A quick google search of the phrase "legislate morality" with any of the candidates' names will pull up countless hits. Where do you fall on this question: should we legislate morality?
Originally posted by NAVDAWG: Personlly I think it should be left at the door step just like religion.
I'll bet you don't bud. Legislating morality goes way beyond sodomy laws and I would bet that each of us has our own set we want to be set in stone. WSS
Posts: 5128 | Location: Norton Ohio USA | Registered: Mon September 15 2003
Originally posted by We need Tom Tupa: A quick google search of the phrase "legislate morality" with any of the candidates' names will pull up countless hits. Where do you fall on this question: should we legislate morality?
Who's morality are we talking about? - Tom F.
Posts: 10116 | Location: Nashville, TN | Registered: Sat September 13 2003
To bad we cant be as moral as the muslems. The ones who behead people with daggers and stone people to death, cut off limbs, etc. Gotta love that religion that governs the entire middle east.
Posts: 1509 | Location: Cuyahoga County | Registered: Mon September 18 2006
Interesting question. The tricky part is that all laws are based on morality (or ethics, to be more precise), only on a large scale--the idea that the community can come together and say, these are things that we will or will not do or accept.
To use an extreme example, why is it objectively wrong to have sex with children? Is there a biological reason for it? Maybe, in a very technical sense, but the main reason is that, as a socitey, we've decided that the people who do such a thing should be imprisoned, or at least forced to move to another parish.
Another complication that what is seen right and wrong changes over time. Muhammad married a nine year old and killed people who wouldn't convert. The Bible says that it's perfectly acceptable to sell your kids into slavery, stone them if they don't want to do their chores, and if a guy rapes a non-engaged woman, he has to marry her. And kill people who won't convert. All older religions have those sorts of fun details that don't make it into the pamphlets (the only really barbaric practice that's still in currency is circumcision, which is celebrated in boys but condemned when people do it to girls). That's because those systems of morality were set down at a time when, based on context or necessity, people did things that we would now find disgusting.
All that said, of course we need rules, and those rules will be based on someone's (or someones', to put it another way) sense of morality. Should people be allowed to kill themselves or not? Should they have access to drugs that society has decided to make illegal if it alleviates the pain of certain diseases? (What if snorting heroin makes my pain go away?) Should I have the responsibility for someone else's housing or health care because I make more money than they do?
I'm drawn to the libertarian "Everyone look out for himself" philosophy, but there are clearly things that are so important that the government has to step in.
Dennis You know, the big things, like DJs saying mean things to ugly women and boys kissing and the like.
Posts: 1536 | Location: Knoxville, TN | Registered: Sat April 28 2007
