Secular Morality: Follow-Up

"For the sake of public decency and morality!" has become something of a rallying cry amongst those with authoritarian bents who wish to see their home-town cleaned up and made, well, more "pure". But when all the facts are weighed, it becomes clear: all that happens when you attempt to place into the written law "Good Christian Morals" (or their equivalent in any other faith), is that society is put at risk.

Take, for example, this recent case in Lubbock, Texas. A woman, working at a sex novelty shop, now faces felony charges and will be forced to register as a "sex offender". People have been hunted down and killed simply for being on the national sex offender registry. And that is now what this woman faces because the police in Lubbock decided that selling dildoes is as dangerous as pedophilia. Even without that threat, she will never be able to reside with her own children should she have any, or reside within a set distance of anywhere children gather; per Texas state law. All this, for working at a lingerie store with a side business in phallicly contoured silicon? Mind you, the store owner himself isn't facing charges -- only the clerk. Of course, Lubbock has somewhat of a history of going out of its way to ensure that nothing sexual happens in anything resembling "public." And don't think this sort of behavior is limited to one little town in "Podunk, Texas" as it were. It most assuredly is not.

All of this, if you ask any "good christian conservative", this is either exactly what the doctor ordered, or -- if they are more moderate -- simply someone being a bit "overzealous" in doing good works. But is it really good? Take the case of one Matthew Bandy, a young man pilloried by the Maricopa County, Arizona, County Attorney; Andrew Thomas. Even FOXNews.com has recognized the young man's innocence. And the office of Andrew Thomas? Even after they failed to obtain the conviction for pedophilia -- mainly because there was proof Matt's computer was hijacked by an intruder -- his employees continued to 'smear' Matt as a "dangerous" pedophile. They even wanted him to register as a sex offender for showing another boy his own age a couple of pages from a Playboy magazine; were it not for the judge throwing out the sex offender status, this would have been the result of the Bandy family's expenditure of over $10,000 to protect an innocent boy; life as a registered sex offender. So it is clear; those whom have such christian zealotry see innocence of crime as no excuse for immoral behavior as they define it. Which in and of itself, possibly not horrendous; so a few people wind up getting harassed because they like sex or booze a little more than their proselytizing evangelical neighbor? At least there's less violence and crime, right?

Wrong.

Take for example the now ubiquitous revelation that easily accessible porn has a direct impact on reducing the frequency of rape. In a similar vein, while violent movies are being played, violent crime rates drop, and stay down for hours afterwards. In a previous article by this blog, it was revealed that this trend is universal; in areas where the population is more greatly secular by nature, violent crime, rape, divorce, murder, abortion, and domestic abuse rates (and more besides these) are all lower.

It will never cease to amaze this author that all major monotheistic religions claim to be "The religion of peace" yet historically and modernly are directly -- and apparently indirectly as well -- responsible for more violence and bigotry than any other cultural phenomenon. Yet of course, as evidenced by the history of "state atheism", any attempt to ban religion results in increased violence in its own right. All we can do, it seems, is hope and pray that here in America, at least, the religious right wakes up to their command to "be in the world but not of it" -- and divorces themselves from their attempts to reshape this nation away from its original secularized roots. It's really a simple point: you cannot force someone to be faithful and moral, by putting them at the muzzle of a gun. It just cannot be done.