Impact on the First Amendment of a New Swing Vote?
This past semester in my class in applied ethics we considered the problems raised by the legal enforcement of particular moral codes -- often by a dominant religious group. The resignation of Sandra Day O'Connor from the Supreme Court may throw our First Amendment rights into serious jeopardy, should a new appointment tip the Court's balance in a morally conservative direction. This debate was waged in both the 19th and 20th centuries and perhaps we are about to see it arise again in this one. Those concerned with protecting privacy rights may wish to join the newly formed group, Privacy Rights, listed below my signature. Here from a posting to my class in Student Concerns (also located in my signature below) are background considerations to keep in mind:
We started our exploration of moral issues by asking 'what is the right thing to do?' and noted that four aspects of any moral investigation must be sorted out:
1) What are the relevant facts to be considered?
2) What concepts and sub concepts apply to any given moral problem?
3) What are the arguments for or against a particular moral position?
4) What are the fundamental presuppositions or starting points of the proponents of the various moral positions brought to bear on this issue?
Again, by pure chance we most recently happened to explore the traditional controversy between proponents of enforcing a particular moral code legally (moral conservatives) versus defenders of liberty (John Stuart Mill and H.L.A.Hart -- moral liberals) who maintain that individual conscience and liberty should not be curtailed by government (legal enforcement) unless harm or extreme offense to others are involved.
Conservatives justify enforcement of their preferred moral norms on the basis:
a) that not enforcing them will cause the destruction of society.
b) that any majority has the right to enforce its preferred moral code.
Liberals warn of the potential 'tyranny of the majority' that the conservative position invokes and appeal for utilitarian assessment of the relative gains and losses entailed by any particular moral decision.
"Justice Sunday," as it was denominated, beamed a political appeal to conservative churches to punish law makers who do not enforce religious conservatives' preferred moral values. It portends a conservative drive to outlaw abortion, homosexuality, stem cell research, cloning, etc. This drive to punish non conformity to conservative moral norms is being opposed by most traditional U.S. churches and civil liberties organizations.
The open question now with the recent election of Pope Benedict XVI is whether he will seek to enforce by law his moral values which he takes to be absolutes dictated by G-d and which in addition to the above also condemn the use of condoms to protect against such dread diseases as AIDS? He is reported to have urged Catholics in our last national election not to vote for Catholic office seekers who do not conform to his church's absolute moral norms [Note that Spain has just voted in the face of Caholic Church opposition to permit gay marriages.]
Liberal Catholic theologians such as Hans Kung, who originally sponsored Pope Benedict for his first Tubingen university teaching position, are opposed to Benedict's absolutism and have argued that the Catholic Church must modify its moral stands to adjust to particular times and moral problems, particularly such things as allowing condoms to prevent the spread of AIDS:
http://www.speakersaccess.com/topics/politics/kung.html
http://homepages.which.net/~radical.faith/thought/kung.htm
Pesonally, as a secular humanist philosopher, I side with Kung, whose works I have read and occasionally reviewed and who, I regret, has been the loser in the struggle for moral dominance within the Catholic Church. He, as I, also trained in theology, aned sees no religious warrant and only great harm in Benedict's opposition to the use of condoms to prevent either births or diseases. I also see no legitimate warrant for interference with our Supreme Court's decision in Roe v. Wade which defined pregnancy and its termination as a sphere of privacy rights of women impregnated in whatever circumstances to terminate an unwanted pregnancy prior to the viability of a fetus. The attack on homosexuality puts at life risk those so attacked.
Hopefully this emerging conflict in moral claims can be resolved by evaluating the relative gains and losses involved in determining what is the right thing to do and not with ad hominen (personal) attacks such as one gathers were launched by religious conservatives during their so-called "Justice Sunday" presentation. And I certainly hope that Pope Benedict XVI will follow the Kantian lead of 'respect for persons' so well enunciated in one of Pope John Paul II's scholarly theological books, which I also happened to review some years ago.
