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A bit over ten years ago, WNYC, the New York metro National Public Radio affiliate, broadcast a few spotty reports of a “possible” serial killer, or killers, dumping bodies on Gilgo Beach in Long Island. These reports struck me as weirdly non-committal. It was as if the reporters were reading only every other line of a coherent narrative. A possible serial killer? Multiple human remains were found on and near Gilgo Beach. Five of them were the remains of people known to be young, female prostitutes. Four were wrapped in camouflaged hunter’s burlap. Wasn’t that enough to reveal the workings of a serial killer?
And why did these reports not voice greater urgency? Where was the expected, fervent assurance from heroic, authoritative officials vowing to get up early and work late, to do everything they could to stop the fiend in his grisly tracks? It sounded as if Long Island’s protectors and defenders were hiding out in their offices, and if they got any reports of a monster dragging bodies down Main Street at noon they’d check their desk calendars and take action if their schedules allowed. It was reminiscent of Steven Spielberg’s 1975 Jaws. “We don’t want to hear about no shark. We need the income from our short summer season.” Just so, in June, 2011, WNYC reported the bodies as mere inconveniences to swimmers. “The grisly discovery of ten sets of human remains … has apparently done little to deter beach-goers from their summer plans.” It was somehow more important to cover summer fun than to detail the biographies of the slaughtered women.
On July 14, 2023, Manhattan architect Rex Heuermann, a husband and father, was charged in connection with three of the Gilgo Beach Four, that is four of the bodies found on or near Gilgo Beach. Why did this arrest take so long? Media voices, from the New York Times to the New York Post, from WABC to WNYC, that is media both right- and left-wing, criticized Suffolk County police and prosecutors.
The New York Post, famous for pithy headlines, reported that “Bad Dudes Botched the Case.” Both the former Suffolk County Police Chief, James Burke and the District Attorney, Thomas J. Spota, had ended up in federal prison on corruption charges. Burke had assaulted a prisoner, and, also, allegedly frequented prostitutes and took drugs. Spota tried to cover up Burke’s crime. A police officer implicated in their schemes testified that, “If you crossed Tom Spota … Jimmy Burke … They will destroy you. Personally, financially, criminally. They will go after your family … They know no bounds.”
Before going to prison, Burke had “stymied the FBI’s investigation into the Gilgo Beach serial-killings for years … That’s because he learned he was in the FBI’s cross hairs for assaulting [prisoner] Christopher Loeb, who allegedly stole his sex toys … ‘ Burke never wanted us involved in this case because he knew we were investigating him,'” the Post reported in 2015. Loeb would allege that the sex tape he stole from Burke was a “snuff” film recording the actual murder of a prostitute.
Dave Schaller was living with Amber Lynn Overstreet Costello, one of the victims. In 2010, Schaller was face-to-face with the killer, and supplied authorities with a vivid description of both the killer and his distinctive vehicle, a green, first-generation Chevrolet Avalanche. The killer, Schaller said, was an “ogre” with an “empty gaze.” The ogre was between 6’4″ and 6’6″ in height, white, with dark, bushy hair. Heuermann fits this description. “I gave them the exact description of the truck and the dude. I mean, come on! Why didn’t they use that?” Amanda Barthelemy, the younger sister of victim Melissa Barthelemy, reported that the killer used his slain victim’s cell phone seven times to torment Amanda. The police traced these calls to Penn Station, less than half a mile from Heuermann’s RH Consulting Office, and also Massapequa, where Heuermann lived. Given these pings, it would be a safe guess that the killer might be a commuter into Manhattan who lived in or near Massapequa. In short, the police had clues.
Many say that finding the killer took so long because his victims were prostitutes. “I can’t believe they’re doing all this for a whore,” a TV crew member commented when families erected four crosses on Gilgo Beach. The Barthelemys say that police hung up on them, and later told them that they would not even file a missing persons report for a prostitute till ten days after she’d last been seen. Boyfriend Alex Diaz attempted to get police to pay attention to Shannan Gilbert’s disappearance. Police laughed at him, he says. Shannan disappeared in a gated community where a video camera records arrivals and departures. Police didn’t ask for that video till months later, long after it had been erased. Melissa Cann, younger sister of victim Maureen Brainard-Barnes, also reported difficulty in getting police to list her sister as a missing person. Suffolk County Police Chief Dominick Varrone probably meant well when, on May 5, 2011, he made a notorious public comment. When asked about the public’s fear of a serial killer, Varrone said that it was a “consolation” that the killer was targeting Craigslist hookers. “He’s not selecting citizens at large.” In an interview, Varrone would also say of prostitutes that “greed gets the best of them. In fact, most of them are in the business that they’re in because it’s an easy way to make money, and because they’re greedy.”
How little victims can matter to anyone is evidenced by the anonymity of some. On August 4, 2023, Suffolk County DA Ray Tierney identified Jane Doe # 7 as Karen Vergata, a prostitute and drug user, last seen in 1996. Tierney reported that there was no missing persons report filed at the time of Vergata’s disappearance. Vergata had a father, at least one step-sister, and two young sons. It is remarkable that no one reported her missing. One of the corpses is that of a woman with a distinctive tattoo of a half-eaten peach. She is called “Peaches.” The body of her toddler child is with her. Another corpse is that of an Asian male in women’s clothes. These three people’s descriptions have been public for some time. As of this writing on August 8, 2023, no one claims them. Anonymous. Alone. Vulnerable. Easy prey for a monster.
Many credit the arrest of Heuermann to Geraldine Hart, Suffolk County police commissioner since 2018. “Two years into the job, Ms. Hart had moved Suffolk County’s most notorious unsolved case forward — where others once seemed determined to keep it from going anywhere at all,” reported the New York Times. Before taking the job, Hart had been an FBI agent for twenty years.
Though some, including, of course, their killer, assessed the Gilgo Beach victims’ lives as of negligible worth, in the history of serial killers, they are noteworthy. The Gilgo Beach Four, that is, Melissa Barthelemy, Maureen Brainard-Barnes, Amber Lynn Overstreet Costello, and Megan Waterman, the four corpses found wrapped in burlap, all advertised on Craigslist. Historians of prostitution and of serial killers point out that online services provide a new opportunity for misogynist monsters. Evidently the Gilgo Beach serial killer preferred very petite women. Three of the Gilgo Four were under five feet tall and they weighed a hundred pounds or less. If he had had to find prostitutes on the streets, fulfilling his criteria would have taken more time and effort. Sitting at home, scrolling through Craigslist, he had a full menu at just the press of a computer key.
Technology facilitated the killings; technology may make it easier to apprehend killers. “Twilight of the Serial Killer: Cases Like Gilgo Beach Become Ever Rarer,” the Times reported on August 6, 2023. Nowadays, security cameras are everywhere, and Americans are less trusting than they used to be. Very few people still hitchhike. Computers speed up analysis of data. DNA and even ancestry websites have cracked cases, for example that of the Golden State Killer. A friend who works in data collection said to me, “Given the nature of the IOT (Internet of Things) world we live in, data collection through RFID chips, credit card transactions, and public records, allow companies to collect data uninhibited. Without laws that allow people to control the collection and use of personal data, the only solution is to limit credit cards, block anything with RFID, and use cash.” Heuermann tried to avoid detection by using burner phones and anonymizing his sick internet searches for rape, torture, and child porn, but investigators, with warrants, were able to use both his burner phones and his internet searches to build their case against him. Thomas Hargrove of the Murder Accountability Project is using artificial intelligence to find serial killers.
