A gentleman's name should appear in the newspaper only three times: When he's born, when he marries, and when he dies.  And above all, we are gentlemen first.

The words above, I take ever so seriously.  It is the one thing in my life that I’m very proud of, my steadfast respect of others.  Always be a gentleman.  I don’t know if my parents taught me this or if it’s something you are innately born with.  In either event, I treasure this quality I ‘m blessed to possess and work hard to instill such ideals in my own two sons.  Never, do I want them to disrespect someone.  Especially at a horrific and unfathomable level like sexual assault.

I’m tired of reading the name Brock Turner in the media.  He’s not a gentleman.  He’s not a man.  He’s not even human.  Hell, I challenge you to tell me he’s even an animal; my money is on slime.
 

I’m so sickened by the complete and utter breakdown of our legal system, the perceived bias of university alums and undergrads and the larger unspeakable bias of privilege.  I’m not sick from hearing about it; I’m sickened that it happened.  And continues to happen.  People continue to take advantage of others.

6 months for 3 felonies.  For ruining a life.  But it was the alcohol that made me do it and I want to speak to kids on how binge drinking leads to ‘unfortunate results.’  Are you fucking kidding me?  It was the drinking?  Have some fucking account ability for God’s sake you useless sack of shit.  Enough with the profane tirade as it accomplishes nothing more than making me exercise my right to say what I want.

I don’t want this entry to be about Brock Turner putting his name in media ether again or my vehement disgust for our legal system.  It’s not the legal system.  The jurors found him unanimously guilty of these felonies.  Our system works.  What doesn’t work is the subjectivity of a Stanford alumnus who didn’t want to ‘ruin’ this kid’s future.  His sentencing is comical.  Even more, is the lack of responsibility and remorse of this guy.  Punishment should suit the crime.  It’s that simple.  No commuting the sentence.  No reduction of sentence due to ‘credits’ or how fast you can swim  You made committed a horrific crime.  Go to jail.  For the appropriate sentence.  Extreme of me to think so?  Absolutely.  I have zero tolerance for predators devaluing human decency with a blatant disregard to human life and respect.

Because of my annoyances with this lack of human decency and continuously seeing his name in the media, I’ve opted to stop reading anything about it.  Until today.  Today, I took the time to read the anonymous victim’s letter to Turner.  It’s not easy reading.  But I implore upon you to read it.  Digest it. Study it.  And more importantly, take it to heart.

https://www.buzzfeed.com/katiejmbaker/heres-the-powerful-letter-the-stanford-victim-read-to-her-ra?utm_term=.uhDP5k8M#.qdy57Alb

Despite how it may seem with my above words; I’m not writing today to debate the charges or sentencing. I’m not writing today to debate the existence of entitlement. I’m not writing to evangelize a cause. I’m not writing to use this tragedy or this young woman’s torturous recovery as a vehicle to promote a cause or advance my agenda.

Then again, maybe I am.  If you consider my ‘cause’ human decency.  Then yes, I’m trying to advance my ‘cause’ at the cost of the results of this tragedy.  But in all seriousness, those who know me know that this ‘cause’ has existed in me long before the stories of the “unconscious intoxicated woman” or Brock Turner.

I cannot fathom what it would be like to be a victim of such a horrible crime.  I can’t even pretend to be close to understanding it.  And there’s no way I would even try to relate any disrespect in my life in contrast to this even being mentioned here.  I wouldn’t do that or talk about me or my struggles in the same breath.

But all of my ranting really comes back to the basics of respect.

A shred of human decency and respect begins to erode the walls of disrespect and intolerance between us all.  It can stop the patronizing and the bullying.  It can stop with the passive-aggressive undertones of dysfunctional relationships.  It can reduce the levels of intolerable violence and shootings.  Respect leads to tolerance.  And in my idealistic world, this can lead to less hatred.  Less abuse.  Less drama.  Will we get there? I doubt it at times because most people are happily drifting blindly in their own misguided intolerable belief structures.  After all, we’re all human and believe we’re right all the time and others are wrong.

The incident at Stanford is a harsh example of just how far a lack of respect can go.  While the letter written by the victim is graphic, it’s also revealing into just how disrespectful some humans have become.  Lost, are we that we feel so entitled to do what we want, when we want, without concern or regard to consequence.  I hope that this young woman will be able to find the strength in herself to heal and grow.  I believe she will if any of her optimism is true at the end of her letter.  May she embrace the grace to carry on and the respect of here family and friends for her resiliency in this.  Still, it’s a shame that we do such inexplicable things to each other only so that we can find some sort of meaning in it all.

Take a break the positive self-affirmations that you post to Facebook that you never follow.  Stop with the gossiping and the defamation of each other.  Stop with the judgements and the condescending superiority complexes we all have at times.  I feel like I’m dropping all of these imperatives like some micro-managing Lumberg from Office Space.  I’m just as guilty as everyone else.  When I take a look in the mirror, I know I have great room for growth and a high ceiling for improving how I treat others.  This entry isn’t meant to be hypocritical and point fingers at others to make a change and practice more respect, human decency and tolerance.  This is to rally all of us, including me, to a movement of respect of others.  If nothing else, we can all make a step today toward respect of others and ourselves.  Even a little step would be for the greater good.

Teach others the value of respect and human decency.  Teach your children respect and respect will come back to them.