Man Up

I’m just a plainspoken Colorado criminal defense lawyer, but the way I see it…

Centuries, millennia, of hate and fear led to the sentencing of a Texas father the other day who viciously struck his son four times in the face because he thought he might be gay.

The boy is two. He was special to his father because the man tried three times before to have a son, and sired girls. Like his sisters, the child preferred Barbies and kitchen sets to toy trucks and soccer balls. This the man could not abide. So he slapped his special son bloody.

The boy will be eight before he sees his daddy again, if his father serves the full six years in prison the judge ordered. I’m pretty sure the boy doesn’t know now if he’s gay; I’m pretty sure he won’t know then.

I can only hope that the child grows to understand he didn’t deserve the punishment his father gave him, that the father grows to understand that too.

Centuries, millenia from now, maybe we’ll all grow to understand that.