Can we govern a country without morals?

I hardly feel qualified to weigh in on the role government should play in the morality of it’s citizens (but here I go). My stance is it shouldn’t have a role at all. I think the most elegant addition the founders included in the formation of our nation was a separation between church and state. It was probably difficult for them to fathom what that separation would look I like at the time, but they understood enough to know mixing the two would muck things up. Boy, howdy.

Small government is the answer I think, as small as you can make it. To me it seems glaringly obvious that government’s interference in a medical procedure is overreach. I’m confident I could work out a decision like whether or not to terminate a pregnancy with the guidance of my doctor. If I am spiritually inclined, I can reach out to a religious leader for advice. I wouldn’t feel the need to also involve my state representative. Would that mean they should weigh in on my next dental checkup? Is it morally gray to have a cavity filled? After all, I made the choice to eat the candy that caused it. No, I’d prefer we spend our legislative effort on broadening healthcare access for all citizens so our country can flourish. Isn’t that the kind of thing we want our government to do for us?

The government shouldn’t weigh in on moral arguments because it’s none of their business where I choose to spend my afterlife. Anyone with half a brain understands that, and anyone with a full brain still arguing for the government to make moral decrees is doing so in bad faith. Using the legal system to force your way into hearts and minds doesn’t look good for the strength of your Lord’s message. The abortion debate is one of the louder objections filtering through the courts, but a lot of religious ideas have become prevalent in places they shouldn’t be. Attempts to control the library selections in public schools, restrict access to medications or types of care, or limit marriage rights to specific people are acts of war in the name of a God, and there is no way to fight fire with fire when only one group is armed with holy water. Maybe the other side, I guess that’s the capitalists at the moment, should wield a holy power of it’s own and lift that sweet tax exemption.

I’m a big fan of giving the benefit of the doubt. In the case of the new right, I believe that they are adult men with the minds of children and that they are motivated predominately by fear. That is how they view themselves, isn’t it? As children of a vengeful God? They are not free with religion. They are chained to it. The men who are trying to control the world are scared little boys who were told by their priests that masturbating would give them hairy palms and then instead of testing it, they trusted them. They’ve been lied to and they’re sexually frustrated. It’s a bad combo. They’ve been told for generations that all their pain and suffering is because we’ve deviated from the words of one book. And because they think like children, they assume the only solution is to get everyone back on the same page. They don’t understand that there are billions of books in the world. They are free to go on believing the myth of the man in the sky, but they can’t force it on anyone else. Have you ever tried using logic with a toddler who is melting down because the sun has set? Instead of trying to reason with the new right, we should be convincing them to grow up.

It’s not easy to open your mind. It’s difficult to bend your brain to consider viewpoints that aren’t your own. But you do have to try. We all do. I understand that the zealots who think women should be confined to the household, kept barefoot and pregnant, may truly believe that God will rain hellfire down on all of us if that is not so. Do I think that’s going to happen? No. But, I assume believing it makes life feel pretty scary. I remember how I felt when the EPA regulations were rolled back. I imagine it’s a similar fear. Could we find some common ground there? This is the part I think the left is missing. The religious right believe their religion, it is not a game to them. Well, most of them. If someone mocked me for believing that all of our actions together were contributing to climate change, I’d be less inclined to work with them. Believing an unholy marriage could taint the entire institution is not much different. Of course, only one of these beliefs has science in it’s corner.

Like so many other things worth doing, making laws and policies that don’t tread on the rights of anyone is hard. It requires defining those rights clearly and then applying them to everybody with absolutely no exceptions. It’s going to take out-of-the-book thinking to accomplish and we need to trust the adults in the room to work things out. It may involve tying more responsibility to the decisions of individuals rather than government. Even a teenager who has been coddled their whole life figures out how to wash the sink full of dishes once they start living on their own. It’s not always efficient at first, but you start thinking about chores differently when you’re the only one around to do them.