RE: Mother and son in New Mexico face jail time for incestuous relationship
August 11, 2016 at 6:46 pm
(August 11, 2016 at 5:55 pm)Thumpalumpacus Wrote:(August 11, 2016 at 4:36 pm)Excited Penguin Wrote: No, there isn't, at least none that was pointed out. As it is, personal morals = thoughts about what laws should(or shouldn't) be about.
Nonsense. Your inability to differentiate the two doesn't confine others to your limited thinking ... it only marks you as someone who culls his values from the larger group rather than thinking for himself.
I know what I think about right and wrong. I also know that seeking to impose my own views on others by dint of law is not only foolish in the practical sense, but also wrong for imposing my values on those who don't share them.
By your logic, a theocracy is moral. By your logic, you, an atheist, should kneel each Sabbath and proclaim your fealty to some deity, if such is required by law. By your logic, you yourself don't have the right to your own self-expression, if your society deems your views verboten.
Morality and laws are two different things. I'm perfectly capable of differentiating between them. I'm merely arguing that laws are moral in nature, that governments impose certain kinds of moralities on their people and that the best morality is the kind that seeks out and applies methods of increasing human wellbeing, in a scientific manner, to a people as a whole.
I wouldn't consider a theocracy to be moral, personally. It is moral to some people, though.
If such would be required by law, I'd have to do it if I didn't want to get in trouble, I wouldn't agree with it, though. It would still be moral in the sense that it would be something prescribed by a certain morality, be that morality explicit or implicit in nature. It just wouldn't be moral to me.
A legal right to my self-expression? Certainly not, if society doesn't allow for it. A moral right? By whose moral standards? By mine, I should have that right, by some hypothetical others' I mightn't.
