Morality and Law

Should something be illegal simply because it is thought to be immoral? Should morality play a role in deciding law?

If you feel that morality should be considered when deciding if something should be legal or illegal then you are relying on some other person or entity to decide law based on their own subjective opinion of what is moral.

Who Gets to Decide? People like to use subjective terms such as "moral," "right," "wrong," "good," or "bad." when deciding if something should be legal or not. Whether something is legal or not should have nothing to do with someones subjective opinion of whether it is moral or not. There is what is legal and then there is what is someones subjective opinion of what is moral, and the two have nothing to do with one another.

Something may be considered to be "immoral" such as prostitution, while at the same time should be legal. If you agree that each person is a self-owner then you would have to agree that the prostitute owns the property (her body) that she is selling. If she in fact is the rightful owner of this property, what right then would some other person or entity such as government have to deny her property rights? If they are claiming a higher right to her property than she has, then she does not own herself and is nothing more than a slave that is owned by the government.

There are many things that are considered to be "immoral" by some that are perfectly legal such as smoking, drinking and gambling which proves that morality should have no place in deciding law. Law should never be decided by a subjective opinion by some other person or entity. All laws should be based on property rights. The deciding question should be; who owns the property in question?

All matters of law could be decided easily if we were to just recognize and respect each others property rights. By doing so questions concerning matters like prostitution and drug procession and use could easily be decided. We simply in each case ask, who owns the property in question?

1. Property Rights 2. Trespass 3. The State Property Rights If we are truly the rightful owners of our property (by property I mean body, money, time, etc.) then we should have absolute authority over all matters relating to our property. Many of the laws on the books today would be eliminated because they would be found to be a violation of a persons property rights.

Laws that we have today concerning questions like:

Should a person be able to sell their body? Should a person be able to purchase sex in exchange for money? Should a person be able to possess drugs? Should a person be able to ingest drugs? Should a person be required to wear a seat belt or a helmet? Should a person be allowed to participate in dangerous activities?

All of these would be decided by asking a simple question; who owns the property? If you are an adult, and as long as coercion and force was not used, then all contracts between consenting adults should be legal. The governments role should only be to protect our property rights. They should only get involved when force or coercion was involved in a contract. If a woman was forced into selling her body against her will, then a crime would have been committed and the State should then enforce the laws against this trespass.

Trespass There are thousands of laws on the books all covering one very basic crime, the crime of trespass. All crime is really nothing more than a trespass upon another persons property rights. If you steal from someone you have trespassed on that person, if you rape someone, you have trespassed on that person, and if you kill someone you have trespassed upon that person.

Rather than have thousands of laws all pertaining to the same thing, we should have just one law, trespassing. Some will think this is silly because they can only relate to trespassing as someone entering another persons physical property such as an area of land or a home, but trespassing covers everything a person owns such as their money, personal property, time, and most importantly their body.

By having one law, the law of trespass we would simplify the entire justice system. The question would simply be, was there a trespass and to what degree was this trespass? We could have different degrees of trespassing based on the nature of the crime. For instance the crime of theft might be a 5th degree trespass, while the crime of murder would be a 1st degree trespass, with all other crimes falling somewhere in between.

All victimless crimes (what I like to refer to as "fake crimes") would be eliminated. For there to be a crime the State would have to prove a trespass and have a victim. Fake crimes like smoking marijuana or paying for sex would no longer exist; no victim, no crime. As it stands now the State fills in for what would be a real victim, for example: The State vs John Doe. This only proves that there is not a real victim because the State has to inject itself as the victim. I am sure you would be hard pressed to find any real person that feels victimized because John Doe was smoking marijuana in his own home, but the State does. The State The State wants us to believe that it knows better than we do what is best for us and how better to run our lives. When we step outside of the States limits on the freedoms they afford us, they punish us; this of course is to protect us from ourselves. Governments role should not be to decide what is best for us or warn us of things that are thought to be dangerous, that is what the role of our parents was. Now that we are adults it should be up to each self-owning adult to decide what activities they choose to participate in. There will be people that make bad decisions and when this happens, then that is when the State should get involved and decide was a trespass involved and if so punish the guilty party.

The States only function should be to protect our rights, not to decide what those rights should be. If you disagree with this, you have subjected yourself to being nothing more than a slave. If that is the case, what other freedoms and rights are you so eagerly willing to give up and turn over to the State to decide?