February 2010

An honor killing in southeast Turkey is renewing the debate about the practice. A 16-year old girl was bound and buried alive by her family last December for talking to boys. The family held a meeting and the grandfather approved the measure. Authorities have since arrested and are still holding both the father and the grandfather. The mother was detained and later released. About 200 honor killings occur each year in Turkey representing about half the country’s murders. The southeastern province where many of these killings occur is among the poorest. The isolation of poverty notwithstanding such killings defy norms of understanding. Obviously honor is valued above parental love. Still, isn’t infanticide a stain on one’s honor? What logic or archaic notions, what levels of ignorance lie behind a father or other male family member feeling entitled to take a life? Let’s hope as the debate is carried out in Turkey and elsewhere that some of these questions are dealt with and lead to what can end the practice. That would redeem an otherwise useless killing.

Massachusetts has become the first state to require tooth brushing in pre-schools and day care centers for any child who has at least one meal there or attends more than four hours a day. The program came as a result of a 2003 state study which found that one in four Massachusetts kindergartners have dental disease. Parents who feel strongly against can opt out. One would think such a small program dealing with health, education, prevention and young children, would have general approbation. Of course, it doesn’t. There are those who believe it an intrusion of the government—though it would seem less intrusive than traffic laws—and there are those who even are concerned about the spread of germs from toothbrushes and the spitting associated with brushing—though that would be so for any tooth brushing in anyone’s home. The inevitable objections may be a sign of the age we live in, where general approbation is elusive even for the most benign issue, but it does not make it constructive.