in that all law should have some moral purpose, but not all moral purposes should be enshrined into force of law. The one categorical exception to law is a subet of morality are the laws that could be arbitrarily different (not grounded in morality per se) that exist for pure order’s sake. For example, why do green lights mean go and red lights mean stop? Because something has to mean something. Same reason why the law may say a person has X days (instead of Y days) to respond to something.

Law should be a subset of moral rules, with the administrative guardrails to prevent chaos.

There is a lot of morality in the Old Testament that we don’t enshrine into law. Blasphemy is an easy example. There are also aspects of the OId Testament that most Christians (and Jews) would say has the morality wrong. For example, stoning adulturers.

The Old Testament is no basis to form a government, and the New Testament says nothing about ethics beyond the framework of the individual and the choices they make.

How about “we have done it this way for thousands of years”?

Doesn’t all immorality result in harm? Isn’t that why it is called immorality? After all moral rules aren’t just arbitrary things God wants us to avoid—we are to avoid them because they are harmful.

Is gay marriage a harm to society or a harm to the couple? Is it the equivalent of not wearing a motorcycle helmet, or he equivalent of getting into a car drunk?

Of all the public debates that have unfolded online in the past 8 years or so, it is my opinion that the gay marriage debate is the least insighful (on both sides) because there really isn’t a direct clash of points.

The gay marriage debate is kind of like Obama on supply side economics, both sides just kind of dismiss the other side with largely conclusory language

I am a social conservative. I have written a few diaries against gay marriage. I can understand why we would take a battle entrenched view when dealing with the opposition, but amongs ourselves can’t we do more?

Stoning adulterors for example.

Less extreme are things like dietary restrictions.

Is public debate on such issues to come down to a theological discussion of how the New Testament rendered some (but not all) of the Levitical codes irrelevant?

Aesthete’s point is that what if you were in a society where there were bad Levitical codes still on the books. Would you defend them on the basis that the change represented a slide into immorality?

Not let my children receive medical care? Sacrifice live animals in ways that would be considered crue? Be intolerant of gambling?

The folks running Iran and Saudi Arabia profess to a legal framework that in their view is about clean life and following your faith.

There has to be broader basis of individual rights and government restraint than a sectarian or even theological teaching. Religion is about teaching THE way. Good western style government is about teaching A way to resolve conflicts between what different people want the laws to be.

“The Bible tells me so” by itself going to be less and less effective over time.

Politics (like religion) is about reaching minds and hearts.

“I don’t care” is recipe for defeat in the long run. Even those in the under 30 crowd who are active church goers think this is a bad issue.

If we can’t fashion some broad based ethics/morality argument that appeals to people, gay marriages will end up being in all 50 states by the time I die.

To the contrary—it is the most difficult and challenging issue in a Constitutional republic.

Clearly nobody on this thread supports enshrining all of the Levitical code into law.

So the question is how do we distinguish the stuff that should be in law, and the stuff that shouldn’t

So far the only approach put forth is the “no more changes” approach, which is both philosophically and intellectual lacking since it is dependent upon what is in place at the present rather than what is the desired approach.

If something harms others (murder), we have laws to address it.

The question is how direct is the harm?

Murder? Easy call. We call agree.
Nany state dietary requirements? Easy call–all conservatives agree.

Other stuff is harder. Drugs (depending on the type). Gay marriage (depending on precisely how it is opposed).

As a guiding principle, we (like Reagan) have the goal of government protecting you from third parties infringing your rights, but not protecting you from harming yourself.

“Harm” from third parties is a great test, but it doesn’t really answer the question of where to draw the line. Liberals think having income equality is harm in and of itself.

Denying that all laws embody judgments is a liberal saw

Denying that all morality should not be enshrined in law is a sometimes conservative saw.

Sometimes society must make judgments that are enshrined in laws. Other times it shouldn’t. The issue is how to determine when morality is to be enshrined in law, and when it shouldn’t. Any other argugment is a saw.

I have no problem judging homosexuality. My point is that our side needs to do a better job of identifying how homosexuality is harmful before the underlying political numbers change for the worse—and they will if we simply rely on “the Bible says so”.

Otherwise, the morality of fighting income inequality (among other liberal memes) will get their day at the seat of government power.

Those who are older will eventually die off.
The trend is not our friend.

http://www.madpickles.org/California_Proposition_8.html

Age
The exit poll data contains one more data point worth exploring.

Vote by Age % of respondents Yes on prop 8 No on prop 8
18-24 (11%) 36% 64%
25-29 (9%) 41% 59%
30-39 (17%) 52% 48%
40-49 (22%) 59% 41%
50-64 (26%) 51% 49%
65 or Over (15%) 61% 39%

The % of pro/con in the exit polls match the vote results.

What the exit polls show is that although Prop 8 passed by a large margin, the under 30 crowd opposed it by an even larger margin.

Stick you head in the sand if you want.

http://www.madpickles.org/California_Proposition_8.html

In the 49 and under crowd, the opposition to Prop 8 correlated directly with youth.

If we don’t reach the young (and we aren’t), it will only take a generation to start losing all of these votes.

These numbers do.

Process describes HOW the line is drawn but it doesn’t address WHY the line is drawn at a particular place. More importantly, brute numerical force is not a substitute for a coherent argument and a certain amount of consistency (which is why we will eventually lose the gay marriage argument).

Many people want income redistribution. In many years, it was a majority of the public We still opposed.

When Roe v, Wade first came out, young people where the most pro-choice that there was. For whatever reason (in part clumsy argument on the right), a lot of the opposition to abortion was characterized as people who were againt other people having sex. Public support for abortion grew in the 70s and early 80s.

It was only after the pro-life forces really focused on the harm of abortion (the death of the fetus) and refrain from focusing on the issue of pre-marital sex did the pro-life forces really start to make gains—-including amongst the young.

I am advocating that a similar change in approach be implemented by those opposing gay marriage.

Draw a line and defend it.

Wear both the limited government hat and the committed Christian hat in the same sentence and draw some lines instead of repeatedl pretending that you don’t get my point.

Glutony is a sin. So is greed. Liberals use a moral justification for nanny state dietary rules and income redistribution.

On what basis do you ignore some sins like glutony or greed and not ignore others?