The morality of criminalizing immorality

Is it moral to enforce a groups morality on others by criminalizing behaviors they consider immoral.

Keep in mind that there is a crossover and many things considered immoral are also causing harm to others and should be criminalized like say murder or theft.

My belief is that criminalizing “immoral” behavior is not moral. Decriminalizing it does not mean anyone is condoning it or need to do it, it simply means people will not be put in prison and given a criminal record for doing it.

Victimless actions should never be illegal, imo.
Murder and theft certainly should.

You are going to have to narrow this down. Whose moral code? How do we define harm and where do we draw the line? To little and we create anarchy ruled by the strong and vicious. Too much and we have a police state in which no one can breathe.

What immoral behavior did you have in mind?

Well that is the point. Who’s moral code? I mean anyones. Currently in North America that would be generally the Christian majority.

In terms of too little and we create anarchy - how do you mean? I want laws to protect people from harm, I am talking about laws that having nothing to do with harming others or their property but simply preventing immoral action that is not these things.

I don’t have anything in particular in mind. Anything thing that does not harm others or their property.

Adultery or drug use be good examples.

I think your looking at criminal laws as a sort of snub from strict moralists, forgetting that laws are made for the benefit of society(not everywhere of course, but certinaly on the whole here in the US). Why do we declare drug usage criminal and immoral? Because it creates a citizen who can so much more easily, when on drugs, be a menace to the society around him. Even in much less significant drugs like MJ, the drug creates a citizen who is not in their right state of mind, and so therefore can not act as a responsible citizen and neighbor. Sure, alcohol can easily do the same, but pretty much no one who smokes MJ does it just for a simple enjoyment–they do it to get high–whereas you can drink alcohol, enjoy it, and still go home sober.

People like to make alot of huplah about how much our citizens hate the “machine” that tries to stuff morals down our throats, and that " we all really don’t like laws against these things that we should be allowed to do." The problem is that this just simply isn’t true. If the mass of society believed something to be wrong, they would illgalize it, just as if the mass of society believed something to be good, they would keep it legal.

Yeah, I agree with the OP that harmless actions shouldn’t be illegal, even if those actions are immoral. But I disagree that it is so clear cut. While many debaters like to equate the law and morality (“X is wrong… therefore should be illegal”), every sophisticated arguer I’ve listened to knows how to twist any immoral action into something “harmful”.

“Sure, I don’t care what adults do behind closed doors, but it harms my kids to see or hear about homosexuality in an approving way”

“Prostitution and gambling encourage crime”

“Drugs cause people to go crazy/commit crimes/rape babies/whatever”

It’s really easy to twist whatever immoral behavior you are railing against into “harmful to others or society”. But in the end, it’s still just an attempt at legislating morality. While I agree with the OP, I doubt his guideline will be useful.

The point is not that a society of people who didn’t do drugs would be more productive, it is why do we criminalize it? Why is not the most damaging drug to our society criminalized? Well they tried it once and it created a massive spike in criminal activity until it was revoked.

I agree the majority are behind many of these laws of morality, but that doesn’t make them right and it does mean they are stuffed down the mouths and throats of those who are not the majority.

For example the majority of people in America are Christian. If they therefore chose to make other religions criminal would it be moral?

I agree and was going to raise that concern, but at least we have a starting point an those arguments can be defused.

“Sure, I don’t care what adults do behind closed doors, but it harms my kids to see or hear about homosexuality in an approving way”

That assumes homosexuality is bad.

“Prostitution and gambling encourage crime”

And they encourage more crime when it is illegal.

“Drugs cause people to go crazy/commit crimes/rape babies/whatever”

And people still do drugs and it is much harder for them to seek help as they want help for doing something criminal.

Adultery doesn’t harm anyone? Maybe not physically, but I’d say it sure as hell has repercussions. I actually wouldn’t have a big problem with adultery being considered a crime.

Drug use is sketchy because you get into the areas of pushing harmful substances. Generally, I agree that what you do with your drugs and yourself is your business. I wouldn’t even consider using drugs recreationally to be immoral in the first place.

I think the reason immoral activities are regulated is precisely because there are victims.

Many things have emotional effects that is true. In terms of adultery I don’t think it is significantly different than your spouse saying they have fallen in love with another and they want a divorce. Shall we also outlaw that? Shall we also outlaw falling out of love with someone?

Well we are not talking about drug use. We are talking about criminalizing it. They are used and pushed now. I think if they were decriminalized this would either remain about the same or the pushing would be reduced as criminals would not be the people selling them. I don’t use drugs (nor drink) but I don’t think it is immoral either, but many people do.

