Republicans are pushing to expand the death penalty

jeffw@lemmy.worldmod to News@lemmy.world – 160 points –
Republicans are pushing to expand the death penalty
salon.com
27

This is a gateway to murdering LGBT+ people with government allowing it.

First, you give child rape the death penalty.

Then you classify LGBT living their lives as themselves and being honest with children about that as "child abuse."

It's just a handful more steps before you're taking kids from LGBT couples and putting them to death.

That's what this looks like to me anyway, especially paired with Project 2025.

Expand the death penalty, and then further expand it to include people you don't like, by dumping them into the same category as child abusers.

Nevermind that its always fucking conservatives and religious people who fucking rape kids. It's never lupus a drag queen.

Two steps: child sodomy rape = death penalty. Look at those two 17 year old boys having sex! Statutory rape. Guess they both die now.

For statutory rape, one has to be below the age of consent. Also, so many states have the age of consent at 16 and 17

Federal is still at 18, I'm mostly sure, but they don't really get involved unless it fall under their jurisdiction; mainly when interstate commerce is in-play such as internet porn.

But then what about high school couples that are 18 or 19 with 17? Most states have a Romeo & Juliet clause for near age couples to ignore that but I've heard of people getting arrested at 18 for cp because their 17 year old gf sent them nudes. (Interstate commerce = internet = federal jurisdiction)

I don’t believe there is such a thing as federal age of consent

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ages_of_consent_in_the_United_States

The wiki page says right on it that under 18 is considered a minor for federal and forbids any interstate transport for illicit sexual activities. So any pornography (even within same state if internet/messengers are used), and any sexual acts that would be illegal where teaveled to (which could be determined by the state's age of consent instead of the federal term of minor).

I was more trying to point out that some stuff that states find legal could get pulled into being illegal on the federal level in certain cases.

Age of majority is not the same as age of consent. That just means if you are from a state where consent is 17, you can’t bring a 16 year old to a state with an age of consent of 16 to have sex with them

I remember someone on reddit had a very, very long list of Republicans doing something sexual with minors or towards minors (like driving to a school and jacking off). So, can we expect some friendly fire here?

You Republicans really think you want to start executing sex criminals?

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2024/2/2/2221200/-Republican-Sexual-Predators-Abusers-and-Enablers-Pt-50

1250 names as of February 2nd.

Because nothing says ‘freedom’ quite like state sanctioned murder

Death penalty isn't necessary at all anymore, as there isn't any risk to society in keeping them imprisoned. In the past we were sometimes forced to execute because there weren't viable long term prisons. That's the only legitimate need for the death penalty to exist in my opinion.

I can't imagine it works as a deterrent given the psychopathic nature of these crimes.

I suppose it could bring some kind of peace to a victim of aggravated rape, that their rapist had paid the ultimate price so that would be nice. I'm not sure it works that way though or if it's a healthy coping mechanism.

Overall it feels like it should be a relic of the past.

There's not enough evidence to prove that it is a deterrent.

https://deathpenaltyinfo.org/policy-issues/deterrence

However, I would suggest the fact that there are still plenty of murders in the U.S., especially when compared to many countries without capital punishment, shows that it isn't one that works all that well.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intentional_homicide_rate

People aren't thinking about consequences when they commit murder, so it doesn't really matter how severe they are.

Could they also include decision makers at big companies if their decisions are proven to be criminally negligent, self-serving, and result directly in a large number of deaths? I'm thinking like Boeing people.