The Moral Law

The homosexual community has long argued that what consenting adults do in the privacy of their own homes is morally permissible and the government should stay out of it.  Notice the moral positions contained in that argument.  First who said consent makes something moral?  That’s an appeal to an absolute moral standard.  Second, keeping the government out of it is also a moral position.  It’s based on the principle that it would be morally wrong for the government to infringe on the autonomy of individuals.

But the government restricts the actions of individuals all the time.  No one argues that there shouldn’t be laws against murder, assault, or child abuse.  We all agree that those acts are wrong regardless of the issue of consent because not every act can be reduced to the level of preference.  In other words there are some issues that are objectively right or wrong, and others that are simply a matter of taste or opinion.  For example, murder is objectively wrong, but liking chocolate better than vanilla is simply a matter of preference.

To further drive home this distinction, let us ask these questions:  Would the holocaust have been morally permissible if the Jews had consented to it?  Was the mass suicide at Jonestown simply a matter of consenting adults exercising their rights?  Would there be nothing wrong with a father an his adult daughter consenting to have a sexual relationship?  How about three adults and the family pet?

If there is no objective right and wrong, we could not conclude that such activities are morally wrong.  We recoil at this suggestion precisely because there is a Moral Law — also known as conscience — pressing on us, which helps us conclude that some acts are undeniably and absolutely wrong.

Dr. Norman Geisler & Frank Turek, Legislating Morality, p.136