Legislating Morality

[FA_Q2]

This one statement is key to we are talking about and at the center of what I believe in. To my core, I believe that government exists to protect my rights and above all, I see that as the reason this nation came into existence in the first place. People came here escaping persecution and perusing freedom. Freedom that can only be attained with a government that such is the paramount purpose of its existence.

It depends on what one means by ‘government.’

If by ‘government’ one is including the courts, then yes, to a degree.

But it’s not the fundamental responsibility of the legislative or administrative components of government to protect one’s rights, it’s the responsibility of both those entities to act in a manner consistent with the Constitution, and their acts are assumed to be Constitutional until such time as a court says otherwise. However, it is not uncommon for government to act in such a manner that may conflict with individual liberty, where government believes its acting in a manner consistent with public safely or policy.

When government acts in such a manner we believe is in violation of our civil liberties, citizens may access the Federal courts to seek relief from such excess; the courts belong to the people, it is the venue in which they exercise their First Amendment right ‘to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.’

And herein we have a fundamental disagreement as to what the purpose of the government is. I do not agree with your contention that the Judicial branch is the sole protector of our rights. The legislative branch is just as important in that role.

I must ask, what is it that you believe is the purpose of government? I am asking about the government as a whole, not just one piece of the government.

 

[Publius1787]

I have meant to post this topic for a long time but have failed to do so until I seen Immie recently mention government legislating morality and I could not let another statement like this slide. I have heard time and time again that it is the governments place to legislate morality and that all law is based on this. The worst part is that I hear this mostly from the 'small' government right here on this board. You cannot have a small government at the same time as a government that decides morality. Those two situations are mutually exclusive because a government that is based on determining morality has any and all rights to do whatever it feels is moral at the time.


IT IS NOT THE GOVERNMENTS PLACE TO LEGISLATE MORALITY. PERIOD.


It is one of the most egregious things that the government does when it legislates my activities based on what it feels is right and wrong. That was never the place of the government and we should never have given it such an unstoppable power. Now, before you go into making murder or theft illegal and claiming that is legislating morality, it is not. The number one job of the government (and in reality, the only real job of government) should be to protect its citizens rights. It is in that duty that acts like murder, theft and other laws derive their need. It prevents on citizen from infringing on the rights of other citizens.

Personally, if I were to draft a law, the primary question that should be asked is what right does this law protect. If the answer was none then such a law would be meaningless and discarded. If the government can decide what is immoral and moral, how long are you going to wait for the government to decide that YOUR morality is not the correct morality.

Well.... let the scathing criticisms begin

Sure the governments’ job is to legislate morality. I would hope that law was grounded in something. However, what kind of morality? Objective morality? Religious morality? A little of both? Of course, I need not convey the obvious answer.

 

[Artevelde]

Sure the governments’ job is to legislate morality. I would hope that law was grounded in something. However, what kind of morality? Objective morality? Religious morality? A little of both? Of course, I need not convey the obvious answer.

I agree that legislation implies the imposition of public morality. This should remain limited however, to what is fundamental to the orderly functioning of society.

 

[dblack]

Sure the governments’ job is to legislate morality.

I agree that legislation implies the imposition of public morality.

Why?

 

[NYcarbineer]

I have heard proponents of the ultrasound, a non-invasive procedure to "view" the unborn, indicate that they only want the potential mother to know that the "thing" she is being shed of is a living and moving entity.

"The word on the street" is that this is only a tissue mass.

Those who campaign against this are campaigning to intentionally withhold information from the person who is going to either abort or not abort a unborn child.

Then why don't they also require women to watch a movie of a birth, and a caesarian, and a medically necessary late term abortion, etc.,

every time a pregnant woman decides she's going to have a baby?

Those things are relevant in a remote sense. The ultra sound is a here and now this is really happening kind of a thing.

I happen to support the legality of Abortion because it is expedient and i don't intend to take care of every unwanted child that comes to term. However, justifying the legality of the procedure in our legal system is an empty exercise in false justifications. There is no appropriate legal base for killing an infant, born or unborn.

