People frequently say, “You can’t legislate morality.” This is accepted by most people, even Christians. However, I don’t think it’s true as a blanket statement. Let me explain why.First, I do understand what people (especially Christians) mean by it. They mean passing laws doesn’t change peoples’ hearts. You can say something is illegal, but all that does is make people do it secretly. If they want to do whatever it is, they will, even if it’s illegal. The classic example of this was Prohibition. Apparently Christians played a big role in getting alcohol outlawed. Would it be good if nobody ever drank alcohol? I realize many would disagree with me, but I have to say, sure! Nobody would ever become an alcoholic, there would be far fewer car wrecks, unwanted pregnancies, unwise sexual escapades, fights, etc. Surely this is indisputable, no matter how much people may enjoy the pleasure of drinking alcohol?
That being said, Prohibition didn’t work. It just made the production and sale of alcohol a criminal enterprise. But people wanted to drink and they were going to find ways to do it, no matter what the law said. So there were hot-rod bootleggers (the origins of Nascar), secret stills in the mountains of West Virginia, and “speakeasys.” The mafia got so heavily involved in the business, it turned out to be better for everybody when Prohibition finally came to an end. This is why many today have argued for the legalization of marijuana and even the legalization of all drugs. Let people do whatever they want. That way fewer people are in our jails, cartels would be out of business, etc.
Here’s why I don’t believe the statement, “you can’t legislate morality” isn’t universally true. Why do we have laws against theft, murder, speeding, causing riots, and the like? Aren’t these laws a way of legislating morality? Surely anyone would admit this is true. We realize that stealing or murder or anything else that’s illegal is wrong in some way. It is harmful to people and to society, so we prohibit it. Now, a lot of people already have a prohibition to these things in their moral fiber. They don’t want to steal, kill, rape, or cause chaos. For whatever reasons, they don’t do these things, and nobody has to pass a law to cause them to not do them. However, it seems to me that these prohibitions were at least taught in some way. Parents teach their children not to steal, making even a three year old return a piece of bubble gum if they find it in their hands as they leave a store. We don’t want people stealing from us, so we teach our kids not to steal.
Surely laws against such things are also helpful, are they not? You may feel it’s wrong to steal a pair of sunglasses from a store, but knowing there are also cameras watching and people who will grab you and call the police on you augments your “inner prohibition” against such things! Knowing the neighbors might be watching and will call the police keeps young people from breaking into houses in their neighborhoods. Just knowing there are police around makes many of us keep an eye on our speed as we’re driving. If there were no laws or police forces, I for one would drive a lot faster than I do! But I don’t want a ticket, I don’t want my insurance rates to go up, etc., and so I keep to the speed limits (mostly!)
This is why I agree with speed limits, laws against shop-lifting, police forces and all the rest. It’s a very desirable thing to have law and order, and to know if anyone threatens me or steals my stuff, I can call the police. So yes, there is generally an inner sense of what’s right and what’s wrong that keeps most people in line, but at the same time, it’s good to have laws on the books and police forces around, because a lot of people will do wrong things if they think they can get away with it. As the saying goes, locks keep the honest people honest!
Law is an expression of right and wrong. It is an expression of morality. As a society, we agree that murder is wrong, stealing is wrong, and so forth, so we agree with laws against these things.
We used to agree that adultery was wrong, sodomy was wrong, and even fornication was wrong. These things were on the public law books. In some areas of society, such as the military, there were stricter laws. Officers and enlisted people were forbidden from “fraternizing.” An officer couldn’t date an enlisted man or woman. A military person couldn’t commit adultery with another military person’s spouse. I remember a very public case some years ago, in which one of a very few female B-52 pilots, an Air Force officer, was kicked out for having an affair.
These laws against sexual misconduct were only enforced very sporadically in our history. Police never looked into bedroom windows to find out what was going on in there. Nobody was prosecuted for adultery, fornication, or homosexuality, or for such things as abortion. But the laws were on the books, nevertheless. I would argue that such laws set a tone in society. Even if you didn’t agree with the laws, and even if you broke them in your personal life, knowing it was against the law kept you from being open and public with it. So law served as a restraining influence.
The fact that these sexual laws have all been dropped or changed in the last 50 or so years is generally attributed to our more “sophisticated, liberal approach” today. Most people today would think such laws outrageous and antiquated, totally inappropriate for any society. However, this is not universally accepted. Tanzania just passed laws making homosexuality illegal. Most Muslim societies have such laws and many more. Not everyone universally accepts that there is no place for legislation regulating peoples’ sexual practices. This is primarily a Western development, and one, I might add, which is considered by other civilizations a sign of our general moral deterioration, not our sophistication.
My point is that law does express what a society believes about right and wrong, and tends to restrain what is considered bad or immoral behavior. Just because we as Westerners have dropped or changed many of our moral laws doesn’t mean you can’t legislate morality. It just means our morality has changed to such a degree we no longer agree with what is right or wrong in many areas of life.
