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 urder
a bunch of people in your family. Take long enough to perform the
multiple killings so that it's plain that the killings were not
a momentary passion. Are you the victim?
Consider Nikolay Soltys, currently on the FBI's most-wanted list
for murdering seven people: his three-year-old son, his pregnant
wife, two cousins (aged 9 and 10), and his aunt and uncle. Nobody
defends those heinous acts. Nobody offers excuses about how tough
it is to be an immigrant, to support an extended family, to cope
with job-related stresses, or the like. Even though there is speculation
that money problems helped push Soltys over the edge, nobody is
claiming that the murders are "society's fault" because
society isn't supportive enough of fathers of small children. Instead,
Soltys is accurately described as a "monster."
Imagine the
outrage if a "fathers' rights" group formed a legal defense
fund for Soltys, claiming, "One of our fatherly beliefs is
to be there for other men." Imagine the outrage if a Ukrainian-American
group organized a candlelight vigil for Soltys, claiming that America's
selfish failure to provide enough social welfare programs was responsible
for driving Soltys to perpetrate the crime.
Soltys's victims were four children and three adults. Now consider
another murderer, who systematically killed five children: Andrea
Yates. Both Nikolay Soltys and Andrea Yates were, on some level,
demented; for only a demented person would commit such wicked acts.
One of them lured the final victim — a three-year-old boy —
to his death by enticing him with toys. The other captured the final
victim — a seven-year-old boy — by chasing him through
the house as he fled for his life, and then dragging him to a bathtub
to hold head under water and watch him drown.
Yet despite
the similarities of Soltys and Yates, commentators like Anna Quindlen
and Katie Couric rush to explain her actions, but not his, as the
result of the stresses of parenthood. It's society's fault, supposedly.
The Texas chapter
of the National Organization Women has actually started a legal
defense fund for Yates, the Andrea Pia Yates Support Coalition.
The group plans a candlelight vigil for her on September 12, before
her competency hearing in state court. "One of our feminist
beliefs is to be there for other women," says Deborah Bell,
President of the Texas chapter of NOW.
Motherhood and fatherhood can both be very stressful. But that's
not even a good excuse for abandoning one's small children by running
off with a paramour. It's certainly no excuse for killing children.
Why the double standard for Soltys and Yates?
Perhaps it's the soft bigotry of low expectations. On the one hand,
NOW, Couric, and Quindlen tell us that everything men can do, women
can do just as well — in fact, better, because women are morally
superior. So if the percentage of female chief financial officers
at Fortune 500 companies, the percentage of Navy admirals, the percentage
of physics professors, or the percentage of any other profession
is less than 50% female, the only explanation must be unjust discrimination
against capable women.
But on the other hand, women supposedly can't be expected to live
up to the most basic moral standards.
In many countries — including Great Britain, Canada, Italy,
and Australia — infanticide
laws allow women to kill their child in the first year of his
or her life. Some allow the mother to kill all her children, providing
that one child hasn't yet celebrated a first birthday. The killer
need then only show that the "balance of her mind was disturbed"
by childbirth and having a baby in the house — and what mother
or father couldn't prove that? Then, the woman can only be
convicted of manslaughter, rather than murder. The practical result
is the child-killer ends up with probation and counseling, rather
than prison.
Fortunately, in Texas as well as the rest of the United States,
child-killers like Mrs. Yates must prove insanity (typically defined
as the inability to distinguish right from wrong), rather than the
laughably easy standard of being "disturbed" by the stresses
of a baby.
Many other countries sneer at the United States for imposing the
death penalty. Given the worldwide hullabaloo over the execution
of Timothy McVeigh — who murdered 169 people in cold blood
— we can expect even greater caterwauling should justice prevail
and the child-killing mass murderer Andrea Yates be executed. "You're
executing a mother!" the foreign press and politicians will
scream.
But which society really fosters a culture of death: the society
that tolerates infanticide, or the society that does not?
Which organization
is really pro-child: the National Organization for Women, which
supports women who kill their children, or the National Rifle Association,
which supports women who protect their children?
In the conflict
between civilization and savagery, the gun-totin', murderer-executin'
State of Texas turns out to be the real defender of human dignity,
against a cultural "elite" which has progressed from defending
ninth-month abortions to defending the murder of children —
provided, of course, that the murderer is the mother rather than
the father.
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