Legal or Illegal

Whatever Happened to Moral and Immoral, Right and Wrong?

Before getting into the core of today’s topic, I want to make it clear that when someone says, “You can’t judge me”, they’re correct. We cannot judge the person of another. We cannot know the life and thoughts of another. We cannot walk in their shoes and understand the total experience of their life. In our courts we cite a broken law, a deed that has been committed. Earlier in our history we understood that the judgement of the person was beyond the scope of our system of jurisprudence and awaited a higher authority.

Which brings us to the often heard assertion “You can’t judge morality”.

Wait a minute! Morality is discerning between that which is right, and that which is wrong. That which is good, and that which is evil. All law is a judgement of morality.

“But wait”, you might say, “what I really meant to say is that you can’t judge sexual morality.”

Really?

At the time of this writing it is illegal to have more than one spouse. It is illegal to have sexual relations with someone under the age of 18, even though these things are, or have been, legal in numerous cultures other than our own. So, enough with this nonsense about not being able to judge sexual morality. We do it all of the time, and people are punished for breaking these laws all of the time.

(Accusations of being judgmental will have to wait until another time.)

So much for that!

The issue that I mean to discuss came about earlier today when I came across an old magazine, the January 1973 issue of Good Housekeeping, where, on page 48, is an article by Dr. Joyce Brothers.

(Does anybody remember her?)

Well, she was discussing the changes in morally acceptable behavior, citing the general outcry six years earlier in which two college students were found to be living together outside of the bond of marriage! She used this incident to illustrate the change in public morality in such a short span of time and went on to discuss its’ possible implications for the future.

What I got out of it was that there was a general morality that applied to everybody. Yes, we have, for example, words that are strictly prohibited, but their usage nearly always involves certain groups or identities, not to the general public. The application being narrow and focused, seeming to grant privilege to some at the expense of others. Dividing us, not uniting us.

If I remember correctly, somewhere around that point in time, my uncle had owned a duplex and, to his horror, found out that he had rented part of it to an unmarried couple. Naturally, he evicted them. Not because he was some sort of Bible-thumping radical, (he was an atheist), but because such a life style was considered immoral, shameful. It was an embarrassment to him. What are the neighbors going to think?

Which brings us to my point. Today, hardly anything is morally wrong or shameful. Everything is acceptable and normal, perhaps even condonable, up to that point at which it becomes illegal.

Instead of simply legal and illegal, wouldn’t it be better to start once again thinking in terms of what is proper and what is improper? What is honorable and what is shameful? Like putting a buffer zone into our standards of behavior. A buffer zone that cautions us, like the yellow traffic light that prevents us from going through the red light - and into the illegal.

It’s something to think about.