{"id":6039,"date":"2009-10-22T14:31:50","date_gmt":"2009-10-22T18:31:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/anglicansamizdat.wordpress.com\/?p=6039"},"modified":"2009-10-22T14:31:50","modified_gmt":"2009-10-22T18:31:50","slug":"should-we-legislate-morality","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/should-we-legislate-morality\/","title":{"rendered":"Should we legislate morality?"},"content":{"rendered":"

The answer used to be a unequivocal \u201cyes\u201d since the alternative is to legislate amorality; life is no longer so clear-cut<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Lorne Gunter: Prostitution may be immoral, but it shouldn’t be illegal<\/p>\n

I have sympathy for the groups lining up in Ontario Superior Court to preserve Canada’s laws against prostitution.<\/p>\n

As Derek Bell, a lawyer representing the Christian Legal Fellowship, the Catholic Civil Rights League and REAL Women of Canada told Madame Justice Susan Himel yesterday, “the prohibitions contained in [the Criminal Code] in part were designed to protect public morals and against moral corruption.”<\/p>\n

These are important considerations. I don’t want my daughter or yours or any other young girl drawn into prostitution. Like the largely Christian groups asking the court to turn down a constitutional challenge of the ban on prostitution — brought by a dominatrix, a former sex trade worker and a working prostitute — I oppose prostitution on moral grounds.<\/p>\n

But I am even more opposed to laws dictating morals between consenting adults. The state has no business proscribing what is right and wrong for people quite capable of making up their own minds. I would not, for instance, overturn laws against statutory rape, child pornography or bestiality; children and animals cannot give informed consent. Nor am I in favour of legalizing murder, assault, rape or robbery, because no one has a right to take another’s life, liberty, wellbeing, dignity or property without their consent.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Such is the argument of the Libertarian. The problem with it is this:<\/p>\n

On the one hand, Gunter says prostitution, while immoral, should not be illegal, implying the legality of a thing should rest on something other than morality.<\/p>\n

On the other, he asserts that laws that allow the harming of one individual by another must stand; \u00a0the difference is in the harming of an individual<\/em>, something which he would view as, well\u2026 immoral.<\/p>\n

This is not untypical of those who proclaim that we cannot \u201clegislate morality\u201d: the truth is, everyone<\/em> wants to legislate morality. It\u2019s just that the only moral imperative left in our civilisation is \u201cdo what you want as long as you don\u2019t hurt anyone\u201d; but it is still a moral <\/em>imperative, albeit a narrow and short-sighted one. The Libertarian might make the argument that laws against murder, theft and so on are there merely to maintain order; but that doesn\u2019t further the argument, since it assumes that order in human society is better \u2013 more moral \u2013 than disorder.<\/p>\n

So Lorne, we do legislate morality and prostitution, if immoral, should also be illegal.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The answer used to be a unequivocal \u201cyes\u201d since the alternative is to legislate amorality; life is no longer so clear-cut: Lorne Gunter: Prostitution may be immoral, but it shouldn’t be illegal I have sympathy for the groups lining up … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"iawp_total_views":4,"footnotes":""},"categories":[307],"tags":[2267],"class_list":["post-6039","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-the-fall-of-the-west","tag-the-fall-of-the-west"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6039","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6039"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6039\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6039"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6039"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6039"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}