Many things have been criminalized simply because they were immoral, not because of any harm.

Of course in many cases it can be argued harm.

Homosexual sex was not criminalized for harm although you would have been told it was to save peoples souls.
Interracial marriages were not crimnalized due harm but prejudiced thoughts.

That’s a pretty shallow and specious comparison. Alcohol is more addictive, unhealthy, and causes more accidents than cannabis. The main reason cannabis was outlawed was racial fears, not some analysis of its pros and cons (this is true of many illegal substances in the U.S.).

You are also making a moral judgment in the bolded section. Most people drink alcohol for intoxication purposes. They may only get “buzzed”, “tipsy”, “mellow”, and then stop, or they may get “plastered”, “shitfaced”, or “falling down drunk”. Similar for cannabis. The real reason it has been so hard to get pot legalized is because so many people think it is “wrong”.

I don’t drink, smoke, or use any recreational drugs, but I would welcome a rational discussion of what to make legal and how. At what combination of chance of fatal overdose, risk of long term health problems, and chance of doing harm will under the influence are we as a society going to accept? That should be the basis of what is legal or not, not anyone’s opinion’s of which imbibers are loser dirtbags or dirty hippies.

Not only is it acceptable to prohibit something because it’s immoral, I would argue that that’s the only acceptable reason to prohibit something. We have laws against murder because murder is immoral. We have laws against theft because theft is immoral. The problem comes when people legislate against things that aren’t moral issues, like gay marriage.

The problem is who’s morality?

To many people homosexual sex is immoral.

If we go with harm we have an objective foundation we can work with and is definable.

Morality is subject and always will be.

Second.

The force of the state and the moral force the citizens are pretty much the only things that can coerce people into a given type of behavior. One works more explicitly but is slow and formal, the other more implicitly making use of the whole battery of social emotions. The key is that the two mutually reinforce each other to a great extent. There can be, for example, a number of laws that no one pays much moral heed (The RAII is currently having fun with that) and a number of common mores that are more or less explicitly illegal (school prayer and things like that). With these exceptions, the two generally coincide and this is the “sweet spot,” in the sense of politcal strategy. And that is well-known to pretty much everyone. If pot is illegal, for example, then it becomes all the more likely that people will see it as immoral, and if violations of mores become too common, it is more likely that people will try to make them illegal, like with the do-not-call list. *

So, the situation is not as simple as the OP suggests. Laws certainly are made to address moral wrongs, and there is nothing inherently wrong about doing so, since who wouldn’t want the law to curb actions you see as detrimental in some way. The issue is the traditional politcal issue of muddling by in relative peace despite disagreements, and it is in this space that the idea of whether all victimless behavior should be legal or if actions are right or wrong to begin with comes out.

  • If you aren’t American, you’re mileage will certainly vary.

That would be all fine and good if we all agreed on what is detrimental, but we do not.

I agree with the notion that the law should only concern itself with the restriction of behavior that causes a material, undue harm upon another. I also agree that the devil is in the details that describe “material” and “undue.”

But that’s where the discussion should start, IMO. Anything that’s principally a decision that involves only consenting adults is none of my business. It “harms your kids to see or hear about homosexuality in an approving way”? Um, okay. Then use it as a learning experience. But even if one concedes that you get to decide what is harmful to your kids, one needn’t concede that “harm” is material. In this instance, according to my judgment and rationale (which are, of course, the only ones that should count ;)), restricting homosexual activity, in a way that heterosexual activity is not, is overbearing.

It’s none of my business. Our legislative bias should be to NOT restrict personal liberties, that there needs to be a compelling reason (one that involves an innocent person having their rights stepped on in some significant way) to say “you may not.” I am free to not engage in any homosexual activity. I am not free (or shouldn’t be) to say no one else can.

That’s where I think my church’s position is schizophrenic (I’m Catholic). They lobby against SSM. Then why not make divorce and remarriage illegal? Skipping church on Sunday should be against the law as well. But there’s no noise about those, nor should there be. We should not legally restrict behavior that is largely a personal decision.

There are people who think that homosexual sex is immoral, but those people are wrong. Morality is absolute, and people thinking otherwise won’t change that.

And before you ask, no, we mortals do not have a direct line to God to know exactly what that absolute morality is. We do the best we can to figure it out, and sometimes we make mistakes. But just because we don’t always know right and wrong, doesn’t mean that right and wrong don’t exist.

Define “harm”. In the mind’s eye of anyone who wants some sort of behavior made criminal, that’s because they view it as harming someone.