***
In 2013, Robert Kolker published Lost Girls: An Unsolved American Mystery. Kolker wrote this bestseller before anyone knew Heuermann’s name. His book isn’t so much about crime, as about what lead five young women to become prostitutes.
There are almost twice as many poor whites in the US as poor blacks. These poor whites are, in many cases, doing worse year by year. One measure of their decline is the increase in deaths of despair, that is deaths from drug and alcohol overdoses, suicide, and cirrhosis. The same Woke who pretend to champion blacks express contempt for poor whites. See, for example, the 2019 peer-reviewed article, “Complex Intersections of Race And Class: Among Social Liberals, Learning About White Privilege Reduces Sympathy, Increases Blame, And Decreases External Attributions For White People Struggling With Poverty.”
I didn’t read Lost Girls in search of breathless, spine-tingling accounts of corpse disposal. I read it for insights into living poor, white women and their choices. I am a poor, white woman, and I grew up among poor, white people. My life featured the challenges that the women in Lost Girls faced. As a teacher, and as a citizen, I am concerned about declining life indicators for poor whites like myself. Lost Girls’ ethnographic approach promised unique insight.
When I was a kid, my town had no library, no official playing field, no movie theater, no book stores. We swam in a river that flowed through the ruins of a major factory explosion. We worked in factories, often handling toxic chemicals, and many of us, including my siblings, died young of cancer. We were often hungry, cold, and barefoot. The Salvation Army Santa Claus visited our house at Christmas and distributed hard candies.
I adored my childhood friend “Sue.” Sue was imaginative and dynamic. Playing with her was like a trip to Oz. As soon as hormones began to work on our bodies, Sue began telling anatomically graphic sex jokes with a sadistic, inhuman undertone. She went into the woods to smoke cigarettes with others. She got pregnant, with no husband and no income. I check in on her every now and then. She is obese, she’s never had any kind of a real job, she has morbidly obese and psychologically frail children and grandchildren, who report addiction to drugs and welfare dependency.
Another one of our childhood peers became a prostitute, along with her daughter. She drank, took drugs, lost her mind, and died prematurely. One of my first crushes died of a heroin overdose. On the other hand, another childhood companion went on to a stellar career. He is photographed in the company of world leaders. He is a noted mover and shaker, quoted in major media. Another peer married a wealthy professional and her life is worthy of a Town and Country spread. She grew up in the same poverty we all did. Why did we end up so differently? I thought that reading Lost Girls might provide some clues.
Author Kolker devoted hundreds of hours to researching his subjects in minute detail. The reader gains access to the thoughts, feelings, and behaviors of several young American women who chose prostitution as a career.
Maureen had a child at sixteen, and then another, by two different men. Like the other women Kolker covers, she had unstable addresses. Many of the women “crashed” temporarily with family members, friends, or relative strangers, in trailer parks, hotels, and crowded apartments. Many, in addition to prostitution, accepted money from men. Maureen, for example, took rent money from the father of one of her children. Maureen’s family disdained “stuck-up rich people.” Many of the women came from families that strongly differentiated themselves from those with more money or education. Maureen grew up in a public housing project, and many of the others in the book relied on federal benefits in one form or another, including food stamps and unemployment insurance. Maureen’s mother was a cleaning woman. Maureen’s father appears to have been a marginal person. He “stayed” with his family “only from time to time.” When Maureen was 21, her father fell to his death from a train trestle. While Maureen’s mother worked long hours at low-paying jobs, Maureen grew up eating junk food and taking care of herself. Maureen developed breasts early, and reveled in attention from boys. She got pregnant at sixteen and dropped out of high school. She began using drugs. She began posting ads on Craigslist.
Melissa was a hair dresser from Buffalo. Melissa’s mother, Lynn, got pregnant with Melissa at sixteen. She and Melissa’s father had a short relationship that didn’t even last until Melissa was born. When she was 16, Melissa began to date a black, drug-dealing “hoodlum.” Melissa was sent to Texas to live with her father. He was married and his wife fought with Melissa. Melissa stole her father’s van, thus ending her relationship with her father, and earning her first conviction. She moved from Buffalo to New York City and began working as a prostitute. Her pimp was John Terry, who called himself Blaze. He once arranged for Melissa to be jumped and beaten up.
Shannan was raised in foster homes. Her mother Mari left her husband and the father of her daughters because he was a heroin user. Shannan would often run away, according to a childhood friend, and no one would look for her. One of Mari’s live-in boyfriends abused Shannan’s sisters. Because of him, Shannan was sent away at age 7. Shannan worked at a hotel, an Applebee’s, a senior center, and as a secretary in a school. She was in college for a while and dropped out.
After Shannan became a prostitute and came back to her mother’s home with lots of money and presents, an observer remarked, her mother, Mari, suddenly seemed to like Shannan more. Shannan was a conspicuous consumer of expensive items, like high-thread-count sheets and cakes from a bakery featured on a TV cooking show. Alex Diaz was Shannan’s driver for a while. They became lovers. He hit her once, damaging her face so badly she required the insertion of a titanium plate. She had the money handy to pay for the titanium plate. That plate would prove key to identifying her corpse.
Megan’s mother Lorraine grew up in a house with a lot of drinking. As a child, Lorraine sipped from leftover drinks. Her mother Muriel drank a lot and had lots of boyfriends. Lorraine had kids by Greg, a man she says abused her. She left him. Lorraine went on welfare. Greg showed up with a new girlfriend and asked Lorraine to house him and his girlfriend. Muriel took Megan away from Lorraine. Lorraine would insist that Muriel took the kids just in order to get state aid. Megan was a dysfunctional kid from early on. She was defiant and had trouble learning. She committed petty crimes like shoplifting. She threatened to kill people. She was institutionalized. Megan had “hook up” sex in a public bathroom with a 32-year-old man and got pregnant. She later went with Akeem Cruz, a black drug dealer from New York who traveled to Portland, Maine, to prey on white girls fascinated by black city boys. Cruz pimped Megan. Cruz was once witnessed grabbing Megan by her hair and smashing her face into the side of a house. A friend tried to intervene. Megan screamed, “You’re not my mother!” On another occasion, Megan told a friend that Cruz “clotheslined” her as punishment for stealing and using the drugs he was supposed to be selling.
Amber was raped by an adult neighbor when she was five years old. Amber’s mother was hospitalized with a nervous breakdown; her father drank. Amber’s sister Kim became a prostitute and she also stole from Johns. Amber was promiscuous. Following Kim, she began prostituting herself at age 16. Drugs were a standard feature of prostitution. Amber became a heroin addict. A Christian pastor went out of his way to help Amber. The help didn’t take.
