It was 8th grade when I first heard the expression “you should never force your morality on anyone”. I was confused; I didn’t know how to respond. That thought tried to go down a pathway in my mind that wasn’t connected. I sat there trying to wrap my head around what I had just heard.
Years passed by and still I thought about this phrase. From time to time I ran into it again, on a bumper sticker, or in someone’s passing comment about how “you can’t legislate morality”. Still, I couldn’t figure out what was bothering me about this statement, or quite how to respond to it. Then I read Pro-Life 101: A Step-by-Step Guide to Making Your Case Persuasively
When someone says “you shouldn’t force your morality on anyone”, what they’re actually doing is forcing their morality on you. Notice the slight of hand.
That statement is a statement of morals. It is saying what is right to do, and what is wrong to do. It states a moral (that you shouldn’t force a moral), and in an act of supreme hypocrisy, forces this moral onto another person. Ironic isn’t it? The first day of filming our documentary in the Dominican Republic, we saw another variation of this on a car that read “no one knows the answer”. If that is true, then neither do you, so you’re wrong! That statement in itself assumed it knew the answer.
Here’s the passage from Klusendorf’s book
The student said it was wrong for me to force my views on others, but she could not live with her own rule. Although our dialogue was pleasant, she clearly tried to force her views on me.
Student: You made some good points in your talk, but you shouldn’t force your morality on me or anyone else who wants an abortion. It’s our choice, isn’t it?
[Klusendorf]: Are you saying I’m wrong?
Student: I’m not sure. What do you mean?
[Klusendorf]: Well, you think I’m wrong. don’t you? If not, why are you correcting me? And if so, then you’re forcing your morality on me, aren’t you?
Student: No, I just want to know why you are telling people what they can and can not do with their lives.
[Klusendorf]: Are you saying I shouldn’t do that? That’s it’s wrong? If so, then why are you telling me what I can and can not do? Why are you forcing your morality on me?
Student (regrouping): I’m confused. Look, the simple fact is that pro-choicers are not forcing women to have abortions, but you want to force women to be mothers. If you don’t like abortion, don’t have one. But you shouldn’t force your beliefs on others. All I’m saying is that pro-life people should be tolerant of other views.
[Klusendorf]: Is that your view?
Student: Yes
[Klusendorf]: Why are you forcing it on me? That’s not very tolerant, is it?
Student: What do you mean? I think women should have a choice and you don’t. It’s your view that’s intolerant, wouldn’t you say?
[Klusendorf]: Okay, so you think I’m wrong. What is it you want pro-lifers like me to do?
Student: You should let women decide for themselves and tolerate other views.
[Klusendorf]: Tell me, what exactly do pro-choicers believe?
Student: We believe everyone should decide for themselves and tolerate other views.
[Klusendorf]: So you are demanding that pro-lifers become pro-choicers?
Student: What?
[Klusendorf]: With all due respect, here’s what I hear you saying. Unless I agree with you, you will not tolerate my view. Privately, you’ll let me think whaterver I want, but you don’t want me to act as if my view is true. It seems you think tolerance is a virtue if and only if people agree with you.
Put succinctly, her argument for tolerance was in fact a patronizing form of intolerance. She spoke of moral neutrality, but tried to force her own views on me.
As Klusendorf points out, intolerance is often masquerading in the name of tolerance. You can’t have your cake and eat it too; by telling people they’re not being tolerant, you are not tolerating them.
Moreover, I would submit to you that evil should not be tolerated. The observant reader will here ask, ‘what is evil”? That is a topic for another post; for now though, suffice it to say that rational people do not “tolerate” things that are evil. That would be illogical–that’s the reason why civilized societies have laws.
Have you ever heard anyone say “they shouldn’t do that because it’s illegal”? Is legality the ultimate arbiter of right and wrong? Do laws define ethics, or do ethics define laws? Appealing to the law is intellectually immature, because the action was wrong long before the law encoded it into society’s rule. The funny thing is, all laws enforce morality. Why is stealing illegal? It’s illegal because those making the laws thought it was wrong.
Where did this sense of right and wrong come from? It came from Natural Law. Never forget that the law of God is above the law of man. While God establishes valid authorities here on earth whom we should obey, were that authority to ask us to do something in violation of God’s law, we would have an obligation to a higher power to peaceably refuse to commit the evil.
Martin Luther King Jr said it best when he said:
We should never forget that everything Adolf Hitler did in Germany was “legal” and everything the Hungarian freedom fighters did in Hungary was “illegal.” It was “illegal” to aid and comfort a Jew in Hitler’s Germany. Even so, I am sure that, had I lived in Germany at the time, I would have aided and comforted my Jewish brothers.
- Dr. Martin Luther King Jr, Letter From Birmingham Jail
If you’ve ever found yourself saying “you can’t legislate morality”, you need to rethink that statement. Legislation is morality. In a democracy, it’s the majority opinion that defines legislation, in a monarchy it’s the ruling family, in a theocracy it’s the religious elite, etc., but each sets up laws to enforce what it believes to be right and wrong. That’s the whole point of law.
You see, what the question really becomes is, how does one define what is right and wrong? To do that, we must put aside the moral bankruptcy of Moral Relativism and appeal to the objective truth of Natural Law, or a legitimate moral authority.
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