Should morality be legislated?
Dear Editor,
There is one philosophy we can all be united on and that is: The United States of America will never be united.
Last Friday’s released ruling by the Supreme Court of the United States has further polarised an already fragile nation.
This is a nation divided along race, colour, religion, economics, and political persuasion. There are those who are leftists, others who are rightists, and still others who are centrists. So many sociological terms are brandished in the society. We have the liberals, the radicals, the conservatives, the moderates, the nationalists, and other subgroups. And the American Constitution seeks to protect all of them. But, alas, there are only notes of discord, frustration, and bewilderment for rolling back a law almost half a century old.
In the issued edict by the Supreme Court on Roe v Wade there are no winners and no losers. It is too sad that the highest court of the land has become a political playfield tainted by political ideologies. The big question I am seeking an answer for is whether governments should be legislating morality.
Already Associate Justice of the Supreme Court Clarence Thomas is explicitly calling on his colleagues to put same-sex marriage, gay sex, and even contraception cases on the table. I concur with President Joe Biden who thinks, “This is an extreme and dangerous path the court is now taking us on.” America is too polarised and there is going to be bedlam in “the land of the brave and the free”.
As I peer through my apocalyptic lenses I see trouble ahead for the Church-state relationship. This move might very well be a casting of the foundation stone for the enactment of a National Sunday Law, whereby people/Christians will not be able to worship according to the dictates of their conscience, but will have to abide by the laws of the Supreme Court, which may make no allowances for religious choice.
I hope that before some Christians join the fanfare they will sober up and consider the implications of the court’s decision for religious liberty.
While I am not philosophically, sociologically, and theologically a supporter of abortion as a birth control method or gender selection, I believe the court has overstepped its boundaries. The power of choice should not be legislated. We are free moral agents endowed with the power of choice to think and act. This choice was bestowed on us by the supreme God, not the Supreme Court.
The ruling betrays this fundamental principle and stifles democracy.
We may do well to listen to Martin Luther King Jr, reminding us from the grave that, “Morality cannot be legislated but behaviour can be regulated. Judicial decrees may not change the heart, but they can change the heartless.”
The Supreme Court has really boo-booed, and the politically contaminated justices should abort their lifelong tenure on the bench in the interest of justice and fair play.
Burnett Robinson
blpprob@aol.com