Dave Schaller was a used car salesman engaged in petty drug dealing on the side. Dave took Amber in and tried to get her to quit prostitution and heroin. When Schaller met her, Amber was missing several teeth, she smelled bad, and she had track marks. Dave says that Kim was not supportive of her sister. Kim said, “If it wasn’t for her pussy, I wouldn’t have anything to do with her. Because her f—ing pussy makes money.” Eventually Dave succumbed and he also became a heroin addict. Amber’s prostitution “became the main economic engine of the house.” Dave lost his car dealership. He began to sell valuable items. At one point Dave had to rescue a bleeding Amber from a highway shoulder because John had beaten her and tossed her out.
After biographical sketches of the Gilgo Beach victims, their families and friends, and their fellow prostitutes like Kritzia Lugo and Sara Karnes, Kolker covers the discovery of the bodies, the conspiracy theories that arose on the internet, and how the murders affected the family and friends of the victims. His writing here is subtle, compassionate, and yet at the same time revealing. Kolker’s chapter, “The John” consists mostly of unedited quotes from his conversation with Joseph Brewer, the man who hired Shannan Gilbert the night she disappeared. This chapter alone is worth the cost of the book. The John in question is revealed to be a shallow man with no self-awareness and who engages in a great deal of self-flattery. Anyone tempted to romanticize prostitution should read this chapter.
Kolker has already given the reader the sense that just about everyone he is writing about is immature, emotionally unstable, adrift, and needy. Once they learn that their loved ones have been murdered, the murders catalyze some of them. Kim, who had dismissed her sister Amber as merely a money-making “pussy,” goes so far as to post Craigslist ads that will draw the killer to her. She is convinced that her sixth sense will allow her not to be overcome by him, but to stop him. Mari allegedly did not have a good relationship with her daughter Shannan until Shannan began sharing her prostitution earnings with her mother and her sisters. After Shannan’s disappearance, Mari became a volcanic activist. Many credit Mari with jump-starting the discovery of a serial killer. Lorraine, who, thanks at least partially to alcoholism, was never much of a mother to her daughter Megan, was suddenly making TV appearances. “She plays a mother on TV,” one detractor said. These and other family and friends of the deceased cling to each other, feud with each other, and call each other their new “family.” Kolker’s writing here is intimate and yet brutally honest. He feels for these people, and he wants his reader to feel compassion for them, but he refuses to depict them as better than they are. Dave is consumed by guilt. He couldn’t save Amber. Other family and friends “make some small adjustments to history, to ease [the] burden somehow” of having had a family member or friend who took a devastating life path from which no one saved them. In less artful language, they lie to themselves about this fact: Yes, my loved one was a prostitute doing risky work and no, I never was able to stop her. And, yes, I even took some of her money.
It’s clear that Kolker provides so many details about these women because he wants us to feel for them as he does. We are to see through their eyes, be on their side, understand their choices, and be sympathetic to them. We are not to be judgmental. It goes without saying that even though they made bad life choices, they did not deserve to become murder victims.
To that I say, of course, yes. If Heuermann is as guilty as he appears to be, he should be pumped for as much information as the police can get out of him, including other murders he has likely committed, and then he should be unceremoniously put down. New York does not have a death penalty, but Nevada and South Carolina do, and Heuermann’s actions there are being investigated. One can always hope that prisoners will carry out justice. “I don’t think people would be too happy if he was in population … I could see someone doing something to him … Crimes against women and girls … is frowned upon here. A lot of us have sisters, daughters, mothers. No one likes guys who did crimes like that,” said Philip Walker, an inmate in the same facility as Heuermann. One can hope. Jeffrey Dahmer was killed by another inmate. In July, 2023, Larry Nassar was repeatedly stabbed by another inmate. Unfortunately Nassar survived.
So, no. The lost girls did not deserve to be murder victims. But, yes, I found them impossible to like, and I felt rage at them. I think I felt this way exactly because I am poor, and white, and a woman. Growing up poor, I have long been aware that we walk a tightrope, and with one loss of balance, we plunge to unspeakable depths from which escape is unlikely. Those losses of balance, I saw early, are the result of very small choices. I think of Sue going off to the woods to smoke cigarettes with other bad kids, and my refusal to do so. My refusing meant losing friends. I had to go it alone for a while till I met other friends less interested in being delinquents. Smoking cigarettes doesn’t sound like such a criminal choice but it was one step, the first step to Sue living the rest of her life as a miserable, marginal person, the matriarch of three generations of miserable, marginal people. Making other small choices produced very different fruit. My decision to study, to go to mass, to seek nutritious food, to work at helping jobs like nurse’s aide, and scrupulously to reject alcohol and drugs and not to engage in casual sex had an impact on my life. My family was poor; Sue’s family was even poorer. Her childhood home was filthy. It smelled bad. There were no books. There were serious health issues. Is that why Sue has spent her life on sagging couches griping about how ugly life is? No. Sue’s siblings made other choices. After her life went south, her parents lowered the boom on her younger brothers and sisters. I’m in touch with all of them, and they are happy, healthy people leading productive lives. One of her siblings is a top professional for an international corporation. Another served in the military with distinction. All of these people were born into the same filthy, smelly house with no books, the house cursed by serious medical issues in a small town with no library, no bookstores, and very limited horizons. Environment didn’t create Sue’s misery. Sue’s choices created Sue’s misery.
When I was a leftist, my fellow leftists rarely spoke of personal responsibility. If your life sucked, it was because society screwed you over. You were a victim of racism or sexism or capitalism. One of the distinct differences between the Left and conservatism is emphasis on personal responsibility. That emphasis was one of the key steps on my moving from left to right.
I know some readers will approach Kolker’s book and say, “We can’t judge these prostitutes because they faced hardships that we have never faced.” I didn’t have that reaction. I knew these girls; not these girls specifically, but girls like them. I knew prostitutes. I heard the lies they told themselves. They pretended that they had a wisdom that “straight people” lacked. They sneered at women who cleaned houses or waited tables or changed the diapers of bed-bound patients, as I have done. Women who worked minimum-wage jobs were suckers. Kim Overstreet talks this way in a documentary interview. Amber, Kim said, “Had a little job at the Waffle House, busting her tail for nothing, and she just wanted more, fast.”
Yes, these prostitutes all faced very difficult childhoods. There were weak or absentee fathers, drunken mothers, chaotic households, erratic moves, meals of junk food, child sex abuse. Any insistence that these circumstances dictate a life of prostitution fills me with rage. Plenty of us endured all of these challenges, and even worse, and we made different choices. I have heard so many stories from so many wounded people who had parents from hell but who did everything they could to lead decent lives. It’s the people who don’t give up, who don’t take drugs, who don’t commit crimes, with whom I feel solidarity. Some of us have been denied dignity by the powerful others around us. And yet we struggled to inhabit that denied dignity with our own choices. Some of us lived with violence, but chose not to be violent. Some of us lived with addiction, but chose to refuse alcohol and drugs. Some of us lived with irrationality, but worked hard to identify and operate in a world constructed of objectively verifiable facts, not a world of paranoia, self-flattering myths, and rage. Some of us saw the worst side of sexuality, but chose to find and protect the best in our own bodies.
