Branding People With A New Scarlet Letter For A Long-Ago Crime
A long-ago mistake by a young person doesn’t necessarily tell us anything about their character today.
By David Grace (www.DavidGraceAuthor.com)
The Scarlet Letter
In Nathaniel Hawthorn’s 1850 novel, The Scarlet Letter, Hester Prynne was forced to wear a large “A” for “Adulteress” so that people would forever be reminded of her sin.
The current hue and cry for retroactive social purity makes me feel as if I am living in a contemporary version of Hester Prynne’s 1638 Puritan Boston.
I’m not advocating a policy of “forgive and forget.”
I’m saying that a young person’s action thirty or more years ago is unlikely to accurately tell us anything about their personality, character, or ethics today.
Things That Usually Don’t Change
Yes, sometimes past actions can reveal a fundamental personality or character flaw.
Crimes of sex and violence may well betray hard-wired defects in the individual’s psyche. Pedophiles, rapists, and wife-beaters are often fundamentally flawed and are unlikely to change.
