Why Morality is the Only Thing We Should Legislate
“You can’t legislate morality!” is a common battle cry today. It’s thought to be a quintessentially American idea, even though the Founding Fathers never expressed such a sentiment. Nor did the early Americans who would unabashedly enforce a biblically based code of morality in their localities, both via social pressure and governmental laws, with transgressors sometimes spending time in stocks — or worse. No, our common battle cry is a modern idea, and one of modernism. It also betrays a fundamental, and dangerous, misunderstanding of law’s nature.
In reality, the only thing we should legislate is morality. The only other option is legislating whims or immorality.
There can be no such thing as a separation of morality and state. That is, unless we want to regress to man’s default, the immoral state....