The women Kolker profiles made destructive choices that hurt themselves, hurt those close to them, and hurt the wider society. Their initial bad choices are written off by those around them as “minor.” She shoplifted; she threatened to kill teachers; she got pregnant at sixteen. Minor mistakes! No, these aren’t minor mistakes. They are the kind of choices that lead to very bad outcomes.
Again and again, in all the Gilgo Beach coverage I’ve read, friends and family members, journalists and officials, tiptoe around the word “prostitute.” These women were not prostitutes; they were “escorts,” or “erotic dancers,” or “sex workers.” These women were more than prostitutes. These women should not be written off as prostitutes. This is language policing. We are not to state blunt truths.
No, nothing I or anyone else will say will make a dent in prostitution. It’s the world’s oldest profession and male lust is possibly the most powerful of economic engines. Yes, a good percentage of men have at one time or another paid for sex in one form or another. All that being said, let’s get real. Prostitution is disgusting. Prostitution is evil. Sex between a committed, adult man and a committed, adult woman who choose each other is one of the most beautiful things any human being will experience. It’s about so much more than orgasms. Loving sex in a committed relationship bonds two people to each other in multitudes of ways that affect not just the two people, but the world around them. Married people live longer. Married people are less likely to smoke and drink excessively. Married people are less likely to be criminals. Married people are less likely to be poor. Committed parents raise healthier, happier children. And on and on.
Prostitution parasitizes and parodies one of the most sublime and sacred aspects of human life. Prostitutes insult women with their every gesture. They turn themselves into perversely exaggerated mockeries of women’s bodies. They offer themselves as objects, which is exactly what Johns want prostitutes to be (see here and here).
Again and again I am told that I am not supposed to be “judgmental” and I am not supposed to judge my fellow women who undermine women by reducing women to objects. Sorry, I can’t comply. I do judge such women, from Kim Kardashian to hookers. And yes, yes, I know my judgment means absolutely zero in a world that spins on the axis of male lust. But I’m here to say that I was a poor, white girl, too, and I faced similar obstacles and opportunities as these lost girls, and no, being poor or living in a town characterized by surrounding towns as “white trash” did not make it inevitable that I would become a hooker, a thief, a drunk, a drug addict, or a single teenage mother. I had different priorities and I made different choices.
While I’m ranting fecklessly against the immovable force of prostitution, allow me to rant against another force I can never change: addiction. As Lost Girls makes clear, drugs are inextricable from prostitution. Kim says that some Johns demanded that their hooker provide the John with drugs. Alcohol and drugs destroy lives. We all know that; we’ve all witnessed it. But somehow we aren’t supposed to say it. We are supposed to call drunks “jolly” and we are all supposed to wink and smirk when illegal drug use comes up. Why do people participate in these absurd, grotesque lies? Come live in my neighborhood. Watch skeletal, pock-mocked, mostly white heroin addicts dance with death on the street for months before they finally disappear, leaving as much trace of their wasted lives as does the ever present trash falling down through the sewer grates. Watch adult black men, so needed as fathers and community leaders, lie in the street in puddles of their own urine, clinging to emptied bottles of booze.
The lost girl’s friends and families protested that Suffolk County officials were not paying enough attention, or enough respectful attention, to their dead. They reminded me of Jordan Neely’s friends and families. On May 1, 2023, according to those present, Jordan Neely, a homeless black man, criminal, and drug addict, behaved in a threatening manner toward subway passengers. Former Marine Daniel Penny, recognizing a threat to his fellow passengers, restrained Neely, who subsequently died. Neely’s family mourned publicly, insisting that Penny had robbed them of a cherished family member, and, of course, they sued Penny for financial damages. Al Sharpton eulogized Neely, bemoaning society’s failure to care about him. One had to ask, why didn’t any of Jordan Neely’s family members care about him? He’d been on the streets for decades. He was a criminal and an active drug addict. “Society” had offered Neely sweetheart deals, second chances, and care, which he rejected. Maybe if someone, like his father, had actually loved Neely, he wouldn’t have ended up as he did. Just so, the lost girls’ friends and family members demanded that “society” respect and care for them in a way that their friends and family never did. I want to hear someone say, “If you love your child, be sure to be in a committed relationship with that child’s father, and be sure that that father is a productive, independent adult male who can shelter and provide for both mother and child. If you aren’t in such a committed relationship with such a father, use birth control. That’s love. Anything else is child abuse.”
Leftists often condemn conservatives for being “harsh” and “not nice” and lacking “compassion.” What approach would result in fewer dead Jordan Neelys and Megan Watermans? The “compassionate” leftist approach? That approach now dominates in schools, journalism, and churches. We are not to judge. We are not to condemn. We are to walk a mile in their shoes. We are to offer second chances. What if someone had come down on little girl Megan Waterman like a box of rocks and told her that if she again threatened to kill her teacher she’d meet with appropriate consequences? What if someone had told the teen mothers in this book the facts of unwed teen motherhood? That the children of such mothers are more or less condemned to lifetime poverty? What if someone had told them how cruel it is to condemn a baby to a lifetime of never having a father? In short, what if any of these lost girls had been introduced, by some responsible conservative adult, to the consequences of their selfish, immature, destructive choices? If that had happened, perhaps they would still be alive today, and their own lives would have been surrounded by health and happiness, rather than degradation and misery.
In an interview, Dave Schaller said that Amber “used to say that she was better off dead … she lived her life as if like she didn’t even care about herself … She knew what she was doing was just like degrading, just despicable … She absolutely hated it.”
I am haunted by those lost girls, with whom I have so much in common, and from whom I am so different. Different emphases on personal responsibility and personal choice drove me from the Left to the Right. In thinking about the lost girls, I question my conclusions. I believe that I made the choice not to become a lost girl. I credit myself for this. But was I really exercising free will? Perhaps, unbeknownst to me, I had something that the lost girls didn’t have. It might have been a higher IQ, or greater impulse control. It might have been my parents, who were imperfect, but who did voice values that supported me: education, God, dignity, responsibility, hard work, low expectations, never quitting, gratitude. I’ve thought all my life about those moments when Sue and I took different paths. We had been so close, and when I saw her moving closer and closer to what to me appeared to be an abyss, I consciously chose not to follow her, even in something as apparently harmless as smoking cigarettes in the woods, or telling nasty jokes. It appears that investigators have solved the mystery of the Gilgo Four. What remains to be solved is how some of us go one way in life, and others go another.
Danusha Goska is the author of God Through Binoculars: A Hitchhiker at a Monastery
“But was I really exercising free will? Perhaps, unbeknownst to me, I had something that the lost girls didn’t have. It might have been a higher IQ, or greater impulse control. It might have been my parents, who were imperfect, but who did voice values that supported me: education, God, dignity, responsibility, hard work, low expectations, never quitting, gratitude…. What remains to be solved is how some of us go one way in life, and others go another.”
