Who Said You Can’t Legislate Morality?
By Pat Boone
How
many times have we heard liberal-minded people say, when moral issues are
discussed in a political context, “Well, you can’t legislate morality”?
Sounds reasonable at first, doesn’t it? Very democratic, humane, tolerant,
all that good stuff? I mean, after all, this is a free 
country,
and people can decide for themselves what they think is right and what is
wrong, right? So how can one group force its views on another one, and how
should a legislative body have the right to make rules for everybody – and
on whose ideas of morality would those rules be based?
All
those thoughts have been repeated so often that millions of Americans are
buying into them, and wearying of the efforts to preserve traditional morality
in this country. And increasingly, citizens who do keep trying to
preserve our long-held moral boundaries are vilified as bigoted, prejudiced,
homophobic, narrow-minded, out of touch, “wacko,” or
worse. Lots worse.
Let’s
look at this idea that you can’t legislate morality.
We,
through our elected representatives, did declare murder illegal, didn’t we? In
spite of the fact that it’s one of the Ten
Commandments in the Bible? Is
that legislating morality, even religion?
What
about stealing? And rape? And pedophilia, sexually abusing little children?
Those things are universally considered immoral – and we made laws
about them? Who gave whom the right to do that? Hey, NAMBLA, the organization
that promotes man-boy sex, feels that men have the right to do anything they
want sexually with little boys no older than 8, and who are we to legislate their
morality?
I
guess even the most liberal, as well the most conservative, among us agree that
the institution of slavery was immoral. Did we really have the right to enact a
constitutional amendment to prohibit it? And anybody can see that women should
have the right to vote, just like men. Why did we have to have a constitutional
amendment to ensure that? Who gave our Congress the right to make laws about
those moral issues?
If
I read my history correctly, it was our Constitution
– formed by our Founding Fathers – that decreed that a majority of the
citizens, through the representatives elected to do our bidding, were given the
right, the duty and responsibility, to make laws that would ensure domestic
tranquility, defend our borders, and promote a safe and wholesome environment
for us all.
It
was also provided in that same Constitution
that the laws could be changed or amended – but by the will of the majority,
not by each or any minority group that might not like what the majority ruled.
But
even as this marvelous, unprecedented system of government was settling in,
Thomas Jefferson warned that the judicial branch was the one to fear, because
though the legislative branch might make laws, unelected judges might undo
them, twist and misinterpret them, and even make judgments that would have the
effect of new laws, which they had no constitutional right to make.
Take for example what has occurred here in California. The citizens,
by a large majority, voted in 2000 to approve Proposition 22, defining marriage
as between one man and one woman. The people spoke, through our democratic
process. But then, four out of seven of our Supreme Court defied the people
and declared that homosexual same-sex couples 
could
marry – which thousands did. In 2008, the people voted once more and, by a
52 percent majority, again declared their insistence that marriage be retained
as a union of one man and one woman – this time through a constitutional amendment.
It was clear and decisive, and the people had spoken.
Yet
the battle rages on, with Prop 8 opponents vowing to ‘overturn’ the
will of the people (expressed twice) and even prevailing on a federal judge
to rule that the
public has a right to know who is giving money to state ballot measures such
as Prop 8! And to what purpose, do you suppose? The planned disclosure
will give the angry opponents – the same ones who spent $40 million against
the measure, compared to the $30 million spent to promote it – the information
they need to persecute those citizens who had the effrontery, the gall, to
donate to a measure that expressed their moral convictions!
Marriage,
after all, is a moral and religious institution. The homosexual activists aren’t
satisfied with civil unions; they want the privileges, the appearance of
sanctity and the public approval accorded to traditional marriage. Not able to
obtain that through the democratic process, they are determined to find and
convince judges who will – you guessed it – ‘legislate morality’.
And
this is just one issue. There are so many more where the same things are
happening.
The majority of Americans still
abhor abortion, and time after time they have expressed their will that
unplanned babies be allowed to live. It’s a moral issue if there ever were one.
It’s the issue of life itself. But judges, from the Supreme Court on down, have
legislated their idea of morality, appealing to some invisible ‘right to
privacy’ provision in the Constitution.
If women have a ‘right to privacy’, don’t little babies have a ‘right to live’?
The judges have legislated against the latter right.
John
Adams, a principal crafter and architect of our hallowed Constitution, and later our second president, declared, “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and
religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”
This
being true, any and all just laws must be based on moral considerations. If
this Republic is to endure, our elected representatives are ever bound to
‘legislate morality’.
To fail that responsibility is to ensure we will be ruled by ‘immorality’.
Pat Boone, descendant of the legendary
pioneer Daniel Boone, has been a top-selling recording artist, the star of
his own hit TV series, a movie star, a Broadway headliner, and a best-selling
author in a career that has spanned half a century. During the classic rock
& roll era of the 1950s, he sold more records than any artist except Elvis
Presley.
