Cordele — Without fail, when conservatives take a position on a moral concern, liberals will angrily assert, “You can’t legislate morality!”

How many times have we heard that exhausted expression? Really, the slogan is a misnomer. The Apostle Paul declared in 2 Corinthians 10:5, as Christians, “We are destroying speculations and every lofty thing raised up against the knowledge of God….”

It is time to dispel the notion, “You can’t legislate morality.”

Morality concerns right and wrong, and that is what laws are about. Can you think of one law that does not declare one behavior right and its opposite wrong? The truth is that all laws legislate morality. There are laws against taking someone’s life, robbery, income tax evasion, violating the speed limit, ad infinitum. All these laws involve morality.

Everyone in the legislative process, conservatives, libertarians and liberals, is trying to legislate morality. The issue is, however, whose morality should be legislated?

Of course, there is always the trite question, “What about the separation of church and state?”

Well, what about it? Read it again. The First Amendment says nothing about the separation of church and state. In fact, the Supreme Court needs to read and reread the amendment; it says “Congress shall make no law respecting and establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof…” (Article 1, Bill of Rights).

Even if it did order the separation of church and state, the First Amendment does not prohibit legislating morality. To be sure, the First Amendment per se legislates morality.

It clearly implies that it would be wrong for Congress to legislate a national religion or prohibit the free exercise of religion; it also implies that any congressional effort to reduce freedom of speech, the press, or public assembly would be morally wrong.

When working for moral legislation, Christians must learn to refer to well-known  substantiation and appeal to the common ground of reason.

The common ground of reason is the tactic the Apostle Paul used on Mars Hill when addressing the Greek philosophers. He did not quote scripture to them because they did not believe in the Hebrew scriptures! Rather, he reasoned with them.

We must do the same in our anti-Christian society. One such reasonable difference we must understand is the distinction between religion and morality. While it is true that morality comes from God, there is a big difference between religion and morality.

Religion involves our duty to God while morality concerns our duty to one another. Laws against murder, child abuse, rape and robbery are moral (not just religious). These laws are needed to control evil and protect the innocent.

Certainly, we can and should refrain from legislating religion, but we cannot evade legislating morality. We do not want to make laws telling people how to worship, or even to worship; that would be legislating religion. 

Nevertheless, we cannot shirk making laws that tell people how to treat one another; that is legislating morality. In two sentences, legislating religion is unconstitutional, but legislating morality is inescapable. All laws legislate morality.

Let us examine one of the most disruptive issues in America, abortion, to exemplify how morality is always legislated and imposed on others by both sides of the issue.

It is widely proclaimed that the religious right (pro-life) are the ones who want to ram morals down the throats of everyone else, while the pro-choice (pro-abortion) folks are the reasonable ones who do not want to impose on anyone.

Nothing could be farther from the truth. Actually, both sides of the matter are actively seeking to impose moral norms on others.

Everyone realizes or should realize what pro-life people want to impose: they want to protect the baby and, thus require the mother to carry her baby to term.

However, what is so often missed in this dispute is that pro-abortion activists want to impose their morals on others as well. They want to impose the morals of the mother on the baby. When abortion is chosen, the morals imposed on the baby come in the form of a knife, vacuum, or scalding chemical. Such a choice imposes on the father by depriving him of his fatherhood and the right to protect his own baby.

In short, while the pro-life side wants to impose continued pregnancy on the mother, the pro-abortion side wants to impose death on the baby. It is true, even liberals want to legislate and impose morality on others! The burning question is: “whose morality should be legislated?”