We do have free will but we also have minds and subconscious minds that from the moment of birth absorb our surroundings, absorb mistaken ideas implicitly without explicit awareness or understanding. Why do gay people feel that they were born that way, from their earliest memories they were attracted to the same sex? But they were NOT born that way, there is no gay gene, what actually happened was that even before they could speak, before they had concepts or language, their emotional-pre-conceptual minds were making erroneous, emotional, connections making it seem and feel that they were born that way. Retrievable, remembered memories don’t begin until three years of age so that the mental connections made pre-verbally and before three years of age cannot be recalled.
It stands to reason that an attraction to evil or badness can also occur in the same way, pre-verbally in the first three years of life making the attraction to evil as impervious to reason and free will as homosexuality that begins in pre-verbal infancy.
A choice can become a habit and the habit solidifies into character and character is very difficult to change. The earlier in life the habit becomes character the more difficult, if not impossible, it is to change.
As an example, the character of the commentor “Intrepid”, like Pavlov’s Dog he will not be able to resist his habitual character and he will absolutely attack this comment even though it has no mention of Ayn Rand, Objectivism, or religion. He just can’t help himself. C’mon boy, bite.
You are so unimaginative you even crib my “Pavlovs dog” insults. Of course I’ll bite. It’s not just your obsession with Objectivism….it’s everything about that faux superior, irritating, self serving persona of yours.
There are several others, today who seem to agree with me. And throwing around the Schopenhauer name impresses no one. She still won’t date you.
You are such a little weanie you can’t even take me on directly anymore. Kind of like Macron and the Muslims (see todays article on this site)
I don’t see a reference to Schopenhauer.
Look at all of his comments in this article.
Oh, knock it off, will you? You’re acting like a third grader.
Sorry, I won’t.
Although I disagree with some of what you said, I appreciate what you have to say, when you write on topic. For the record because of the fall, we are all attracted to evil, the solution is to ‘Renew your mind in Christ.’ I hope, someday, you and Intrepid can get together over a beer
Never. He lives in NYC (I think) and I will never go there. Besides what would I have to say to him that I haven’t said already on paper? And what would I get out of it? Another boring lecture on his favorite topic………Himself and Objectivism.
Well you’re probably right, I would never go to NYC, myself.
Good observations, THX. Sorry that you ended your comment with a paragraph baiting Intrepid. He’s not entirely rational in his feelings about you and you might do better to steer clear of him.
Excellent observations in this essay.
It’s a reminder of what Heraclitus said; “A man’s character is his fate”. . If we’re the result of all our inputs, chemical, physical, etc , it is the personal choices we make that send us on the road to our fate.
What makes people want what they want? Is Schopenhauer correct?
“It was Arthur Schopenhauer who wrote: “Man does at all times only what he wills, and yet he does this necessarily. But this is because he already is what he wills.” [Chapter 5 of On the Freedom of the Will] As paraphrased by Albert Einstein in his essay “My View of the World“ (1931), it is put like this: “A man can do as he will, but not will as he will.”
Schopenhauer tries to explain that we can actually do what we want, but we cannot choose (or want) what we want, and in this sense we are not free – what we want is determined by our nature or programmed into us. For example, when someone is hungry, he may think that he is choosing to eat something, and that he is acting out of free will, i.e., that he is eating something because he wants to; but he has not really chosen to eat something, but his determined/born or innate nature is forcing him to eat something.
Any example of a motivational state we can think of can be explained in this way, e.g., anger, thirst, jealousy, fear, disgust, etc. Naturally we are able to suppress things we want, such as refusing to eat when we are hungry, but Schopenhauer would say that in this case our character is such that this was not a choice; rather, our disposition to asceticism or our health consciousness (or whatever impulse caused us to refuse to eat) compelled us to refuse to eat. So he would say that even if we disregard what our body initially tells us, this is not a counter-example to his view. Rather, this would just be an example of a second-order impulse overriding a first-order basic impulse….
continued below
Don’t bother: you failed to establish relevance and everyone stopped reading, above.
As if I care one iota about anything Samuel Pope writes.
No one cares one iota about anything you write, yet you continue spend time composing these wall-of-text posts that nobody reads.
Spot on. My sentiments exactly. Well said.
No one cares at all, or even an iota, what you write. I guess if there’s no way to proselytize your fake religion of Objectivism you simply shoehorn something in about your latest hero, Schopenhauer. Hint: no one cares about Schopenhauer either.
Sam Pope is only partially correct. You NEVER manage to establish relevance and no one reads your crap anyway.
Yeah, I know. It’s been slim pickings lately on the this site for you. That’s because there are other things going on in this world besides altruism.
Schopenhauer? Really? TGIF.
Keep at him Sam. Well said.
I never started reading his drivel.
Oh please. no. Not continued below…………………………………………………..
Didn’t Schopenhauer push his grandmother down a flight of stairs? If you ‘Renew your mind in Christ’ you can ‘Have life and have it more abundantly.’ If you renew you mind, in Schopenhauer, you won’t have any friends.
No, it was his neighbor. I am not a fan of his philosophy it is the most depressing and demoralizing of all philosophies I have ever read. Reading him depressed me for months but he does have many golden nuggets of wisdom and insight into human nature if you can carefully pick them out from the ocean of the toxic poison of the rest of his philosophy.
“Before he left for his three-year travel, Schopenhauer had an incident with his Berlin neighbor, 47-year-old seamstress Caroline Louise Marquet. The details of the August 1821 incident are unknown. He claimed that he had just pushed her from his entrance after she had rudely refused to leave, and that she had purposely fallen to the ground so that she could sue him. She claimed that he had attacked her so violently that she had become paralyzed on her right side and unable to work. She immediately sued him, and the process lasted until May 1827, when a court found Schopenhauer guilty and forced him to pay her an annual pension until her death in 1842.”
Shopey’s philosophy depressed you for months? Good.
Now you know how the rest of us feel reading your depressing philosophy day in and day out
Then don’t read my comments moron. Nobody is forcing you to read or reply to my comments. But you’re a goddamn moron who has no self-control, so you keep on doing it. You’re pathetic.
Or grandmothers.
If we suppress our desired choice, would it not be accurate to say we desired something else more than our usual choice in that moment?
We might have very different dispositions, but that does not change the basic truth that we always choose in accordance with our strongest desire in the moment. Right?
I’d say that’s usually the case and a wise observation but I often make choices contrary to my desires, both good and bad. But I’m a contrarian.
When I read your comment, I thought of Paul’s lament in Roman’s 7:19: “For I do not do the good I want to do, but the evil I do not want to do—this I keep on doing.”
You and Paul are both contrarians.
I would say that your contrary choice is not really against your desire. You chose against your usual desire because, in that moment, there was something you wanted more. And you choose the “contrary” thing because its value in that moment surpasses whatever resolve you had in place to govern the “usual” desire.
But Jeff, there is so much intellect and philosophy in the idea of free will and choice. This is just the place that makes the most sense to me. I am definitely something of a “hard determinist,” but the way it works out in practicality looks a lot like spontaneous choice (which I don’t really think exists).
…”Schopenhauer’s conclusion was that we do not have free will, as most people believe – that is, we do not freely choose to be the way we are or to do the things we do. Nevertheless, Schopenhauer was not a hard (mechanistic) determinist. More specifically, Schopenhauer thought that our circumstances or situation (e.g., new information, altered resources, or a different social environment, etc.) can change our behavior, but that our character – our motivations, desires, or who we are inside – remains unchanged. Many other philosophers and scientists have subscribed to this deterministic view or quasi-deterministic variants of it – so it is by no means a fringe view anymore.
