaged her mental state and lead to lower IQ. She was not mentally sane and yet we killed her because she was a lesbian and an African American woman. It is an issue for anyone who cares about people. The death penalty does not lead to closure or relief for the victims family. It drags out their loved ones murder and they have to relive it over and over instead of being able to move on.  So not only does the LGBTQ need to stop the death penalty for their own people but for every person because in the end an injustice to one group is an injustice to everyone.