I'll use pot as an example. None of the effects produced by smoking are virtuous. Gluttony, laziness, lowered sexual inhibitions, are all vices. Vices shouldn't be encouraged by legitimizing the behavior through legalization.
I've never seen an object do anything sexually base. And there are plenty of undignified people who aren't objects, and there are people who do unsacred things without being objects. Just say that fornication itself is immoral and be done with it. BTW, should it be illegal for unmarried people to have sex without money changing hands?
Give me a break, A.J. By the term "object" I mean dehumanizing to base level. Prostitution helps create a moral and social climate conducive to sexual abuse and expoitation. I do believe that fornication is immoral, but I would like to stay on the topic of prostitution and drug use. The last question is too silly to answer.
Society? Too nebulous. If Dope Smokin' Joe takes a toke of the old whacky weed, name the person who suffers an invasion of his person or property.
We were talking legalization and immorality. Normalizing the behavior by making it legal will continue to push our society further away from our cultural foundations. Our kids deserve a better society than what you propose.
You can reinforce something without making it illegal to do otherwise.
Societal standards are important. Without them the line between relative and concrete becomes blurred. I have already given an argument in an earlier post on this.
No, you're not talking about ideas. You're talking about making it illegal to do what you consider (rightly or wrongly) to be immoral. If something's illegal, you don't counter it with ideas, you use police officers and administer punishments.
Prostitution and drugs are already illegal. I was specifically referring to fighting the culture war in the arena of ideas, which is what I am doing as we speak. Someone has to stand up for our foundation before its lost.
This is a blanket statement and you have absolutely no idea that it is true. Smoking is not in and of itself moral or immoral. People who smoke pot to alleviate their pain are no more doing anything immoral than are people taking aspirin.
Secondly, it is not the job of the state to produce "virtuous" members of society. Were this true you and I would have to agree that the state should be scrapped immediately because it is failing miserably.
Drinking produces un-virtuous results too. Should we ban it? Wealth can produce a lack of virtue. Should we ban capitalism?
Give me a break, A.J. By the term "object" I mean dehumanizing to base level. Prostitution helps create a moral and social climate conducive to sexual abuse and expoitation.
They're not "dehumanized", and do not become objects. Sin, in fact, is a characteristically human activity.
I do believe that fornication is immoral, but I would like to stay on the topic of prostitution and drug use. The last question is too silly to answer.
The last question is a perfectly fair question, and so is OP's later question about idolatry. If prostitution should be illegal because of it's immorality, then fornication, which is on the same moral level (and is the immorality in prostitution, not the fact that money changes hands), should be on the same legal level.
You're right that the preaching of a false gospel is not comparable to drugs or prostitution. It's worse! Smoking marijuana is an inherently trivial act. Denying Jesus Christ will send someone to Hell. Selling marijuana will get some people high (horrors!). Selling Islam or Hinduism or any other falsity like that will get people sent to Hell (at this point, "horrors!" would be entirely accurate).
Societal standards are important. Without them the line between relative and concrete becomes blurred. I have already given an argument in an earlier post on this.
You seem, here, to be saying that concrete, as opposed to relative, is marked out by the laws, in which case, some modern invention like Harry Anslinger's selection of pot as the excuse to keep old Prohibition enforcers employed is concrete, while the eternal word of the Lord is relative. That's mixed up.