Adam Bendetto also blogs at his MySpace page. If you would like to be a guest blogger for Dane101.com, drop us a line at "editor (at) dane101.com" We have room for everyone.

On Nov. 7th if WI decides to vote to keep gay people as second class citizens and if WI votes to bring in the Death Penalty I'm going to say, "O Great! now I have to cut my tattoo off the way Russell Crowe cut his Roman Legionare symbol off in the Gladiator. O Great, that's just how I want to spend an afternoon."

Wisconsin has never had the death penalty. We never had it, why would we want it now?

I consider this the first hallmark of a failing educational system because the only way you can support the death penalty is if you don't understand the reasoning behind why Wisconsin has Never had the death penalty.

Of course, the Republicans have cut school funding at the Federal, State and Local level so much that it's about time they got some pay back on their systematic dumbing down of our citizens.

Back when schools were well funded and teachers had the room to do some actual teaching with out having to pepare kids for standardized tests.... back in that time I was taught the primary reason to keep governments out of the business of executing people is that the death penality is a tool for corrupt governments to slice away its political enemies.

But there are other reasons, say the teachings of Jesus that say we should turn another cheek. And don't forget there's also that 10 Commandment.. umm... how does it go... hummm... let me see here, "Thou shall not kill."

I know, it's a tough one for the religious zealots to understand in any language, time period, or religion for that matter.

Ofcourse, Wisconsin, has held a scandinavian tradtion of keeping cool about religion and focusing more on helping their friends and neighbors get though hard times and cold winters.

***

It occured to me last night that everything we, and our government does, serves to either make people more humane or to demean them.

The best people I know make the people around them, everyone around them, more human. They work to understand people as people and make them better people. Which is why the humanities are important- they help us understand eachother. The more we listen to one another the more human we become.

That's usually how it works. The opposite is when people treat eachother as steryotypes, or as obsticles to some greater goal. The worst people start wars and in doing so basically say, "Human life isn't worth anything; the enemy is always less than human. They are terrorists who want to destroy democracy."

Well, Wisconsin has a choice. It can say that all people are equal people and all human love and families ought to be seen as equal by our government or they can vote for a constitional ban on gay marriage.

And they have the choice to say that a government can extinguish the life of one of the citizens it has vowed to protect. But I don't know that there's another way to demean a person in a democracy more than to write them a death sentence.

Please remember to vote on tuesday. It's about who we are as people and I want to continue to be proud when I say I'm from Wisconsin. Vote "No" for both proposals.

When there is no justice there is no peace. Which also means that when there is an endless war there is no justice. It's time to turn the tide against dehumanization. Time to belive people are people. Time to vote "No." on both of the ballot measures Tuesday.

Peace.

Adam Bendetto also blogs at his MySpace page. If you would like to be a guest blogger for Dane101.com, drop us a line at

We have room for everyone.