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Should the government legislate morality?

Yes or No?


  • Total voters
    42
Morality itself is based on logical arguments to preserve a large group of people living together. With that said, the government should police/legislate certain aspects of 'morality' in order to keep some sort of order. What should be measured is the limits of this legislation. It doesn't benefit anybody for us to be able to murder without consequence. It also doesn't benefit anybody to make rape legal. As long as the legislation does not infringe on the man-made rights, benefits etc of others, I do not see a problem with 'legislating morality'.
 
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As a moral relativist, no.
 
Legislating morality would be immoral because it subverts the life and freedom of other beings.

The one moral the government can rightfully administer is justice, which is stopping people from imposing on the lives and freedoms of others to the point the imposition threatens the continued existence of these beings' lives and freedoms.

Hence the term, justice system.
 
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Depends. What do you mean by morality?

If we're talking about banning same-sex marriage and waging a war on drugs because they make Baby Jesus cry, then no, government should not be involved. If we're talking about deciding together, as a society, that there are certain things we aren't willing to tolerate (e.g. human rights abuses, corporations taking advantage of weak people, being unable to get health care when you get sick), then yes, government absolutely should be involved.
More than just like, I applaud.
 
Most laws coincide with popular morality, but a good law isn't based solely on morality. The people have a right to chose laws to protect themselves against others in society. If a law doesn't do that but instead meddles in private affairs that don't affect anybody else, it should go.
 
Like CC said, all laws are morally based. There are consequences for not obeying the law. So the government doesn't exactly force people to live a moral life, but it does punish them for not doing so.

All laws are not morally based... especially by-stander laws. You are pretty much protected from being punished if you watch somebody die... A lot of decisions made in family court doesn't seem right or moral to me...

Reminds me of another thread... should child abusers be sterilized, so they don't have more children to abuse and hurt? It sounds morally reasonable, but enforcing it would be in violation of the abusers rights... :shrug:

There are sometimes conflicts between rights and morals...

To answer the question, the law shouldn't be based on morals because it's impossible to prove whose brand of morality is correct. I also think that by allowing the law to be based on morality, religions would just fight each other over government control and the right to impose authority. Ironically, churches and religious groups can do some pretty damn immoral things IMO... so the law should absolutely not be based entirely on morals.

Although morals are not universal to individuals, all individuals have a sense of morality... unless the individual is mentally ill. Individuals can governthemselves morally... no take out "govern." Humans don't need to be governed morally, because humans have the capacity to be moral without authoritative structures like churches and government defining morality.
 
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Depends. What do you mean by morality?

If we're talking about banning same-sex marriage and waging a war on drugs because they make Baby Jesus cry, then no, government should not be involved. If we're talking about deciding together, as a society, that there are certain things we aren't willing to tolerate (e.g. human rights abuses, corporations taking advantage of weak people, being unable to get health care when you get sick), then yes, government absolutely should be involved.

lol

Making baby Jesus cry should be a crime...
 
All laws are not morally based... especially by-stander laws. You are pretty much protected from being punished if you watch somebody die... A lot of decisions made in family court doesn't seem right or moral to me...

Reminds me of another thread... should child abusers be sterilized, so they don't have more children to abuse and hurt? It sounds morally reasonable, but enforcing it would be in violation of the abusers rights... :shrug:
Yeah, might hurt their self esteem or something. :roll:
 
The government should not legislate morality. The government should legislate behavior which harms other people without their consent. That covers not only the obvious crimes of violence, but also acts of fraud, theft, vandelism, contractual violations, etc. These are society laws.

The government should not legislate "moral" behavior such as sexual orientation, forced church attendance, specific systems of belief (religious or otherrwise), any behavior between consenting adults, or victimless behavior, like prostitution and use of drugs, alcohol or tobacco (although the government can certainly legislate the consequence of recklessly abusing these substances, creating potential harm to others in the process).

This is a good post... I agree
 
These laws are also based on morality. Perhaps not EVERYONE'S morality, but morality nonetheless.

If any law were based on everyone's morality, there wouldn't need to be a law against it anyway. Laws are for people who don't believe in them.
 
I think someone who abuses children deserve to have their rights taken away from them.

I agree... but forced sterilization is really controversial. There's been one Supreme Court ruling that I know of involving forced sterilization as a form of punishment, and it was ruled unconstitutional under the equal protection clause and a violation of due process.

Skinner v Oklahoma, I believe… so the law isn't always on the side of what's moral.