There is no moral justification for this either.

Societally, there is no remedy for this problem and so we, as a society, have banded together to rob the unborn of their rights in favor of the imagined rights of irresponsible and probably stupid women who have no clue and we allow them to define a living entity as a tissue mass.

This is an excellent example of something that is legal, immoral and wrong.

I can find morally objectionable in the termination of a pregnancy in the early stages. I can certainly find nothing in it objectionable compared to the immorality of using the long arm of the law to force a woman, under threat of severe penalty, to carry a pregnancy to term when she does not want to.

btw, the 'appropriate legal basis' for allowing abortion is the Constitution, which in its original form provided NO rights for fetuses.

 

[NYcarbineer]

I have heard proponents of the ultrasound, a non-invasive procedure to "view" the unborn, indicate that they only want the potential mother to know that the "thing" she is being shed of is a living and moving entity.

"The word on the street" is that this is only a tissue mass.

Those who campaign against this are campaigning to intentionally withhold information from the person who is going to either abort or not abort a unborn child.

That is medically irrelevant. That is nothing more than using an unnecessary medical procedure for propaganda purposes to advance a partisan political agenda.

If this is medically irrelevant, why is it ever performed? In any other -ectomy type of procedure the doctor is encouraged and almost without exception required to explain what is happening and what is being removed.

Are you saying that in this one case, the doctor must be restrained from explaining what is being removed from the patient's body?

Are there any other removals or procedures that need to be done without the the patient's full understanding of what is happening? Forced sterilization? Frontal lobotomy? Euthanasia?

Medical procedure absent patient fully informed consent is more appropriate to Nazi Germany than 21st Century USA.

It is medically irrelevant to force a woman to look at a movie of a fetus she has chosen to legally abort.
Are you forced by law to look at the xray of a tooth you're having pulled?

 

[NYcarbineer]

Those who campaign against this are campaigning to intentionally withhold information from the person who is going to either abort or not abort a unborn child.

That would only be true if those people were campaigning to have such a procedure unavailable to the person in question. That is not the case. What they are talking about is not FORCING such a procedure.

This IS a case of morality though. These people view what the woman is doing as immoral and, through force of law, they are trying to force a person face their morality. Of course, those on the left will scream about such as they should.


Then out of the other side of their mouth, they demand that birth control be offered for free. Little do they seem to realize that the principals in are the same.

There is no 'information' being withheld. What woman who has decided to get an abortion does not know that she is terminating a developing fetus that were it not aborted would have eventually resulted (in most cases) in the live birth of a child?

Show me the women who don't know that.

 

[dblack]

Sure the governments’ job is to legislate morality.

I agree that legislation implies the imposition of public morality.

Why?

The reason I ask, is that it seems the central question of the OP, is "Should government be imposing morality through laws, or merely protecting our rights?".

I don't really think that the purpose of government is to ensure that we all believe the same thing, or have the same values. At least as far as the tradition of the US goes, the purpose of government is to maintain a society where we can get along and, as much as possible, remain free to follow our own beliefs and values.

In other traditions government is about enforcing conformity of beliefs (particularly in theocracies) and in those it makes sense for government to legislate morality. But I don't want our government to follow their lead.

 

[editec]

Every law or policy is a morality play, kiddies.

Soem are just more obviously involved in issues we understand as being moral issues.

But EVERY LAW is effecting our behaviors and every act we do or don't do is basically playing out as a mind of moral decision.

 

[dblack]

Every law or policy is a morality play, kiddies.

Soem are just more obviously involved in issues we understand as being moral issues.

But EVERY LAW is effecting our behaviors and every act we do or don't do is basically playing out as a mind of moral decision.

So do you see any distinction between rights and morals?

 

[Katzndogz]

The government is legislating immorality. People are being absolutely denied the right to make moral choices for themselves in the name of protecting immoral conduct as freedom. There is the freedom to be immoral, but not the freedom to be moral.

