The death penalty isn’t offensive but my gosh that art sure is!

March 16, 2007

Dallas Morning News | News for Dallas, Texas | Texas Southwest

AUSTIN — A state lawmaker removed two pieces of art from a Capitol exhibit organized by a group opposed to the death penalty because he found the images “extremely inappropriate and highly objectionable.”

Rep. Borris Miles, D-Houston, took issue with a painting of a man hanging from a rope and an illustration of a man tied to an electric chair with the inscription “Doing God’s Work.”

“We should not prevent the display of art,” Miles said Tuesday. “But there have to be limits.”

I saw this a few days ago and I have been trying to come up with something witty to say about it but in the end it sort of speaks for itself. We, as Texan’s, are all for the death penalty but oh my gosh, seeing art depicting it is just offensive. Why? Is it because we really don’t mind the idea that we are killing people but we don’t want to see it? We don’t want to be reminded that the modern day death penalty is no different than lynching was a hundred years ago or stoning was five hundred years ago. We have rationalized the death penalty to a point that in our minds it is clean and innocent and has none of the overtones that we think of when we look down our noses at those barbaric ancestors that stoned people and drowned witches. We should be able to look at art depicting our most barbaric act as a modern society without being offended as we vote to expand the death penalty. Art is supposed to evoke emotion and if you find your emotion is repulsion when viewing a piece that depicts the death penalty then maybe you should sit down and think about how you really feel about the death penalty not put it out of your mind by silencing the art.

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