{"id":7071,"date":"2013-02-15T12:59:33","date_gmt":"2013-02-15T17:59:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/uusj.net\/wp1\/?p=7071"},"modified":"2013-02-15T12:59:33","modified_gmt":"2013-02-15T17:59:33","slug":"clergy-press-conference-speech-and-maryland-general-assembly-testimony-of-rev-megan-foley-sugarloaf-uu-on-death-penalty-repeal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/uusj.net\/wp1\/clergy-press-conference-speech-and-maryland-general-assembly-testimony-of-rev-megan-foley-sugarloaf-uu-on-death-penalty-repeal\/","title":{"rendered":"Clergy Press Conference Speech and Maryland General Assembly Testimony of Rev. Megan Foley, Sugarloaf UU, on Death Penalty Repeal"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"no-death-penalty-sign-th\"<\/a>Clergy Press Conference Speech<\/p>\n

I come to the work of repealing Maryland\u2019s death penalty from two different paths.<\/p>\n

From one path, I am a Unitarian Universalist minister, and Unitarian Universalists stand on the side of love.\u00a0 We stand on the side of love even when the person we\u2019re standing beside is hard to love.\u00a0 We know that every person has a seed of God inside of them, even when we can\u2019t see it, and we know that we are all foundationally connected to one another.\u00a0 From this perspective, it doesn\u2019t make any sense for the government to be in the business of killing anyone, no matter what they have done.\u00a0 Unitarian Universalists believe that it\u2019s time that Maryland stood on the side of love, too.<\/p>\n

From the other path, I am also a family member of a murder victim.\u00a0 My father was serving his country as a Foreign Service officer when he was shot and killed in front of his house in Amman, Jordan, by al-Qaeda operatives.\u00a0 His killers were sentenced to death.\u00a0 Most of them have been executed.<\/p>\n

I am probably one of the few people in this room who have experienced the execution of my loved one\u2019s killers.\u00a0 Perhaps you have wondered if maybe what they always say is true, and that execution of murderers brings a sense of closure, of justice, of peace to the family of the one murdered.\u00a0 Let me assure you, execution does not bring any of those things.\u00a0 The horror I experienced upon my father\u2019s death was compounded by the horror I felt when his killers were put to death.\u00a0 What was most terrible about my father\u2019s murder was knowing that people I love can be suddenly and brutally destroyed.\u00a0 I was struck and horrified by a world that seemed suddenly to have gone awry.\u00a0 When I saw the faces of my father\u2019s killers, I realized that they too were dearly loved by someone.\u00a0 Someone would be grieving their deaths.\u00a0 And the rage that killed my father would only increase.<\/p>\n

Martin Luther King told us that the ultimate weakness of violence is that it is a descending spiral, begetting the very thing it seeks to destroy. Instead of diminishing evil, it multiplies it.\u00a0 As a minister and the daughter of a murder victim, I work to diminish evil, not multiply it.\u00a0 Maryland, I am sure, also wants to be in the business of diminishing evil and not multiplying it.\u00a0 May the years ahead of us bring a world where evil is weakened and love stands strong.\u00a0 Repealing Maryland\u2019s death penalty will put us on that path.\u00a0 May it be so.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Testimony 2-14-13<\/p>\n

I am the Reverend Megan Foley.\u00a0 I am the minister of the Sugarloaf Congregation of Unitarian Universalists in Germantown, Maryland, and I am representing the Unitarian Universalist Legislative Ministry of Maryland today as well.<\/p>\n

I am testifying today as the daughter of a murder victim.\u00a0 My father, Laurence Foley, was serving as a Foreign Service officer when he was shot and killed in front of his house in Amman, Jordan in 2002 by members of an al-Qaeda cell.\u00a0 His killers were sentenced to death and were subsequently executed.<\/p>\n

I am one of the very few people you\u2019ll hear from today who has actually experienced the execution of my loved one\u2019s killers.<\/p>\n

I often hear legislators who have not yet made up their minds about repeal say that they might like to reserve the right to execute killers if what those killers have done is particularly egregious.\u00a0 It\u2019s as if the death penalty is a gift that the state of Maryland might be able to offer to the family members of victims to compensate them for their loss.<\/p>\n

Please hear me when I tell you from personal experience \u2013 and I\u2019m also speaking to the other family members of victims who might be in this room, who may also want to know \u2013 please hear me when I tell you that execution of killers does not bring any of the things it\u2019s advertised to bring.\u00a0 Having my father\u2019s killers executed did not bring me a sense of closure, or a sense of justice, or a sense of peace.\u00a0 I did not feel that things had been made fair.\u00a0 In fact, the execution of those men made me feel far worse.<\/p>\n

You see, more than anything else, I hated the capricious violence that took my father\u2019s life.\u00a0 I wanted \u2013 and I want now \u2013 I want the world to be a place where fathers are safe from the murderous schemes of others.\u00a0 To me, to kill his killers is more violence, a deeper descent into horror, another wrong step down a terrible path.\u00a0\u00a0 The death penalty is not a gift that the state of Maryland gives to families of victims. It never can be.\u00a0 Killing does not heal.\u00a0 It does nothing but wound us all even more.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve been reflecting on some words that Martin Luther King wrote:<\/p>\n

The ultimate weakness of violence is that it is a descending spiral, begetting the very thing it seeks to destroy. Instead of diminishing evil, it multiplies it. Through violence you may murder the liar, but you cannot murder the lie, nor establish the truth. Through violence you may murder the hater, but you do not murder hate. In fact, violence merely increases hate.<\/i><\/p>\n

This is what I found to be true when my father\u2019s killers were killed.\u00a0 I wanted to kill hate, to kill the lie.\u00a0 That\u2019s what would have made me feel better. Killing the hater or the liar is not at all the same thing.\u00a0 That\u2019s making the hate worse.<\/p>\n

I wasn\u2019t a minister yet when this happened to my family, but I became one soon after.\u00a0 As a minister, it\u2019s my job to say things like this to people and encourage them to remember the mechanism by which we make the world a less likely place to lose a father or a husband or a child before his time.<\/p>\n

As legislators, though, it\u2019s in your hands that this work gets done.\u00a0 I hope and pray that you\u2019ll do your part to make our world a safer place for all of us, because that\u2019s your job.\u00a0 I believe if you repeal Maryland\u2019s death penalty then we\u2019ll be a step closer.<\/p>\n

Thank you for your attention.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I am probably one of the few people in this room who have experienced the execution of my loved one\u2019s killers<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[1573,1492,919],"class_list":["post-7071","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-maryland","tag-death-penalty","tag-maryland","tag-repeal"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/uusj.net\/wp1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7071","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/uusj.net\/wp1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/uusj.net\/wp1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/uusj.net\/wp1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/uusj.net\/wp1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7071"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/uusj.net\/wp1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7071\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7072,"href":"https:\/\/uusj.net\/wp1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7071\/revisions\/7072"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/uusj.net\/wp1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7071"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/uusj.net\/wp1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7071"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/uusj.net\/wp1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7071"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}