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<blockquote data-quote="Fanaelialae" data-source="post: 6912482" data-attributes="member: 53980">I strongly disagree. Look at Prohibition for example. A vocal minority pushed through legislation making the consumption of alcohol illegal. Then to enforce it, the government mandated that manufacturers who make alcohol for purposes other than consumption add poisons to deter people from imbibing them. Of course, people inevitably consumed those anyway and a lot of people died. I can't see how society was dictating what was evil in that case, given that the majority of people composing the society at the time considered the consumption of alcohol to be acceptable. Given that the government was willing to kill people to enforce this law, I consider the whole affair highly amoral, even when judged by the standards of the time.To put it another way, consider this: cheating on one's spouse is arguably an evil act in &quot;western&quot; morality (as well as many other moralities). However, the government does not go around arresting and punishing cheaters in western society. There is not a one-to-one correlation between what &quot;society&quot; deems moral and what the government deems legal. It does dovetail sometimes, as I said before, but that doesn't mean that one is directly responsible for the other. The government is responsible for creating rules to ensure that society functions. Just because some laws are moral doesn't necessitate that the laws were dictated by morality. I would say that a law's function in society should be the primary consideration for why the law exists.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Fanaelialae, post: 6912482, member: 53980"] I strongly disagree. Look at Prohibition for example. A vocal [I]minority[/i] pushed through legislation making the consumption of alcohol illegal. Then to enforce it, the government mandated that manufacturers who make alcohol for purposes other than consumption add poisons to deter people from imbibing them. Of course, people inevitably consumed those anyway and a lot of people died. I can't see how [I]society[/I] was dictating what was evil in that case, given that the majority of people composing the society at the time considered the consumption of alcohol to be acceptable. Given that the government was willing to kill people to enforce this law, I consider the whole affair highly amoral, even when judged by the standards of the time. To put it another way, consider this: cheating on one's spouse is arguably an evil act in "western" morality (as well as many other moralities). However, the government does not go around arresting and punishing cheaters in western society. There is not a one-to-one correlation between what "society" deems moral and what the government deems legal. It does dovetail sometimes, as I said before, but that doesn't mean that one is directly responsible for the other. The government is responsible for creating rules to ensure that society functions. Just because some laws are moral doesn't necessitate that the laws were dictated by morality. I would say that a law's function in society should be the primary consideration for why the law exists. [/QUOTE]

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