It's really easy to see the law protecting immorality when you look a free speech... What's moral about the Westboro Baptist Church being allowed to protest funerals of soliders and the funeral of the little girl who was killed in Tuscon? Morality steps in when good people go to those funerals and hold up American flags to block those @ssholes from being seen...
 
peepnklown and psychoclown, hmm. :confused:
So, with our powers combine are we super libertarian? :cool:
 
And you'd be wrong, but this is America and you have every right to be wrong! :mrgreen:



Have a seat so you don't faint. Are you sitting down? Good. Because the fact is that I personally don't care if brothers and sisters want to get married. I consider it a huge ick factor myself, but I don't believe the government has the right to criminalize it. Or bigamy. Or polygamy, for that matter. All I care about is that all parties are consenting adults, not duped spouses being lied to by someone with a secret life.

Grown ups have a right to do icky things, things I personally would never do. I don't believe the government has the right to criminalize behaviors between consenting adults, period. And yes, that extends to assisted suicide. Government needs to keep our society safe from those who would infringe upon our bodies, our property and our freedoms without our consent. Morality is not in the government's job description as far as I'm concerned.

Agree.
The Islamics do not agree, and that will be the cause of their downfall.
And we made a similar mistake with prohibition during the previous century. And another, the Salam witch trials of the 1600s.
 
I think someone who abuses children deserve to have their rights taken away from them.
This is wide open to debate.....define "abuse".
Forget the obvious (physical), go to the mental abuse, the self-esteem thing..
Many people simply do not know any better..
Extremism enters the picture.
 
Morality based on fairness (i.e. its bad to kill someone or steal from someone or rape someone who has done nothing and just trying to go about their business) fine. Morality based on what some 2,000 year old book says is "right" or based on what will be "better" for someone who didn't ask for government advice and who's decisions aren't harming anyone else - absolutely not.
 
And what is it, exactly, that makes your notions of "fairness" better than someone else's?
 
And what is it, exactly, that makes your notions of "fairness" better than someone else's?
Common sense. It's my notion that punishing someone for actions that don't harm anyone is unfair.
 
I voted other, some things they should and others they shouldn't. I think the government should legislate morality in some cases like abortion. However other things the government should not, such as gay marriage.
 
Certainly some people like society's laws because those laws square with their morals. But, is morality the only possible justification for most laws?

What if, as a society, we decide that we have a consensus that we value certain things simply because we like them. Such as liberty, order, and security? Deciding that we value these things is not a moral decision, it is a selfish one. We value them because it makes the vast majority of us happy to have them. If laws are based on these values, then their justifications need not be moral justifications.

I think it is important that society avoid moral justifications.

As a side note, I think morality largely happens to spring from the same fount as the justifications I propose above, though not entirely. But even so, there is some departure, and it is in those matters where law and morality ought to diverge.
 
The government legislates morality all the time, such as making murder a felony. I'm okay with murder being a crime.

yet there are other sound reasons to make murder illegal-ie to prevent anarchy and vigilante justice. however, there are no other reasons to say ban liquor sales on sunday or hunting on sunday
 
And you'd be wrong, but this is America and you have every right to be wrong! :mrgreen:



Have a seat so you don't faint. Are you sitting down? Good. Because the fact is that I personally don't care if brothers and sisters want to get married. I consider it a huge ick factor myself, but I don't believe the government has the right to criminalize it. Or bigamy. Or polygamy, for that matter. All I care about is that all parties are consenting adults, not duped spouses being lied to by someone with a secret life.

Grown ups have a right to do icky things, things I personally would never do. I don't believe the government has the right to criminalize behaviors between consenting adults, period. And yes, that extends to assisted suicide. Government needs to keep our society safe from those who would infringe upon our bodies, our property and our freedoms without our consent. Morality is not in the government's job description as far as I'm concerned.

Don't we have incest laws to keep them from reproducing? I thought the law was to protect against that and not the ick factor. Anyway, for whatever reason, I think brother/sister father/daughter marriages should remain illegal.
 
One aspect of law is to define the basic, agreed upon morality of a given society, so it is appropriate for government to "legislate morality". The debate then becomes about the agreed upon morality. Generally speaking, almost everyone is going to push for at least a few laws which are a part of their own moral code, but that are not "agreed upon" by the society as a whole. These proposed laws tend to be shot down.

One of the reasons I consider myself an anti-federalists is because of the interconnected nature of morality and law. I believe that there is a greater likelihood of gaining a social agreement on a specific morality on the small scale, but that as the population affected by the morality increases, the likelihood of agreement decreases and this leads to disenfranchisement and discord within the population.
 
This is wide open to debate.....define "abuse".
Forget the obvious (physical), go to the mental abuse, the self-esteem thing..
Many people simply do not know any better..
Extremism enters the picture.
Well, we were specifically talking about sexual abuse. I can't ignore the obvious, the obvious is what I was referring to.
 
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