Theoretically, we could say that we want to behave completely differently tomorrow, be a new person, so to speak, and we could theoretically do that, but we still don’t do it to the fullest extent. Personal change, i.e. a readjustment of character or even the change of attitudes are extremely lengthy in psychological therapy, which is why it must be assumed that the human being carries something stable within him that can only be broken open and changed with a great deal of effort. Perhaps this is what we understand by imprinting, which determines our will.”
You obviously do not have free will. You keep badgering us with your failed philosophy. A sentient and halfway intelligent person would realize a dead end when he sees it. Even Shopey would recognize it.
But you seem to not have the requisite stuff that gives man free will.
Interesting idea. I think people are innately themselves and usually do not change much – but the idea of “imprinting” is striking. It makes me think of little ducklings imprinting on the first live thing they see and following it everywhere.
Having had 5 children, including identical twins, I can tell you each child is definitely himself from the very beginning. The basic personality is there and it is highly stable. Even identical twins, though they share everything down to the DNA level, are very different from one another. It is astounding.
Except for my first four years in Manhattan, I’ve lived on Long Island
all of my life. I have a lot of karma in the areas near Gilgo Beach from
my young adult years. Near where young prostitute Jessica Taylor’s
torso was found in Manorville in July 2003, I used to drive very often
in those days on William Floyd Parkway. I would always think of
her and how sickeningly afraid she must have been and would
think in disbelief that her creepy killer had actually deposited her
there. I have often prayed for Jessica Taylor.
Although we can speculate on why some in similar horrendous
circumstances turn to prostitution while others do not – one thing
is crystal clear. Every human being has the God-given right to
pursue what they think is their own happiness, whether it is a
wrong choice or not – without anyone believing their lives are
not as equal as others. That some pigs are more equal than others,
as Orwell would put it. And that includes disparaging police
officials or the monster who gorged on their suffering and deaths.
The way these women lived their lives of prostitution is indeed
disgusting and vile. But their souls are as precious to God as
anyone else’s. I’m so glad Suffolk County PD finally tracked
their accused killer down and he will be held accountable for
his crimes against these prostitutes.
I saw that big monster, Heuermann, on TV. I feel sorry for his wife and offspring.
I’m not one of those phony police profilers from TV and movies who can get into the heads of serial murderers and think like them. I don’t even believe people like that exist. But I do intuit how many people function, based on personal observation. I think Huermann was a psychopath who hated prostitutes because he resented his own weakness. He frequently paid for sex and I think he hated prostitutes and blamed them for his own degeneracy. The Johns are just as sleazy as the trollops. And I think he preyed on small women because he’s a big coward and it made him feel strong.
Just my opinions. I hope he gets “shanked” in prison.
It is axiomatic that everyone is created in the image of G0d. This obviously does not have anything to do with physical traits, as it is also axiomatic that G0d has no physical traits, but rather it refers to the ability of humans to be creative, compassionate, and so forth as He is. Those who try to throw away their divine spark cannot do it; those who wish to return to nurturing it can do it. That spark was incorporated into our first parent, Adam/Eve (two people in one body at the time) and has come down to us through the generations. It is the qualitative difference between man and beast and it is impossible to alienate from any person.
Free will is the only means by which mankind can triumph over his environment and emerge victorious as a human being .When you deny the existence of free will the worst things in life happen on all levels of society
Free will is important, and God given, in my belief. Pre-determination is a load of bullshit. That’s something only moslems and other morons believe in.
Careful now; the Calvinists who founded our great universities in America and who contributed much to Western thought believed in predetermination. Was Newton a moron? Eccentric, sure, but no moron,
Corrupt law enforcement in places of leadership. Merrick Garland has taken that much further, but don’t expect him to get jail time for his malicious corruption.
Progressives claim that prostitution and drug abuse are victimless crimes. That statement precisely becauise it ignores the havoc wrecked on society by people’s bad choices ignores the root cause=the absence of a normal family life and a society that refuses to teach what is good and what is evil
When I was younger, I accepted the whole victimless crime, Ayn Rand, hyper individualist world view. After retirement, with time for Bible reading, I came to understand that no sin is a purely private matter. All sin (Even secret sins) negatively effects all creation.
Ayn Rand never argued that prostitution was a victimless crime or that individualism means anything goes, do whatever you want to do. Rand was a very strict moralist. She viewed sex as a very private, very sacred act, that should only be done as an expression of love.
Acording to Rand prostitution is thoroughly immoral, destructive, and unhealthy. In her novel “We the Living” the heroine Kira Argounova does become Andrei’s lover in order to extract money and goods from him but she does this in the context of a totalitarian Soviet state where she has no other options. She wants to save the love of her life Leo from tuberculosis, alcoholism, and spiritual decay, and escape the Soviet Union.
“Sex is one of the most important aspects of man’s life and, therefore, must never be approached lightly or casually. A sexual relationship is proper only on the ground of the highest values one can find in a human being. Sex must not be anything other than a response to values. And that is why I consider promiscuity immoral. Not because sex is evil, but because sex is too good and too important . . . .
[Sex should] involve . . . a very serious relationship. Whether that relationship should or should not become a marriage is a question which depends on the circumstances and the context of the two persons’ lives. I consider marriage a very important institution, but it is important when and if two people have found the person with whom they wish to spend the rest of their lives—a question of which no man or woman can be automatically certain. When one is certain that one’s choice is final, then marriage is, of course, a desirable state. But this does not mean that any relationship based on less than total certainty is improper. I think the question of an affair or a marriage depends on the knowledge and the position of the two persons involved and should be left up to them. Either is moral, provided only that both parties take the relationship seriously and that it is based on values.” – Ayn Rand
“If in a free country prostitution for the sake of earning a living is immoral, what about prostitution to pay for your sick husband’s treatment?”
“Sex must not be anything other than a response to values. And that is why I consider promiscuity immoral.”
So Rand was a very strict moralist? Yeah sure.
Except when she was cheating on her husband with Nathaniel Brandon and then got angry when he dumped her. And then she got really angry when he wouldn’t come back to her. I guess he had enough of her.
I’m not surprised at how eager you are to carry her water.
I just have to wonder about your
You eagerly carry water for Martin Luther, a rabid antisemite, a major hero for Hitler and his Nazis, a rabid hater of the peasants, a rabid supporter of the Almighty State.
Did I tell you, your fellow Lutherans were staunch supporters of Adolf Hitler!
No Objectivist oragnization is receiving any money from the government to help destroy the USA. But you Lutheran Church is eagerly carrying water for Joe Biden, receiving tax-payer dollars to aid and bet the illegal alien invasion of America.
Go on, keep on carrying water for Joe Biden, you and your fellow Lutherans.
Ayn Rand: “I think the question of an affair or a marriage depends on the knowledge and the position of the two persons involved and should be left up to them.”
In Rand’s case, an “affair” would necessarily involve THREE persons, two of which were married.
