Falwell and Legislating Morality
I’m sitting here tonight, listening to the local news. That’s not something I ordinarily do - even our local Fox affiliate is pretty flaky (I’m convinced that a half-hour local news program is 20+ minutes of infomercial…)
Anyway, tonight I tuned in to find out if I’ll be able to breathe any time soon, due to all the smoke. Fortunately this weather front will push out overnight.
The next segment was on the passing of Jerry Falwell. A number of comments made on the local news have struck me as less than respectful.
Tonight, News 2 was airing viewer opinions of the man. Without going into whether that’s really appropriate, one viewer commented that conservatives/Christians have no business legislating morality.
The last time I checked, the conservative right isn’t trying to legislate much. At most, those of us who are politically active are trying to DE-legislate stuff that the liberals have gotten passed over the years, and we’re trying to prevent additional laws from being passed. In other words, the conservative agenda is largely to preserve moral boundaries which are already in place.
On the other hand, the liberal left are trying to adjust a moral boundary. They want new laws passed allowing this, protecting that, giving license to an assortment of activities. Liberals want some “right” added to the “rights” already given to all people by existing laws (aborting babies, euthanizing the elderly/disabled, gay marriage, etc.*) and they aggressively fight for their moral view. Really, although I find much of the liberal agenda to be disgusting and abhorrent, it IS their right to fight for what they believe is “right”.
However, I find it astonishing that they accuse conservatives of legislating morality, when in fact they are the ones advocating the legislation.
* - There’s an assortment of flavors among liberals, just as there are amongst conservatives and any other political affiliation. I know that there’s wide diversity amongst those who could be classified as liberal, such that not all liberals agree with all issues.