I don’t like the legalization of marijuana. I used to smoke it continually, but Christ delivered me from that and other drug use. I now see drugs and alcohol as idols, which people bow to in order to calm their nerves, or give them pleasure or meaning or consolation in life. They are gods modern people worship to get through life. They are not what a person whose life is centered in God would need or should indulge in. I believe legalizing these things makes them seem more acceptable. It gives people a more positive feeling about their use. Thus, I believe legalizing drugs promotes their use and will lead to more, not less people who are addicted to them or use them unwisely. It would be better to legislate morality by making people know we as a society think these things are wrong. They are not good for individuals or society.
People always say that the war on drugs hasn’t worked, because we now have large numbers, particularly of minority groups, locked up in jail, and people continue to use drugs. The war on them isn’t working because a lot of people still use. To me, that is like saying “the war on crime” hasn’t worked. We have all these police forces and laws against crime, and we have all these jails and prisons, but they haven’t kept people from committing crime. Ridiculous? I certainly think so. Crime is a constant, because people are sinners. We don’t just throw up our hands and give up fighting it because it’s so prevalent! We will always be at war with crime, and drugs are part of that!
Recently, I watched a YouTube clip in which journalist Douglas Murray was citing statistics on Islam and showing the negative impact of the religion on the world as a whole. While I was enthused about his overall assessment, one thing he pointed out was how Muslims want homosexuality made illegal. His point, as he spoke to a progressive European audience, was to show how backward and un-progressive Islam is. He spoke as if this were horrible and barbaric. Yet as a Christian, I realized that I agree with Muslims on this. I’m totally against Islam, and believe it is a religion 100% of the devil. Yet in terms of that one moral point, I agree with them; it would be better if homosexuality were against the law!
Homosexuality used to be illegal in this country, and such a thing as “same-sex marriage” was never heard of and would’ve been roundly rejected, just a few years ago. We have changed these laws or removed them from the books, but in my view, it’s certainly not because we’ve become more sophisticated or progressive. Rather, it’s because our concepts of morality have been eroded and our people have lost any sort of moral compass. I believe it would be better if homosexuality were still seen as a perversion and were still illegal. I realize the vast majority of my culture would be shocked at my saying this, and would totally disagree. Nevertheless, it’s what I believe.
Having said that, do I believe that police should hunt down homosexuals or we should have laws against adultery or fornication on the books again? This is actually a tough question! My first response is no, but not because I don’t believe such things are wrong and it would be better if they were illegal. Rather, I see it as I do the question of alcohol. People are just so prone to this that making it illegal is just a waste of time. The police themselves engage in such activities, so having them arrest people for them would be totally hypocritical and futile. In addition, for the most part, these activities only hurt the people indulging in them (adultery being a definite exception!)
My thought here is that we have to pick our battles. Many things may be wrong, but not all wrong things are equally harmful to society. There are levels of seriousness or harm. For example, we recognize levels or degrees when it comes to the taking of a life. There is involuntary manslaughter (accidents and so forth), and then there is first-degree or premeditated murder. These are very different levels. Jesus said if you hate a person it’s like murder or if you lust for a woman, it’s like adultery, but let’s face it, what He meant was if you lust you’re on the path that leads to adultery and if you hate, you’re on the path that leads to murder, and God wants us to know that how He sees it. I don’t think anyone would disagree, however, that hating someone in your heart or lusting after them are not equal in terms of damage to actually pulling a trigger or renting a hotel room. If you’ve pondered it in your heart, there’s still time to repent, change your thinking, and not go through with it. Once you’ve actually shot someone or slept with them, the damage is irreversible.
Speeding is potentially deadly, but nobody would argue we should charge speeders as if they were murderers! We may all agree adultery is wrong, but we don’t have enough police to stop it, we don’t have good means for stopping it, and it is generally just something that must be handled on another level. We preachers can warn against it, we can have programs to promote marriage, and try to impede it in that way. But making it illegal just wouldn’t do much good. It wouldn’t be practical. The same is true with many other immoral activities.
To summarize, we most certainly can and do legislate morality! Societies have been doing it for millennia. Don’t think that just because our morality has changed, laws don’t affect it or it can’t be legislated.
As Christians, we know that even God’s law doesn’t empower anyone to obey it. It only lays out God’s ideals and principles for how life should be lived. But the apostle Paul said the law was good, not bad (1 Tim. 1:8). It gives us God’s view of right and wrong.
The only way we really live moral lives, however, is by trusting in Christ and basing our lives on Him instead of the Law. It’s only by repenting of living for our own selves and receiving Christ’s forgiveness and a new start that we can ever hope to live as the Law teaches. We have to be born again, so that we become new creations in Christ (2 Cor. 5:17), if we ever hope to truly live morally. We have to receive God’s Spirit and learn to walk with Him if we ever hope to see the good “fruit” of godliness and moral living (Gal. 5:16-25).