And I much prefer the idea of marriage based upon covenant, rather than “certainty” of desire.
Even great marriages can be difficult. Desire and feelings are changeable. Commitment based upon covenant can overcome the hard patches and provide the soft, fertile ground for the feelings of love to return.
I used to be married. Except for the fact that my ex wife is a certified psychopath, I enjoyed it much more than being single.
“But you’re a goddamn moron who has no self-control, so you keep on doing it. You’re pathetic.”
Po’ widdle THX. I love it when you get on your high horse and call me (what was it?), oh yeah…a Goddamn moron. And here I thought you didn’t believe in God.
So the list of stolen merchandise keeps getting longer. Self control. Carrying Water. Pavlov’s dog. All mine. Not yours. That’s funny coming from a fool who is too undisciplined to get a degree, and pretty much hates everyone who did manage to get one. But projection is the hallmark of the intellectual fool.
I pretty much don’t read your drivel. What a waste of time that would be. And why should I? I can recite it from memory at this point. That’s how “moronically” repetitive you are. That’s why I came up with the handy dandy “THX’s Objectivism for Dummies” list. It saves everyone so much time.
You definitely need a new grift.
I have also noticed all of your heroes who have actually published their own take on Rand and Objectivism. But we never get to see your own work. When is the great THX take on Objectivism going to be published?
You might actually get a date with the Catholic lady.
Yet even in the days before progressives existed, there were prostitution, alcoholism, and drug abuse. They are as old as mankind. Perhaps dysfunctional families have always been with us, too, leading to other societal ills.
The one supernatural, otherworldly, transformative experience that I do find fascinating (and I really do hope is evidence of an after-life) is the Near Death Experience. Here’s a beautiful girl, Betty Guadagno. no different from the Gilgo Beach girls, with a horrendous childhood and family legacy of severe dysfunction that changed her life around because of her NDE. I’m so happy for her.
Atheist Overdoses; Shown Soul’s Process Of Pre-Life Planning (NDE)
Why don’t you try NDE out. Who knows, maybe you will mess it up and then you will definitely find out.
I even have a big enough plastic bag for the enormously swelled head of yours.
Stop it, you guys a cracking me up. Lol!
What do you think of the declassification of some of the government’s records on UFO’s / UAP’s? I thought about your naturalistic assumptions when reading about them lately. It’s okay, of course, if you are not interested – but NDE kinda touches on some of the same points.
Makes you mad that you can’t change me or the Lutheran mission. Today’s Lutherans are not very concerned with guilt by association (one of your favorite childish tactics) based on what happened 500 years ago or 80 years ago. And how do you know all Lutherans supported Hitler when only about 30% of the population were party members. I cannot speak for how people behaved in the past. It’s not my job to judge them. But I will judge you each and everyday as long as you keep insulting people for their beliefs.
Your hatred of Christianity simply makes you look like a small-minded fool every time you try to break someone’s faith.
And once again you crib my insults about you. Do you ever have an original thought on anything or are you that much of a girly man that you can’t think for yourself.
Like I said if you really want to do something about it here’s what you do, if you have the guts to take them on:
Lutheran Social Services of Minnesota
2485 Como Avenue
St. Paul, MN 55108
800.582.5260
Call them up you little pu$$y. You don’t have the guts to take them on, do you. You don’t have the guts to take anyone on except from your gilded cage Objectivist Lotus Flower where it’s safe.
Now you’re deflecting are you. I’m supposed to clean up your Lutheran Church? And Catholic Charities too? And the Methodist Church too?
But I thought Christianity and Christians are the backbone of American freedom, liberty, and capitalism? You Christians are the ones stopping this country from collapsing into a dictatorship?
But it turns out that it is the Christian Churches that are eagerly destroying America!
You’re the PUSSY! Attacking Ayn Rand and Objectivism relentlessly while it’s your Lutheran Church that is actively destroying America!
If you aren’t willing to put your money where your big mouth is perhaps you should stop whining about the Catholics, the Lutherans, and the Methodists. Man up and make the call. I keep giving you the phone number. I can here the folks in the office laughing hysterically.
Christianity and Christians ARE the backbone of American freedom, liberty, and capitalism. After all they founded the country, not you. It is Godless atheist fools like you and the Left that have pretty much completed the job of creating a dictatorship.
I will continue to attack lazy frauds like you and your female familiar for doing your part in destroying America. You never do anything but whine and moan, complain about long forgotten Euro religious wars, obsess about Nazis, the Christian Dark Ages, and how Christianity “laid the foundation” for totalitarianism. Your ignorance, pettiness and stupidity seem to have no limits.
So when THX doesn’t get what he wants he falls to the floor, kicks his feet, name calls and throws an Objectivist temper tantrum. Very mature.
STILL DEFLECTING.
No Objectivist organization is receiving tax-dollars to aid and abet the illegal alien invasion but your Lutheran Church, the Catholic Church, Methodist Church, and many other Christians Churches and Jewish organizations are eagerly receiving tax-payer dollars to aid and abet the destruction of America. All in the name of Christian altruism.
You’re the lazy fraud who keeps deflecting the fact that it is American Christian Churches that are destroying America!
Your Lutheran Church is down at the border greeting the illegals and helping them with tax-payer dollars right now.
Most all of the major denominations, even Southern Baptist, are taking government money to resettled illegal immigrants, it’s awful.
“No Objectivist organization is receiving tax-dollars to aid and abet the illegal alien invasion but your Lutheran Church, the Catholic Church, Methodist Church, and many other Christians Churches and Jewish organizations are eagerly receiving tax-payer dollars to aid and abet the destruction of America. All in the name of Christian altruism.”
So what. These are simply your silly opinions.
I’m also not sure how I am a lazy fraud because you can’t prove that Christianity is destroying America. There is much to criticize the ELCA for but I’m not about to leave my Church because you can’t keep from lying about Lutherans, Catholcs, Methodists, Jews. Altruism is one of the main callings of the religious. We are human. We aren’t anti-human communists or Objectivists like you.
Sorry, you are simply a selfish bum with zero empathy for anything except yourself. No wonder Objectivism fails at everything it trys.
You are a psychiatrist’s dream patient with all of your mental tics. The narcissistic personality disorder runs deep within you. By the way have you been checked for ASD as well? I bet we would find an ocean of symptoms. Repeated behaviors, learning disabilities and the inability to interact with others is common.
STILL DEFLECTING.
Deflect this you coward.
It’s hard reading Goska’s work. It strikes deep chords in most of our souls, often causing sadness if not anguish at where we are.
So grateful this estimable website gives her a forum, but I hope her writings begin to receive a wider audience before much longer.
She is a very gifted, insightful author and it is really a pity that so few people benefit from her wisdom. I wonder if she has ever considered looking into syndication to reach a wider readership (and to make some money, too).
And having her own column in a podcast with a wider audience.
Ms.Goska is a fine writer on these and all other gender related cultural issues.. I think that one factor that can’t be dismissed is that the overwhelming amount of women’s fashion is designed with the adage that :”less is more”, which feeds into the inherently contradictory feminist mantra that women have the right to dress llike escorts and sex workers and be treated as if they liive in Victorian England without being scared at
Yeah. Remember we fought for the right to look like sex workers and demanded that you not notice or act upon it.
