Short and Sweet Blog

Is there such a thing as a ‘secular morality?” Where does it come from? Is it something we vote on? Is it something we universally or nearly universally agree upon? Is this secular moral code something so important that someone could choose to die for it? Is secular morality something we can be compelled to act as if we agree with or do we just need to obey it? Is the highest and best secular moral value based in politics or the conscience? If it is politically based doesn’t secular morality amount simply to that which seems easiest or most appealing to the human animal? If these morals are politically arrived at can they be changed by a mere change in the political climate or by what party is in charge?

Assuming that secular morality is something we collectively agree upon politically, what should the government do to instill or enforce secular morality? This is an important question. Once secular morality is adopted, is it the proper role of government to see that these ‘morals’ are force-fed to our children thereby becoming self-reinforcing? In fact, a set of ‘secular morals’ are already being force fed to our children in government schools like the “moral” ideas about global climate change, virulent anti-capitalism, population control and Johnny having two dads. Similarly the government has already done for us what is apparently morally correct; things like levying a trade ban against South Africa to stop the clearly repugnant apartheid (I’m not saying that everything they do is bad), redistributing wealth from one set of U.S. citizens to others ‘who need it more’, the provision of abortion on demand and mandating that there be “health care” for all.

So, is population limitation a high tree or even the highest tree in the secular morality forest? This question is at the heart of the new administration policy requiring nearly all employers, including religiously related ones, to provide health insurance for their employees and in so doing provide “no cost” contraceptives, abortifacient drugs and sterilizations to their employees. In fairness to the government, in its most recent proposed regulation the government will only require ‘the insurers for religiously affiliated groups’ to provide these benefits for free and the insurers must do so without charging the religiously related institutional employers anything for it. This “compromise” supposedly takes advantage of the concept, expressed by the president’s new chief of staff, that the government will require(?) insurers to accept the profits generated by not having to pay for “accidental” pregnancies and that these profits/savings will more than offset the cost of the free “birth control.” If this concept, as explained by the chief of staff on last week’s Sunday public policy shows, is actuarially correct why would insurance companies, well known for finding profits anywhere they can, have failed to do this of their own accord already? Will this logic apply equally to all sorts of questionable “preventive care” for fertile women or are these other savings actually the money left from not having to pay for the medical care for 18 years after the birth of an unwanted child? What has this all to do with secular virtue and secular morality anyway? According to secular morality are children bad or good? Or is secular morality a situational morality based upon the perceived circumstances of the parents and/or the apparent desirability of the infant/fetus? Or is it choice itself which is the highest moral good in the secular moral universe? If so, why do we limit this choice to a time prior to birth? What about the choice to engage in sexual relations in the first place, isn’t this a choice? What is so ‘morally’ different about a newborn and a fetus which are both 32 weeks of age (from conception that is)? Morals are just such slippery things.

Next question: does the administration’s rule about free birth control to be provided by insurers impact the freedom of religion of Roman Catholics and other religiously motivated individuals? Whether they run religiously affiliated hospitals, social service agencies or educational institutions aren’t they moral actors? Under Catholic religious principles these people are required to refrain from participating in or providing abortions or contraceptives except in highly limited situations. Requiring participation in this sort of activity is an imposition upon the consciences of religiously motivated individuals who are responsible for these and any other health insurance-purchasing entities. And what of Roman Catholic insurers, the “compromise” unambiguously destroys these businesses altogether.

Next question: Is there any provision in the secular morality which provides for people’s religious rights? In response to press questions concerning this violation of the consciences of Catholics, Jay Carney clearly enunciated Obama administration policy, to wit: after “careful” consideration the administration decided that the secular morality of the “need” to increase the availability of preventative services to women outweighed the secular morality which protects religious consciences and that this is the right balance(?) to strike. How do you weigh the secular morality of allowing religious liberty versus the secular morality of actively providing free birth control to all who have any inclination to use it? Only one of these secular morals is embodied in the constitution. But the president clearly has decided that the one moral good is not as worthy as the other moral good. Doesn’t this kind of mean that the government is deciding between the ‘moral good,’ as defined through the political process, that of providing free birth control pills and abortifacients to women and the Catholic/Christian moral good of respecting the dignity of the life of every fetus/zygote.

Well that’s it I guess. “Private” conscience is one thing and will be “indulged” if there is no substantial impact on the achievement of important secular moral aims. In this context the secular moral objective is plainly to limit the procreation of American women (or it could be to increase the amount of sex which American men have available with a greatly reduced chance of unwanted parentage). Limitation of procreation is apparently a very high goal of this administration and its allies in Congress. On Wednesday a group of Democratic party senators made this public announcement.

Have we reached the point in this country where a secular code of morality has displaced religious morality? Is unfettered liberty rather than principled liberty the highest political and moral end?

Let me ask a couple more loaded question before I go. Is it not in your experience, as it is in mine, that it is men, not women, who are the more powerfully motivated in their desire for intercourse? If this is so, whose freedom are we really talking about, men’s or women’s? At this very moment in this country, women are able to exercise either their right “not to engage in intercourse” or alternatively to obtain free contraception from Planned Parenthood or elsewhere virtually any time. What is more free than that? And what of Sen. Boxer’s list of other conditions which contraceptives treat? Well, why should these drugs, even if they are contraceptives used to treat these conditions, be provided free of charge when the rest of us must pay at least the deductible for drugs which treat our illnesses and conditions? Methinks she doth protest too much!!!

In sum, we know that in this administration’s opinion the secular morality of women’s health (sexual freedom) trumps the first amendment’s requirement that the federal government not burden the people’s free exercise of their religion. I would propose that what we really know is that constitutional rights just aren’t what they used to be. Secular morality must be provided for somewhere in the penumbra of the bill of rights and, stupid me, I just failed to see it there. Has this secular moral code now actually reached the status of a state religion? If not, it seems to me that we are getting closer and closer to that point. If it has, what do you think is the difference between a religious moral code and the secular moral code in terms of the Establishment Clause of the first amendment to the U.S. Constitution, to wit:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion . . . .