Does the legalization of same-sex marriage and polygamy mean the end of all morality laws? George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley thinks so, and he openly celebrates the death of all morals legislation—or, at least he says he does.
Turley was the lead counsel in the “Sister Wives” case in Utah that legalized polygamy in that state last month, a reversal of the very morals legislation that the U. S. government required of Utah for that territory to be admitted as a state in the late nineteenth century.
Here is how Professor Turley explained the case:
It’s true that the Utah ruling is one of the latest examples of a national trend away from laws that impose a moral code. There is a difference, however, between the demise of morality laws and the demise of morality. This distinction appears to escape social conservatives nostalgic for a time when the government dictated whom you could live with or sleep with. But the rejection of moral codes is no more a rejection of morality than the rejection of speech codes is a rejection of free speech. Our morality laws are falling, and we are a better nation for it.
That is an astounding if unsurprising argument. The argument isn’t new to Jonathan Turley, who came on the scene as an advocate for polygamy almost as soon as the Lawrence v. Texas decision was handed down by the Supreme Court in 2003. That case decriminalized homosexuality, and Turley soon made the case for decriminalizing polygamy.
Turley’s article is an example of a concerted, very sophisticated, libertarian argument that is fast gaining ground in American life. Just last year the state of Colorado decriminalized adultery. The president of the Independence Institute testified for the decriminalization, stating that “it is a conservative value to get rid of bills that are useless.”
The legislature followed his advice. But is a law against adultery a “useless” statute? Only in the sense that it is no longer enforced. But the original statute was hardly useless. It was a profound moral statement about the sanctity of marriage and the crime of violating the marriage vows, thus subverting marriage and the family and endangering children and weakening the larger community.
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