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Legislating morality

clarsct

Illuminator
Joined
Mar 14, 2005
Messages
4,867
I recently had a debate with a friend of mine about whether or not prostitution ought to be legalized. In the course of that discussion, I made that statement 'We should not legislate morality."

With which he disagreed. He felt that we can and ought to legislate morality, based on the morals of society.


Can we legislate morality? Should we have laws against drugs, prostitution and other consensual crimes?
What about abortion laws? Isn't that another way to legislate morality?

What about murder? Aren't you enforcing a moral code there?

What do you guys think?
 
That's what all law do. Law is an attempt (and often a poor one) to objectify morality.

'This is wrong, therefore it is now illegal'.

Wrong to whom?
 
Another view of law is that it's an attempt to stop that which is destructive to the society. Which means that even if the majority thinks something is morally wrong, it can still be legal.
 
As long as poverty makes prostitution seem to be the better alternative to some people, mostly women, it won't cease to exist, clarsct. It has very little to do with morality and a lot to do with wealth: Rich people look down on poor people and what they have to do to get by. Rich people ascribe a moral quality to what they themselves don't have to consider doing, as if it were a question of not only financial, but also moral superiority-inferiority: 'I would never stoop so low!'
They do the same thing with the question of taste!
 
Can we legislate morality? Should we have laws against drugs, prostitution and other consensual crimes?

I'm a libertarian, so I believe that laws should only be meant to stop people from infringing on other people's rights. Consensual "crimes" don't hurt anyone else- why are we punishing people for them?

What about abortion laws? Isn't that another way to legislate morality?

The question there is whether a fetus is a human. If it is, then abortion is equivalent to murder (I'm pro-choice, but I can see how there are multiple sides to this issue). Just because there's a moral question about a law doesn't mean the law is "legislating morality"- there's moral questions about just about every law out there (that's why law is such a complicated area).

What about murder? Aren't you enforcing a moral code there?

Murder involves one person seriously violating the rights of another. I suppose you could say that the principle of protecting people from being harmed by others is a "moral principle," but then you're stretching the definition of morality such that no law could possible escape.

I think what you meant by "legislating morality" was "enforcing values"- that is, because the majority consider prostitution a bad thing, they can make it illegal. I absolutely agree that values should never be enforced- I personally can't stand Madonna or Steven Seagal, but I wouldn't try to make them illegal.
 
As long as poverty makes prostitution seem to be the better alternative to some people, mostly women, it won't cease to exist, clarsct. It has very little to do with morality and a lot to do with wealth: Rich people look down on poor people and what they have to do to get by. Rich people ascribe a moral quality to what they themselves don't have to consider doing, as if it were a question of not only financial, but also moral superiority-inferiority: 'I would never stoop so low!'
They do the same thing with the question of taste!

I agree and would like to add that most religions are also opposed to prositution.
 
Yeeeees, but .... aren't these religions always against any kind of sex that is not sanctified by their priests? I wouldn't count that as opposition to prostitution specifically. That a woman has to give in to sex because of poverty or because it is her duty to be subservient to her husband/owner aren't things that seem to bother religions much as far as I know: http://bibleresources.bible.com/passagesearchresults.php?passage1=Judges+19&version1=51
 
Can we legislate morality?

Yes, you most certainly can. Should you? Well, that question always runs the risk of trying to figure out what constitutes morality, but in a broad sense, yes, we should. And I'll give you an example of moral legislation which is fairly non-controversial and so often doesn't get considered in such debates: laws against animal cruelty. I am (generally speaking) in favor of them, and so are most people. But why have such laws? It's really a moral judgment about the act being wrong. Many other laws about "wrong" acts (such as murder) can also be justified on the grounds of preventing people from violating the rights of other people (for example, theft is a violation of property rights, etc), but no such argument exists for animals. They are not members of society, they have no real rights, they can be killed pretty much arbitrarily, so why make torturing an animal illegal when killing that same animal is perfectly legal? This is, ultimately, a moral decision. I'm quite happy with it, but that's what it is.

The cry that we should not legislate morality is often used by people who don't really have a problem with legislating morality categorically, but merely with the particular idea of morality being advanced. That being said, I would argue that legislation can never make people good, and it should not try to. We cannot outlaw every immoral act, and we should be ESPECIALLY cautious about outlawing an act on moral grounds if only a slim majority considers it immoral.
 
I agree and would like to add that most religions are also opposed to prositution.

How is this, in itself, a reason to oppose the legislation? Remember that the strength of an idea is not based on who supports it. (I'm sure you've heard people say "Stalin was an atheist- atheism is evil"- same fallacy.)
 