There was a time when no laws legislating morality were necessary. A teen aged girl who got pregnant could expect to be cut off from her friends, thrown out by her family, forced into a home for unwed mothers and have her baby there. Families that accepted the child passed it off as a sister or brother, both mothers hid until the ruse was complete. Men who abandoned their families lost their jobs, lost their friends, got tossed out of the bowling league. There were social consequences so horrible that laws were unnecessary. Now, immorality is what's legislated.

 

[dblack]

The government is legislating immorality. People are being absolutely denied the right to make moral choices for themselves in the name of protecting immoral conduct as freedom. There is the freedom to be immoral, but not the freedom to be moral.

There was a time when no laws legislating morality were necessary. A teen aged girl who got pregnant could expect to be cut off from her friends, thrown out by her family, forced into a home for unwed mothers and have her baby there. Families that accepted the child passed it off as a sister or brother, both mothers hid until the ruse was complete. Men who abandoned their families lost their jobs, lost their friends, got tossed out of the bowling league. There were social consequences so horrible that laws were unnecessary. Now, immorality is what's legislated.

Are you implying that, in these times, legislating morality IS necessary?

 

[uscitizen]

Rights are kind of just broadly accepted morals.

 

[Katzndogz]

The government is legislating immorality. People are being absolutely denied the right to make moral choices for themselves in the name of protecting immoral conduct as freedom. There is the freedom to be immoral, but not the freedom to be moral.

There was a time when no laws legislating morality were necessary. A teen aged girl who got pregnant could expect to be cut off from her friends, thrown out by her family, forced into a home for unwed mothers and have her baby there. Families that accepted the child passed it off as a sister or brother, both mothers hid until the ruse was complete. Men who abandoned their families lost their jobs, lost their friends, got tossed out of the bowling league. There were social consequences so horrible that laws were unnecessary. Now, immorality is what's legislated.

Are you implying that, in these times, legislating morality IS necessary?

Nope. Not even close. I'd prefer to see no laws legislating immorality either.

 

[dblack]

Rights are kind of just broadly accepted morals.

See, I don't think that's accurate. And I think it's the source of a lot of disagreement and equivocation in politics.

Rights could be considered a subset of morals, I suppose, but they are qualitatively different than most morals. Rights are about tolerance of diversity and respecting the freedom of others, while most morals are imperatives on behavior that most of us wouldn't consider encoding into law. Sloppiness in considering this is what leads to claims like 'health care is a right', when the notion isn't even a coherent concept.

 

[uscitizen]

So Laws about killing, stealing and such are not based on moral decisions within a society?

Just because they have been around along time does not mean they were not based on accepted morals.

 

[dblack]

So Laws about killing, stealing and such are not based on moral decisions within a society?

Just because they have been around along time does not mean they were not based on accepted morals.

No. There's overlap, to be sure, but the reason they're laws isn't because they're immoral. They're against the law because they violate the rights of others. As an example, most people believe that suicide is immoral. But I think most of us also agree it doesn't really make sense for it be against the law (although it is in many places). I would argue that's an example of legislating morality, but not protecting rights.

 

[uscitizen]

Suicide is immoral?

Why is it immoral?

Lets get to the root of some of these morals.

 

[dblack]

Suicide is immoral?

Why is it immoral?

Lets get to the root of some of these morals.

I'm not sure why. A lot of people think it is though. The point is it's not violating another person's rights, so there's no need to make it illegal.

I'm not really interested in getting to the root of any particular morals. That's not really the point of the thread.

 

[Publius1787]

Sure the governments’ job is to legislate morality.

I agree that legislation implies the imposition of public morality.

Why?

Ever hear of Natural Law? It’s the fundamental basics for most laws and constitutions across the world. However, liberal’s don’t subscribe to it and prefer Rousseau or Marx and not John Locke. Read John Locks Second Treatise of Government. It's free to the public online. Or, if you have a hard time understanding natural law philosophy...... ...... .....