By REV. RAY OWENS on Aug 4, 2013, at 2:27 AM Updated on 8/04/13 at 4:51 AM
Tell us what you think: Should Oklahoma reconsider its Stand Your Ground Law?
Laws don't just legislate human actions, laws speak volumes about the values held by the societies that create and uphold them.
In the case of the Stand Your Ground laws that have galvanized the nation in recent days, there is something quite disturbing embedded in their ethical implications.
Stand Your Ground laws, which permit the use of deadly force when a person fears being killed or seriously injured, imply a disregard for the sacredness of human life. These laws expand the right of self-defense in a way that justifies and even encourages deadly force when such force could be avoided and human life could be preserved.
Nowhere is this more evident than in the case of George Zimmerman's alleged self-defense shooting of Trayvon Martin.
Clearly, in this case, the loss of life could have been avoided. Had Zimmerman stayed in his vehicle, as law enforcement authorities had instructed him, Trayvon Martin would be alive today.
The riddling reality in this case is that greater value is placed on Zimmerman's right to self-defense than there is on Martin's worth as a human being.
This perplexing imbalance of priorities exposes a very ugly truth about the racial legacy of our nation.
To be sure, it is disingenuous to divorce this verdict from its larger historical context. The insidious irony in these events undoubtedly calls to mind our nation's history of perpetuating the perception that the lives of black people are somehow less valuable than the lives of white people.
Let's face it, if Trayvon Martin were white, he would not be dead today. He would not be dead because Zimmerman would not have perceived him to be a criminal or a threat.
However, had Martin been an unarmed white teen who was killed by an adult who deliberately pursued him, both the consciousness of the nation and the findings of the courts would have likely demanded a greater penalty for his killer. In this regard, Stand Your Ground laws pose a regressive threat to our nation's progress toward racial and human equality. They support and protect individuals who are inclined to act on perceptions informed by biases and perverted views of human worth.
This is a frightening revocation of the more life-affirming laws that impose a duty to retreat upon those who are under threat of imminent harm.
The spirit of the duty to retreat policies reflects a high valuation of human life. It forces someone to seek a non-fatal option, if available, before resorting to deadly force.
While Stand Your Ground laws expand one's right to take a life, duty to retreat laws seek to actualize the Judeo-Christian values of human worth. Simply put, that moral claim contends that all humans have equal intrinsic worth by virtue of the image of the creator etched in their personality.
This principle is a core value articulated by the architects of our democracy. They declared, "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."
These are the values toward which our laws should lead us.
We should seek and uphold legislation that encourages all citizens to act in ways that preserve and protect human life whenever it is in one's power to do so.
We should reject and repeal all laws that legalize and normalize fatal force in the name of self-defense.
If we value all humans as divinely endowed with an unalienable right to life, we must also commit ourselves to actions and laws that seek to preserve all human life as sacred and equal.
This right applies even to young black boys who wear hoodies and appear suspicious in our eyes.
It's time we open our eyes to what our laws show us about ourselves. In that regard, the moral question of the day is NOT "should you be allowed to stand your ground?" The moral question must be, "what do you stand for?"
Reader Forum
The incarceration rate in Oklahoma is among the highest in the nation with approximately 26,000 people behind bars at any given time.
The Nov. 28, 2008, Tulsa World published my Readers Forum piece, "Antietam," in which I reported on a visit my then-8-year-old grandson, Stevie, and I made to Antietam battlefield in rural Maryland.
