So what is the point?
For over a year now KCADP has been begging, pleading, imploring, beseeching
and entreating religious leaders and you to allow us to hold round table discussions on the
death penalty in churches, schools and homes. Anywhere.
We have learned that people do not want to talk about the death penalty.
Sometimes they even get angry when you try to persuade them to talk about it.
There’s a good reason for that: once the death penalty does get talked about, it’s
basic immorality and wildly unjust application come screaming through.
However, once people do start talking about the death penalty, it’s hard to get
them to stop talking about it.
Case in point: a group of a dozen people in a basement room of a Louisville
church on a steamy Sunday morning in June.
It became pretty clear (this is sometimes, though by no means always, the case)
that this crowd was on our side. These folks not only were against the death penalty, they
had taken the time to think about it. Which prompted one man to bring up the gritty issue
which really stirred up the debate.
What is the point of painfully pushing your point, group by group around the
state, when said groups are often heavily populated by the faithful?
The old preaching to the choir syndrome. Your point is moot before it’s made.
Why bother?
Members of the group roundly challenged the man’s cynicism, inviting him to
come up with a better venue to bring pro-death penalty people to the table to talk (he
could not). They also reminded him that it has always been struggling minorities who
have effected significant social change.
Another point also became clear, however: that while there is a very large choir
out there singing along with us, it’s not really with us. Officially. Publicly. On the
record. Only a couple of people in that basement room were members of KCADP. And
those two were among the very few who have responded to our plea to get us invited into
their church.
And now the main point.
We can’t make our point in all the places it needs to be made, with people who
need to hear it, unless the members of our choir join us and get us invited inside.
If you know someone who is against the death penalty and is nota KCADP
member, get them to join.
Get us invited to your church, school, club, any gathering anywhere, to talk about
the death penalty and bring along friends who are pro-death penalty. We can’t promise
conversions, but we’ll certainly give them something to think about.
That’s the point.
