Civic Morality

In today's issue of The Birmingham News, Joe Openshaw, a board member of the ACLU of Alabama, wrote in a letter to the editor that

"... by working to protect and expand the civil rights of all Alabamians (and Americans) who are oppressed - including children, minorities and the poor - the ACLU is actually preserving the moral foundation of our country."

I wish that various groups would quit acting like they are the authoritative arbiters of what is "moral" in America.

You might think I'm a moral relativist, but I'm not. I have some very clear and well-developed ideas of what is "right" and "wrong" - as I'm sure you do too. However, I also know that sometimes my standards may not square up identically to other people's standards.

I'm not talking about things like murder or theft. But when you get to hot-button issues like censorship, abortion, criminal rights, divorce, and same-sex marriage, to name a few of the hottest, our society reflects quite a number of rifts between various conceptions of "morality."

When we speak of "legislating morality," we should understand that it's not government's role, at least not under the U.S. Constitution, to codify any type of religious morality, per se, be it Christian, Jewish, Wiccan, Muslim, etc. The First Amendment, if its establishment clause means anything, says that government shall not endorse (although it make acknowledge) any particular religion.

The government, of course, everyday defines things that are "right" and "wrong," "legal" and "illegal." But if anything, the law is a civic morality. The passage of laws governing socially acceptable behavior is the defining of morality through democratic mechanisms. It involves legislative processes within a constitutional framework rather than the words engraved on stone tablets or uttered by prophets.

This observation is not to say that religious people have no role in trying to shape civic morality. Indeed, they should be encouraged to bring their conceptions of right and wrong action into the political arena. Just as anyone from other schools of thought may propose policies for the government to adopt, so too may Christians, Jews, Muslims, etc.

Similarly, though, they have to be prepared to jump through two hurdles. First, they have to convince others, a majority of others, to support their proposed policy. And, then, they have to ensure that the policy does not impinge on any constitutional rights.

Unfortunately, too many people do not understand the distinction between a religious morality and a civic morality in our constitutional democracy.