--
"A war is just if there is no alternative, and the resort to arms is legitimate if they represent your last hope." (Livy as cited by Machiavelli)
--
Ed Kent 718-951-5324 (voice mail only) [blind copies]
--
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/CollegeConversation
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/PeaceEfforts
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/EndingPoverty
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/440neighborhood
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/StudentConcerns
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/AcademicFreedom
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/PrivacyRights
http://BlogByEdKent.blogspot.com/
http://www.legendgames.net/blognews.asp
We started our exploration of moral issues by asking 'what is the right thing to do?' and noted that four aspects of any moral investigation must be sorted out:
1) What are the relevant facts to be considered?
2) What concepts and sub concepts apply to any given moral problem?
3) What are the arguments for or against a particular moral position?
4) What are the fundamental presuppositions or starting points of the proponents of the various moral positions brought to bear on this issue?
Again, by pure chance we most recently happened to explore the traditional controversy between proponents of enforcing a particular moral code legally (moral conservatives) versus defenders of liberty (John Stuart Mill and H.L.A.Hart -- moral liberals) who maintain that individual conscience and liberty should not be curtailed by government (legal enforcement) unless harm or extreme offense to others are involved.
Conservatives justify enforcement of their preferred moral norms on the basis:
a) that not enforcing them will cause the destruction of society.
b) that any majority has the right to enforce its preferred moral code.
Liberals warn of the potential 'tyranny of the majority' that the conservative position invokes and appeal for utilitarian assessment of the relative gains and losses entailed by any particular moral decision.
"Justice Sunday," as it was denominated, beamed a political appeal to conservative churches to punish law makers who do not enforce religious conservatives' preferred moral values. It portends a conservative drive to outlaw abortion, homosexuality, stem cell research, cloning, etc. This drive to punish non conformity to conservative moral norms is being opposed by most traditional U.S. churches and civil liberties organizations.
The open question now with the recent election of Pope Benedict XVI is whether he will seek to enforce by law his moral values which he takes to be absolutes dictated by G-d and which in addition to the above also condemn the use of condoms to protect against such dread diseases as AIDS? He is reported to have urged Catholics in our last national election not to vote for Catholic office seekers who do not conform to his church's absolute moral norms [Note that Spain has just voted in the face of Caholic Church opposition to permit gay marriages.]
Liberal Catholic theologians such as Hans Kung, who originally sponsored Pope Benedict for his first Tubingen university teaching position, are opposed to Benedict's absolutism and have argued that the Catholic Church must modify its moral stands to adjust to particular times and moral problems, particularly such things as allowing condoms to prevent the spread of AIDS:
http://www.speakersaccess.com/topics/politics/kung.html
http://homepages.which.net/~radical.faith/thought/kung.htm
Pesonally, as a secular humanist philosopher, I side with Kung, whose works I have read and occasionally reviewed and who, I regret, has been the loser in the struggle for moral dominance within the Catholic Church. He, as I, also trained in theology, aned sees no religious warrant and only great harm in Benedict's opposition to the use of condoms to prevent either births or diseases. I also see no legitimate warrant for interference with our Supreme Court's decision in Roe v. Wade which defined pregnancy and its termination as a sphere of privacy rights of women impregnated in whatever circumstances to terminate an unwanted pregnancy prior to the viability of a fetus. The attack on homosexuality puts at life risk those so attacked.
Hopefully this emerging conflict in moral claims can be resolved by evaluating the relative gains and losses involved in determining what is the right thing to do and not with ad hominen (personal) attacks such as one gathers were launched by religious conservatives during their so-called "Justice Sunday" presentation. And I certainly hope that Pope Benedict XVI will follow the Kantian lead of 'respect for persons' so well enunciated in one of Pope John Paul II's scholarly theological books, which I also happened to review some years ago.
--
"A war is just if there is no alternative, and the resort to arms is legitimate if they represent your last hope." (Livy as cited by Machiavelli)
--
Ed Kent 718-951-5324 (voice mail only) [blind copies]
--
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/CollegeConversation
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/PeaceEfforts
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/EndingPoverty
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/440neighborhood
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/StudentConcerns
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/AcademicFreedom
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/PrivacyRights
http://BlogByEdKent.blogspot.com/
http://www.legendgames.net/blognews.asp
posted by Ed Kent at 5:50 PM
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