Wednesday, July 2, 2003

The supporters of the Supreme Court's overturning of Texas' anti-sodomy law claim that law cannot be founded on morality, especially "Christian" morality, because we live in a pluralistic society of competing moral world-views.

Some will even cite the Constitution as putting up a firewall between "church morality" and civil law. (Of course, the Constitution's main point is to protect churches from the government.)

Their standard for how to define something as illegal is basically this: does it hurt a non-consenting adult or child? By this definition, of course, sodomy is perfectly all right, as is any form of pornography, euthanasia, incest, and nudist camps for all ages.

Of course, they are right in a sense, but they are also terribly wrong. All laws stem from some basic, shared moral convictions. The Supreme Court itself said that the problem with the anti-sodomy laws is that they deny respect to a class of citizens. Isn't that notion based on the moral idea that all classes should be respected in the first place?

Morality indeed is the foundation of law. However, it only acts as a foundation to the degree that the society is moral or shares certain common notions of morality. Once the commonality begins to recede, so does morality's influence on law. Instead, you begin applying some sort of least-common denominator: does such-and-such an activity result in the direct harm of another, non-consenting individual?

Of course, this approach completely ignores the effects of private behavior on public life and society. The mother who engages in prostitution may not hurt herself or her John when doing business, but you can bet that she and her child will suffer as a result of the moral, psychological, and mental damage done to her.

We as a society used to think that certain sexual acts (premarital heterosexual sex included) were in and of themselves sufficiently deleterious to society and the public good that they ought to be illegal. Yes, this was a moral judgment. Yes, it was based on Christian teachings.

Now, we reject such quaint judgments as pre-modern and close-minded. Yet, we neglect the real question: do such sexual acts actually result in harm to society? I mean, was the moral condemnation of those acts just based on some old, out-of-date religious text? Or is there also some real validity to such sexual prohibitions?

If one can possibly move aside the sex-crazed bias of today's culture and look at what non-marital sex does to society, it is quite clear that the old fogies got it right. AIDs, STDs, out-of-wedlock births, rape, psychologically damaged teenage girls and boys, crack babies, etc. The list is long and tragic.

Our laws are a reflection of our society's capacity to respect the dignity of the individual. The less we hold this dignity as something real and inviolate, the less we will want our laws to protect that dignity, and the more our society will descend into moral chaos, personal unhappiness, and general decline.

We have a right, as a democratic nation, to change our mores and the connection between morality and the law. But we do so at our own risk. For those of you who revel in liberalism's continuing assault on traditional morality, I hope you get what you want. It will come at a steep price and at the potential disintegration of the very society which you are trying to "fix."

Trey Hoffman

Sharpsburg, Ga.