fu_mommaOf course, some would argue it's never right to impose one's morality on others by codifying it into law. Yet such is the very purpose of law. No public policy or legislation operates in a moral vacuum. The law has always been the means by which cultures state their values and what it is they want to protect.
The Seventh Commandment, "Thou shalt not commit adultery,"which could also be correctly translated, "Thou shalt not commit sexual immorality," is the Creator's law -- an eternal verity that guards the great institution of marriage, the sanctity of the family, and the preservation of society. God didn't give this law simply because, as someone said, "Everything that's fun is either fattening or sinful." God gave this law because it's the only way that sex works properly.
The full article is an interesting diatribe on an "activist" judge's decision in the case of a woman who was terminated from her job because she was cohabitating in an unmarried fashion: she was given the choice of getting married, moving out, or getting fired.
I know where I stand on this issue, and probably where most of you stand-- and I'd bet that the significant majority of people in this country as well. Note that I'm not saying that it makes it the right decision, just the most popular.
And that's kind of the key argument here, isn't it? On one hand, you have behaviors that are driven by a society in the statistical sense, not bound by the strictures of a codified morality; on the other, you have rules that have thousands of years of history behind them, written by divine hand.
My own personal beliefs are not such that I take the idea of divine laws seriously, at least in the moral sense. I look at religion (in the historical sense) as being the primary force behind civilization, the codification of moral laws and the teachings of ethics that elevate us beyond savage animals: a common set of rules that allow us to live together in communities for the betterment of the people as a whole.
Yet the term "betterment" implies a value judgement (i.e. better/worse), and the judgement is done by a human, and not some divine scoring machine.
The greater issue to me is one of the use of the divine moral absolute as law. This is the kind of thing that leads to things like jihad, and the decision to blow the shit out of people who have a different set of beliefs.
Granted, the Agape Press isn't exactly a mainstream do-rag, but they do pursue a considerable activism in the name of Judeo-Christian moral values.
Like this diatribe against Santorum.
There are just too many articles on this site that are beyond belief. The stem-cell research one is wild if you know anything about the embryos being considered (if they weren't going to be used in research, they were to be destroyed).
I would hope that this is not representational of the majority of people who consider themselves conservatives. I would hope this is an extreme, just as I am often annoyed by the extreme liberal viewpoints that I see day to day. I like to think that most people in the world are sane and somewhat open-minded, and are at least tolerant of things that they may not agree with.
It's when I see things like "We have a moral obligation to eradicate (fill in the blank) from existence" that I see danger: this is exactly the imperative being used by a large part of the muslim world against Israel.
And we see how well that is turning out.