Rather, it is the dignity and sanctity of every life, the fear and trembling we should feel at the prospect of taking even a single life, whether by murder or state-sanctioned penalty, and, finally, the absolute lack of comprehension Mr. Bush has shown for the meaning of the term he has chosen as his own mantle: compassionate.
There are more than 70 countries where it is illegal to be LGBT, eight where state-sanctioned death penalty is the punishment, and often times, even in countries where being yourself is lawful, many LGBT people are treated as second-class citizens.
Like the movements against lynching, state-sanctioned segregation and the death penalty before it, today's movement is part of a centuries-long struggle for racial justice.
We have engaged in so much state-sanctioned violence through our wars, death penalty and other behaviors until we think that it is an acceptable tool.
This much has been thrown in sharp relief by slew of slow, torturous, and botched executions carried out with experimental lethal cocktails in the wake of Europe's ban on the sale for use in executions of pentobarbital (the anesthetic typically used by death penalty states in the administration of state-sanctioned murder).
Though questions about the death penalty previously focused on the morality of state-sanctioned killing, more attention is now being paid to the ability of government to administer the system fairly -- without racial, geographic or socioeconomic inequities -- and in a way that minimizes the risk of executing anyone innocent.
There is much to think about when it comes to the death penalty and what many of us feel is state-sanctioned murder, but what frustrates and angers me the most is how the families are once again brought into the pain, grief, and sadness that accompanies murder and the violent loss of a loved one.
Europe has also outlawed the death penalty -- and initiated a human rights campaign against state-sanctioned executions in the U.S. 2014 was the year the United States began to wake up to the problems in our criminal justice system.
It amounts to state-sanctioned discrimination.
Thailand's seafood industry: state-sanctioned slavery?
This time, the violence is state-sanctioned.
