So, there is this guy in Florida who is terminally ill, and he wants to end his life on stage during a rock concert in St. Petersburg, Fla. early next month.
How do you feel about that?
In a radio interview in Tampa Bay earlier this week, the front-man for the band “Hell On Earth”, Billy Tourtelot, sympathizing with the wishes of his fan, stated, “They’d rather have an assisted suicide, but the way the laws are written, they can’t do it.”
However, the unassisted suicide is still a go.
The band was contacted by the suicide-hopeful via e-mail.
Obviously, Bay Area authorities are not happy with the thought of a live suicide on stage and are
trying frantically to find a way to legally stop it.
But doesn’t a person have the right to die?
After all, the person’s suicide note, read to the public by Tourtelot in his interview, stated that this was an attempt to bring about the awareness of “dying with dignity.”
“Dying with dignity,” now, that sounds very noble – something we all probably wish for ourselves.
However, “Hell on Earth” might be held legally accountable if the suicide does occur.
As reported by “Bay News 9,” St. Petersburg city councilman Bill Foster says Fla. statutes say assisted suicide is a second degree
felony, and if death occurs “Hell on Earth” will be “prosecuted as conspirators.”
Tourtelot claims they are doing nothing illegal.
I really am not sure where I stand on this.
On the one hand, I don’t think public suicide is cool at all – I don’t think suicide in general is cool, but on the other hand I do believe that a person has the right to die.
Not only that, [if possible] they should have the right to die by their own means.
And because we are a people constantly in the “pursuit of happiness,” with happiness being at our own personal discretion, why then, if it does not interfere with another’s personal pursuit of happiness, would we try to stop them?
However, Americans remember the will of the Japanese kamikaze in World War II and their right to die, and what it cost us in American casualties.
What, if any, will be the cost of this person’s will?
Still, there is a sort of romanticism in dying on your own terms, but there is also an element of evil in it as well.
I cannot help but notice the irony in the band’s name – is it an omen of things to come or simply just a mere coincidence?
Is there any romance in public suicide?
Have we digressed to the days of Gladiators, when the soft whisper of an honorable death was deafened by the roar of the entertained.
Athough, Tourtelot claims this is not a publicity stunt, even if unintended, the media circus around this event will be overwhelming.
Maybe, that’s the ultimate wish of this person: to find fame in death, to experience the thrill of the crowd applauding them into whatever comes next.
Maybe this is his or her pursuit of happiness.
Can we stop it? Should we?
And if we think we should, but can’t; who do we punish?
I only present these questions because I myself can not pin down my own opinion about it.
Neither could the Supreme Court.
In 1997, the Supreme Court upheld the right to states to prohibit assisted suicide, and in the same breath reserves the the right to states to allow it.
When Patrick Henry said, “give me liberty, or give me death,” could he have also meant, “give me liberty and give me death.”
Maybe … maybe not.