Was prostituion outlawed for religious reasons, though?


If you made an equivocation between animals and humans, for instance those people who believe that their dog is their child, then would it not make sense to outlaw cruelity to animals?
And couldn't an argument be made that someone who tortures animals is a risk to society in general? We lock up drunk drivers because their behavior is a danger to those around them. If you enjoy torture, be it animals, then is it a great leap to think that you would enjoy torturing a fellow human?


At what point do we say that society's morals are justified? If one person tells you what you're doing is wrong, then that is their opinion. If a hundred people tell you what you're doing is wrong, then they get to impose a moral code upon you? What about a thousand? A million?

Isn't that an ad populum argument?
 
We should only make those things illegal that interfere with a person's ability to be happy. That is to say, if you want to screw yourself up, that's fine. However, if you start screwing other people up while doing so, then there should be a law.

Why is prostitution illegal, but being a slut not?
 
I recently had a debate with a friend of mine about whether or not prostitution ought to be legalized. In the course of that discussion, I made that statement 'We should not legislate morality."

With which he disagreed. He felt that we can and ought to legislate morality, based on the morals of society.


Can we legislate morality? Should we have laws against drugs, prostitution and other consensual crimes?
What about abortion laws? Isn't that another way to legislate morality?

What about murder? Aren't you enforcing a moral code there?

What do you guys think?

I think that the concept of "morality" is much too vague for that question to be really meaningful. If we define an immoral act as anything that is counterproductive to the ongoing maintenance of cooperative society, which is as good a definition as any I've heard, then the law is all about legislating morality (indeed, the principle that it is possible to legislate morality becomes a mere tautology), in that a chief goal of the law is (or at least, I think, should be) to prevent precisely those sorts of acts. But different people have different conceptions of the basis and content of morality, and since quite often the people debating the issue of legislating morality have very different notions of what morality is, I think they generally just end up talking past one another.

I suspect, from my own experience, that people who argue that "you can't legislate morality" quite often mean by that statement that it is impossible to persuade other people of the correctness of one's own conception of morality by enacting that conception into law. I think that view is wrong, or at least misguided, for two reasons. First, there's the crossover problem-- the law itself quite often carries some degree of moral force, such that a particular act may be deemed immoral simply because it is illegal. Insofar as that is the case, attitudes about the morality of some specific conduct can certainly be influenced by enacting a law imposing a criminal penalty on that conduct. Second, I think that the objection is misguided because, generally speaking, the purpose of imposing criminal sanctions on some kind of conduct is not, primarily, to persuade the public that the conduct is immoral, but rather, simply to prevent the conduct from taking place. Laws against prostitution and marijuana use, for example, might not persuade some portion of the public that those activities are inherently immoral, but they do prevent a significant portion of individuals who might otherwise engage in such conduct from doing so, and permit the state to punish those individuals who disregard the law and engage in the prohibited conduct anyway. From the perspective of deterrence, it isn't really relevant whether the legal prohibition in question is widely internalized as a moral norm or not, so long as the behavior in question is prevented, or at least substantially curbed, by the operation of the law.

So, in short, to the extent that the question has any clear meaning, it is possible to legislate morality to a significant degree. The questions whether all widely-held moral beliefs should be enacted into law, or whether all legal prohibitions should be regarded as carrying a moral force, are separate and somewhat more complicated questions that are not resolved by the affirmative answer to the question posed in the opening post.
 
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Perhaps legislation against prostitution isn't so much about morality as it is about taste.
 
Was prostituion outlawed for religious reasons, though?

I believe it was largely a result of the reform movement in the early 20th century (I assume you're talking about America).

If you made an equivocation between animals and humans, for instance those people who believe that their dog is their child, then would it not make sense to outlaw cruelity to animals?

I agree.

And couldn't an argument be made that someone who tortures animals is a risk to society in general? We lock up drunk drivers because their behavior is a danger to those around them. If you enjoy torture, be it animals, then is it a great leap to think that you would enjoy torturing a fellow human?

This I strongly disagree with. As soon as you say "We're going to outlaw this behavior because we believe that people that do it are a risk to society," you open the door to tons and tons of terrible legislation.

For example, "homosexuals are more likely to be child molesters- let's make gay sex illegal." It's not true that there's a correlation, but who's to decide what correlations should be believed and which should? "People who drive red cars are more likely to be criminals, let's make red cars illegal." I doubt this is true either, but imagine that it were- would it be reasonable to make red cars illegal? People in WWII believed that the Japanese were more likely to be saboteurs- let's lock them up.