I am being sarcastic, but that is often missed.
A real tragedy about the three girls.
for the girls that were murdered i guess it is what oprah refers to as white privilege . and she should know being so underprivileged .
Brilliant and compelling writing! Thanks so much!
Yes, my last ex-wife ( the 8!tch ) would eagerly use the term ” white trash” but you’d never hear the phrase “black trash” come out of her mouth. She’d rather die.
Quote: “What remains to be solved is how some of us go one way in life, and others go another.”
This is why I keep coming back to FP for more of Dr. Goska’s writings-not only are they elaborate (I wonder how much time goes into research here) but they are non-dogmatic as well as inviting us to ponder the underlying issues of any problem.
The question she end’s her piece here is not banal at all. How many people are, at this very moment, imprisoned (or worse) because they continued on the wrong path? How much are they culpable, at which junction could s.o (or something) have helped them stay out of trouble.
How can we, as a society, raise/empower our kids to be resilient?
Yet, there is one thing I can not agree with:” and then he should be unceremoniously put down. New York does not have a death penalty, but Nevada and South Carolina do…”
Pushed the Send button to early. I can not agree with capital punishment even for someone as despicable as Mr. Heuermann. A society should be judged by how it treats “the least of it’s bretheren” and I can not think of s.o less deserving of anything than him at the moment (and his ilk). Pro-life Catholic here, let him rot in prison. And study him extensively.
Also, with the US American “justice system” and media frenzy accompanying death penalty cases you will make him immortal (remember the first “trans-woman” to be executed in Missiouri? Yeah, that autogynephiliac has a Wikipedia page in four! languages: English, German, Russian and Farsi the family of his victim can look at. So, congratulations, I guess)
I will also say something unpopular Dr. Goska has hinted at in her other piece about the Gilgo Beach Killer:Prostitution is gloryfied as “sex work”.Women’s bodies are devalued, by society, by the current culture. If this was NOT the case, a missing prostitute would immediately ring all alarm bells. If people saw that prostitution is basically slavery, it would have more empathy with it’s victims.
Going back to the perpetrator: It would be easy to kill him and than feel good about it. Problem solved.Not our society’s fault, we have washed our hands of it.Misogyny? Not our problem. Until the next Heuermann arises.
This would be more than wrong. The question should not be what should happen to the murderer (let’s just call him Rex H if anything. and forget about him, erase his existence symbolically) but what should happen to society and women’s role in it.
I appreciate your thoughtful post but I politely disagree with you about the death penalty.
We will all die, but few of us will commit murder. Murderers have exited society. We dishonor their victims by providing them with food, shelter, entertainment and recreation for the rest of their lives.
I am Catholic, too, and the death penalty is Biblical.
I appreciate your answer as well Dr. Goska an will also politely disagree with you. Arguably, a lot of things that might seem appaling today are Biblical,too, like i.e animal sacrifice or Levirate marriage.
Hmm, is the glass half full or half empty? Do we honour life by taking life? Or by perserving it? I tend towards the second option (without frills)
As to Catholicism, the Magisterium of the Church is clear on this issue. All life, no exceptions (yes leftists, no abortions, too, or MAID. Someone should tell Mr. Biden in case he forgot).
Okay let me give you a hard time. Tell me what good is served by keeping the convicted Gilgo Beach killer alive.
The Gilgo Beach killer must die if life is sacred and precious.
Genesis 9:6 “Whoever sheds man’s blood, By man his blood shall be shed, For in the image of God He made man.”
If we can all kill willy nilly, then man and his life are of little value.
Hard times make for strong people so: with pleasure
1.To uphold the concept of the seamless garment. Yes, that includes this despicable man, too.
2. To study him. We are doing way to little CT brain scans of psychopaths. It would be interesting to observe such specimens during the course of their lives, check for changes resulting from treatment etc. Yhis chould help us develop early warning systems/treatment for psychopathy in children and thus reduce the number of serial killers in the future.
3. Society is partly to blame, too,imo. It should not be allowed to wash it’s hands of it.
By this, I mean- there must have been many people who had realized thst things were off with this guy.They choose not to get involved because society looks down on prostitutes.The women were seen as less worthy by society, which meant that it did not put too much resources into assisting them or caring for them. Killing Heuermann will be a similacrum of a solution.
Second try: Hard timea create hard people, who, in turn will create good times. So sure, with pleasure.
1. I believe in the seamless garment
2. We can study him and his ilk using CT scans to monitor changes in brain chemistry and changes happening due to treatment. And use our findings to filter out young people who might become like him and stear them in the right direction.
3. He will spend the rest of his life in solitary. Otherwise someone will kill him.
4. Execute him and he will become famous. Let him wither away in prison and people will forget about him, eventually.
Several goods are served, imo.
Hanna: I have to reply to Ms. Goska because the “reply” buttons are gone for you.
1. I looked up “shameless garment” and it is a beautiful teaching, but I disagree with its application in staying the executioner’s hand. The Church’s authority does not abrogate God’s unambiguous commands. God is perfect now and always, but the living await perfection.
2. Life is precious, so God commands the death of the one who destroys it. Romans 13:3-4 gives to the government power to kill the body. God will judge rightly thereafter. Neither does God remove the consequences of sin in this life.
3. Whatever CT scans or any science might reveal about our innate propensities does not in any way ameliorate what is said in #2.
4. Blaming society or upbringing to excuse criminal behavior denies justice to the widow, the orphan and the oppressed of the perpetrator’s chosen actions. It demeans both victim and perpetrator.
5. Giving sanction to murder tends to devalue innocent life and increase societal evil.
Hanna, you may not mean to do so, but you are saying your wisdom supersedes God’s.
God mandated the death penalty for murder in Genesis 9:6. What mistake did God make?
If I intentionally torture and kill your beloved child, mother, friend for the fun of it, would you stay the executioner’s hand? Would I not forfeit my right to live? How would you defend your position? It seems chaotic to me.
Yes, because I could not honor the lives of my family members by having s.o killed or deprive another family of them.
Would I suffer?Sure, but values are only values if you are willing to suffer for them.
Also: do you think the Catholic Church is wrong here? Although it clearly has received a mandate from God?
The author’s theme of personal choices and personal responsibility is the elephant in the room that popular culture – the glorification and status of victimhood; the social acceptance of self-destructive behavior(s) that harm and damage children, families, and society – does not advocate, promote, or support in the media.
I like the word responsibility. It means you need to carry your own water. It means to have basic decent values that are productive and helpful – you are polite, you work, you complete necessary tasks, you consider how your behavior affects other people,
I believe that popular culture would be well-served if somehow, someway, the youth looked at personal responsibility and positive personal choices with the same sense of awe and reverence as they do with victimhood and thug life.
The concept of personal responsibility is demonized. It’s called “blaming the victim.”
Soooo, there are literally no adults around (if no one is responsible for anything).
No society can function like that, in the long run. My prediction is, that this weakness will result in hard times, for all of Us.