Each of us brings our own moral code into the larger cultural and national debate. There are, in fact no shortages of "moral codes." If one looks carefully, the common thread, the "TRUTH" (in my way of looking at it God's Truth) is always operating in the background. If you examine the faiths around the world all have, for example, some version of the "Golden Rule". The various faiths / believers may state them in such a way as is most understandable to their audience but God is incredibly versatile. He can find a way to couch His truth so that the greatest or the least of us can understand it.
The problem for human beings is when we feel the need to "legislate truth" based on our "righteous understanding" of God's "intention". God's intention is to the best of my understanding to be reserved for God. When we suggest as some have, for example, in the recent judicial confirmation debates that to be against the filibuster is to be against people of faith I have to suggest they are overstepping the bounds. Moral code is essential to order, peace, and safety but moral code imposed by a majority, even a well meaning majority, on a helpless minority is nothing more than despotic behavior against the very basis of most faiths. Certainly, Christianity is based on the least and the greatest exchanging place and value, so if we are trampling the minority in the name of our great "morality" we had better be careful that we aren't in fact violating our own "rules."
Speaking of rules and who makes them. First I should disclose that as a Christian I am a bit leery of "Rules" to begin with. It seems to me that when we want to set up rules based on our faith we run the risk of planting the seeds of Pharisaical behavior where we wander around accusing others of blasphemy and sins against "The Law". It seems more likely that we should be more followers of the "summary of the Law" where we love our neighbors as we would love God. In that to me is the answer to the last question in the comment, "who gets to pick the rules?" The answer in my view is that we all do in the time-honored American tradition of compromise. Remember compromise? It was that thing where I give up something important to me and you give up something important to you so that we both leave the table a little dissatisfied but far more likely not to come to blows. If nothing else, good compromise ends with all the parties feeling that at least the others lost something too. More often than not these days, to engage in compromise is to be seen as being weak. To me, that misses the mark mightily. If I give you something which is important to me and you do the same we are in fact, absolutely living our faith. We are sacrificing for the benefit of others and for humanity as a whole because we are encouraging peace and understanding. Living your faith in actions FOR others is the real place where the rubber meets the road of faith.
Who then, gets to make the rules? Short answer, we ALL do and my rules won't make you all that happy and your rules won't make me all that happy. That is precisely why I think we are in dangerous ground when we feel we need "moral laws". Yes civil, orderly society is a good and proper goal but it will be far more likely achieved with the change in behavior of citizens than by codifying their transgressions. Until a few scant decades ago "right thinking" individuals in this state felt it was "morally right" and Biblically justified to keep people of different skin colors segregated and they used laws for this purpose. Moral laws made by the majority are quite obviously not always morally correct. When I advocate not imposing a moral code I see that the imposition of the majority's moral code can in fact have a chilling and discriminatory effect. That discrimination against the defenseless or underpowered minority is in my way of assessing, the most immoral thing a civil society could ever conceive of attempting. If we keep our moral rules to a minimum and act toward one another in accordance with the best tenets of our beliefs and faiths, we will in fact create an orderly, peaceful and certainly civil society – by default.
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