Punish people for what they do, not what you stereotype them as doing!

At what point do we say that society's morals are justified? If one person tells you what you're doing is wrong, then that is their opinion. If a hundred people tell you what you're doing is wrong, then they get to impose a moral code upon you? What about a thousand? A million?

Isn't that an ad populum argument?

I agree. About 80% of the country supports an amendment to the Constitution prohibiting flag burning- that doesn't mean Congress should be allowed to pass it (that's the reason we have the 1st amendment).
 
I think that the concept of "morality" is much too vague for that question to be really meaningful. If we define an immoral act as anything that is counterproductive to the ongoing maintenance of cooperative society, which is as good a definition as any I've heard, then the law is all about legislating morality (indeed, the principle that it is possible to legislate morality becomes a mere tautology), in that a chief goal of the law is (or at least, I think, should be) to prevent precisely those sorts of acts. But different people have different conceptions of the basis and content of morality, and since quite often the people debating the issue of legislating morality have very different notions of what morality is, I think they generally just end up talking past one another.

I suspect, from my own experience, that people who argue that "you can't legislate morality" quite often mean by that statement that it is impossible to persuade other people of the correctness of one's own conception of morality by enacting that conception into law. I think that view is wrong, or at least misguided, for two reasons. First, there's the crossover problem-- the law itself quite often carries some degree of moral force, such that a particular act may be deemed immoral simply because it is illegal. Insofar as that is the case, attitudes about the morality of some specific conduct can certainly be influenced by enacting a law imposing a criminal penalty on that conduct. Second, I think that the objection is misguided because, generally speaking, the purpose of imposing criminal sanctions on some kind of conduct is not, primarily, to persuade the public that the conduct is immoral, but rather, simply to prevent the conduct from taking place. Laws against prostitution and marijuana use, for example, might not persuade some portion of the public that those activities are inherently immoral, but they do prevent a significant portion of individuals who might otherwise engage in such conduct from doing so, and permit the state to punish those individuals who disregard the law and engage in the prohibited conduct anyway. From the perspective of deterrence, it isn't really relevant whether the legal prohibition in question is widely internalized as a moral norm or not, so long as the behavior in question is prevented, or at least substantially curbed, by the operation of the law.

So, in short, to the extent that the question has any clear meaning, it is possible to legislate morality to a significant degree. The questions whether all widely-held moral beliefs should be enacted into law, or whether all legal prohibitions should be regarded as carrying a moral force, are separate and somewhat more complicated questions that are not resolved by the affirmative answer to the question posed in the opening post.
WOW..

Now that's an answer!


Let me see if I can tackle it.

1) Morals and Laws. Does legal authority carry moral authority? I would say no. There have been several bad laws in America that were overturned by civil disobedience, and other measures. Law has no concept of fairness, and the Law can be an ass, as the saying goes.

2) Should widely held moral beliefs be made into law? Well, how widely held? What gives the majority the right to dictate what morals ought to be? I would say no. But, aren't many laws we have simply moral choices? If killing someone would be good for me, then isn't that a moral choice?
This one is a sticky one for me, and probably the heart of my question.
If we can legislate some morals but not others, then where is the line drawn?
 
This one is a sticky one for me, and probably the heart of my question.
If we can legislate some morals but not others, then where is the line drawn?

If you are expecting objective criteria for making such decisions, I think you will be disappointed. There is no escape from making hard decisions on a topic like this by defering to some simple (and hence inflexible) principle. Sometimes in life, case-by-case is the best we can do.
 
If you are expecting objective criteria for making such decisions, I think you will be disappointed. There is no escape from making hard decisions on a topic like this by defering to some simple (and hence inflexible) principle. Sometimes in life, case-by-case is the best we can do.

Libertarians would argue that it IS possible to decide on such issues based on principle- that laws should only prevent people from infringing on each other's rights. Of course, this principle leads to a lot of policies that are very unpopular, such as (for starters) drug decriminalization, legalization of prostitution, abolishment of anti-discrimination laws (for private firms, that is), etc...

However, I think using this principle is far better than the use of the phrase "for the good of society"- which is used by liberals to mean one thing, Christians to mean something else, fascists to mean something else...
 
If you are expecting objective criteria for making such decisions, I think you will be disappointed. There is no escape from making hard decisions on a topic like this by defering to some simple (and hence inflexible) principle. Sometimes in life, case-by-case is the best we can do.


But the law doesn't do case by case very well. It does one rule for everyone.

I know it won't be totally objective, but it ought to be as objective as possible, in my own not-so-humble opinion.
 

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