On legislating morality...

Morality -

1.	conformity to the rules of right conduct; moral or virtuous conduct.

2.	moral quality or character.

3.	virtue in sexual matters; chastity.

4.	a doctrine or system of morals.

5.	moral instruction; a moral lesson, precept, discourse, or utterance.

1.	concern with the distinction between good and evil or right and wrong; right or good conduct [ant: immorality]
2.	motivation based on ideas of right and wrong [syn: ethical motive]

Someone commented on my other blog likening legislating morality to communism. (Since communism is a theory or system of social organization based on the holding of all property in common, actual ownership being ascribed to the community as a whole or to the state, I thought that was a really silly comparison) . I was thinking about this while chatting with a friend at the skating rink and what follows are my thoughts.

We legislate morality all the time...yes, it is called LAW. Without law, we would have anarchy and no one and no thing would be safe.

We legislate morality when we say DO NOT STEAL, that taking what does not belong to us is wrong. We make laws that protect us from theft. We legislate morality when we say DO NOT KILL and make laws to protect ourselves from acts of violence. We legislate morality when we say that it is wrong to force sexual intercourse on another person and we make laws to punish rapists. We legislate morality when we say if you have a blood alcohol content of over 0.08, you had darn sure better not operate a motor vehicle. We have made laws to protect the innocent from people who drink too much and won't control themselves.

There is Right and there is Wrong. There is no escaping from that fact. There will always be people who try to violate other people by behaving wrongly towards them - and that is why we have government and why we have laws.

Just because it is now trendy and progressive to deny that a human life exists in the womb, we can hear people fuss and bluster about "How dare we try to legislate morality! It is a woman's right to choose!" The same people, I'm banking, would be outraged and horrified if they knew their neighbor put some kittens in a sack of stones and threw them off a bridge to drown. Those people exercise a morality of convenience.

A morality of convenience says that if something like an unwanted pregnancy puts me out in any way, I can throw out my conscience and start declaring that the laws which say "DO NOT KILL" to protect innocent victims no longer matter. I can make morality expendable IF it is to my personal benefit to do so.

It's not too far fetched to imagine how this expendable morality can progress... if the elderly are too tedious and tiresome for us to care for, let's decided they are "post-mature human tissue" and end their lives prematurely. Let us tell ourselves that we're doing them a favor and us as well, as it would be too taxing on our resources to support them. Let's then decide that the disabled are not just different, they're inconvenient - perhaps euthanize them while we are at it. At least the concept would be euthanasia "mercy killing" as opposed to the blood-thirsty ripping of immature human beings from the womb.

Here's a step by step diagram of partial birth abortion... oh yeah, it's the woman's right to choose. Unfortunately, the unborn woman ( or man) child gets to be born by forceps delivery then brutally knifed in the head, brains suctioned out.

Whenever a woman wants to have a baby and she rushes out to get an at home pregnancy test, even if that baby is only a week or two in utero, upon receiving a positive result she happily declares, "I am having a baby!" She begins to dream of the name for this child. She makes plans.

Make it an unplanned or unwanted pregnancy and suddenly it isn't "my baby!" - it is fetal tissue or embryonic materials. This is DELUSIONAL morality. If it is a baby when you want it, it is still a baby when you don't. Period.

It seems that the people I've met in my life that believe that are also generally the ones who think "I have a right to smoke!" and don't care if they are polluting and destroying other peoples' lungs. I've seen this type - driving in the car with their children being forced to breathe in clouds of nicotine and tar. Many times their teenagers end up smoking themselves, thanks to Mom & Dad's great love and pumping them filled with chemicals for so many years. THANK GOD that some places like Bangor, Maine *are* legislating morality in this area. If you get caught driving around smoking with your kids in the car there, expect a hefty fine.

(Many of the above folks are the ones we'll see clamoring for free health care - to pay for the kids they have given asthma to, or to get themselves through their bouts of bronchitis and probably later lung cancer. They want freedom to kill themselves slowly, but don't want the rest of us to have freedom from paying for their stupidity).

I might as well add - if we shouldn't legislate morality, then why are we prosecuting pedophiles? Are we going to let them have "the right to choose" their sexual partner regardless of age? Shall we welcome NAMBLA with open arms? Oh wait, is that too progressive? Maybe after this next presidency or the next, as our country declines even further into its immoral cesspool.

I could go on and on, but I won't. Like it or not, morality has been legislated for years. That's where laws come from - legislating morality for the protection of the people, the property of the people and the livelihood of the people.