Why is there such a large gap between what is immoral and what is illegal.
Lately, I have been reading a lot about law, because I am trying to get married and am dealing with immigration issues.
The more I look, the more it seems, that there is a gap between immoral acts and illegal acts.
Why is it, that when people start to turn bad, and lose their morrals, their actions don’t become illegal until they become far more immoral?
E.g. It is legal, to tell someone you love them to get them in to bed, then go fuck a different person the next day, and lie about it to anyone you like.
It seems, that immoral behavior does not become illegal until it hits a full blown 10 out of 10 on the scale of immoral acts.
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14 Answers
Because if there’s one thing that cannot be legislated it’s morality.
If the Religious Right could get this through their thick heads and divorce themselves from their party of choice it would make for a far better government.
Because neither is objective, and because the law must be agreed upon publicly by a large group of people.
It’s an interesting and rather profound question that’s been batted around since the Romans determined that law was a “profession”. The intersection of law with ethics and even justice is what lawyering is all about and its no coincidence that the field is notoriously lucrative for those of “flexible ethics”,
Law isn’t about morality. It’s about power.
Whose morality? Your’s? Mine? My cat’s? Answer that and you’ll see the problem.
@SecondHandStoke Some of us feel somewhat similar to @poisonedantidote, that the world may be a better place if some (not all) moral issues were legislated.
The problem is that both major parties agree on practically nothing except that for the most part, whether it’s the Patriot Act or abortion, that personal choices/ freedom trumps a legal morality for all in regards to law making. Except for Obamacare of course. ;)
@poisonedantidote – It is legal, to tell someone you love them to get them in to bed,: actually it would be more accurate to say that such behaviour is not illegal. A lot of immorality is not.
@KNOWITALL In that case, allowing millions to suffer and die so that Walmart can collect billions in taxpayer subsidies should be illegal, and all those who support the economic policies that favor the wealthy few over the lives of the ,majority should be rounded up and shot like the animals they are; they sure lack humanity.
@jerv I don’t even shop at Walmart because I love my country, try not to lump us all in together.
@KNOWITALL If widespread human suffering isn’t worth legislation then what is? That brings us back to “Whose morality?”.
@jerv Exactly, that is THE question we all have to ask ourselves when representing our political and religious beliefs.
You care about the suffering of millions of adults, but I’m not allowed to care about the killing of innocent babies. Who’s to say which of us is morally correct?
@jerv Thus the original question, friend.
@KNOWITALL But I think we’ve already proven that morality is highly subjective. Is a fertilized egg a person, or just a clump of cells no different from a tumor? Is it acceptable to raise animals with the intent to kill them and eat them, or should we ban meat? Is it okay to starve the poor so that the rich can get richer?
Without answering questions like that, the original question cannot be answered simply because “immoral” is an undefined term. The only way to make morality align with legality is if everybody has their own laws, but what sort of society would that leave us with?
The alternative is our current system in which the law is determined by concensus… and lobbyists.
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