Should Christians Support Indonesia Criminalizing Cohabitation and Extramarital Sex?

Apologies. This one is paywalled.

The answer to the titular question, though, is no. “Wrong” and “illegal” are different things and it’s foolish and counterproductive to try to illegalize everything people shouldn’t do. Plus… I don’t know what flavor of Islam we’re talking about here, but, what are they going to do with violators? Executions? What made sense in ancient Israel in the context of a covenant with God doesn’t make sense in Indonesia in the context of a false religion.

Edit: not exactly paywalled. You trade your email address for access. Clearing cookies might also work.

“Legislating morality” is usually the phrase people use to resist attempts by one group of people to enforce (sometimes criminalize) their version of right and wrong on the rest of a particular society or culture. Nothing wrong with this in principle since most laws are some form of legislating morality (stealing, murder, lying under oath, etc). The political left frequently attempts (and is often successful) in creating laws for their version of morality, such as homosexual marriage, transgendered acceptance, climate initiatives, and slavery reparations and describing these initiatives in moral language. It’s only when the political right attempts to create laws for their version of morality that the political left objects to “legislating morality”.

Yes, it is “foolish and counterproductive to try to illegalize everything people shouldn’t do”, but the questions still remain: What SHOULD we make illegal? How do you decide what behavior to not criminalize? Why do we criminalize some behaviors and not others?

One of the problems is that once people enjoy a certain behavior, such as consumption of alcoholic beverages, to make that behavior illegal is difficult to control and enforce (Prohibition). This is one reason why many people oppose legalizing certain drugs. Once legal, extremely difficult to reverse and make illegal.

Personally, I don’t object to making pre-marital sexual relationships and adultery illegal. Why not? But it would be difficult to enforce. And, of course, we know that such laws do not change the heart. But neither do laws criminalizing stealing, murder, child abuse, or animal abuse.

Nations are built on strong families, and marriage is the center of family life. Nations, therefore, have a vested interest in safeguarding the institution of the family. Adultery, pornography, premarital sex, and the like should come with legal consequences (not just personal or social consequences) as a further deterrent, seeing that their proliferation is devastating for a nation’s wellbeing. Indeed, such things were against the law in America until the sexual revolution.

OK, from one point of reference, it would be good to prohibit both pre-and-extramarital relations, just like it’s a good idea to prohibit public intoxication (actually a law on the books in many places). The trick is that the comparison to Prohibition is apt, as the vast majority of people who actually do get married arrive at the altar without their virginity. So how big do we want to build the jails? Would any jury convict when most members have a guilty conscience about the matter?

A middle point that we might be able to sustain—and one that is law already on the books in most places—is to more strictly enforce statutory rape (sex with a minor) laws and go after the fathers of children on welfare for child support. “You breed ‘em, you feed ‘em”, and all that, no? I would also be in favor of dealing with adulterers harshly in divorce court—commit adultery against your spouse, the division of property immediately goes from 50/50 to 30/70 or something.

I don’t think that we can go to an active ban on fornication, and I don’t believe we ever had an effective ban on it—we have data going back a while about births out of wedlock, and there’s no point in time when it was “darned close to zero”—but I do think that Christians can and should make the argument that sexual behavior is more significant than other behaviors in terms of disease (mental and physical), unplanned pregancies, and the like, and that therefore the law ought to take fornication more seriously than we currently do because of this.

When it comes to government, I’m a big believer in liberty. As a general rule, most things are none of the governments business. Who do I associate with? None of the gov’s business. Who do I date? None of the gov’s business. Who did I vote for? None of the gov’s business. What do I believe? None of the gov’s business.

So, when it comes to who people date… I could care less “from the government perspective”. It is none of the government’s business who I date, live with, or marry. The ship sailed long ago on those things… divorce is common, inter-racial marriage is no big deal, now even same-sex relationships. Who cares!

Mind your own business. Reduce divorce in the church. Improve our marriage relationships. Reduce our teen pregnancies… That’s our job as Christians. What sinners do is there’s.

Government should only do what it MUST do, and caring about who lives together is not one of those things.

Do governments have a vested and compelling interest in extending a country’s longevity? Do they have an innate responsibility to encourage behavior that strengthens the fabric of society and discourage actions that will fundamentally destroy it?

[KD Merrill]

Do governments have a vested and compelling interest in extending a country’s longevity? Do they have an innate responsibility to encourage behavior that strengthens the fabric of society and discourage actions that will fundamentally destroy it?

Promotion of child-bearing can be done through tax policy, which is what the US does now with its large Child Tax Credit.

Why not?

This is precisely the opposite of the right question. Because history shows that governments always tend to grow themselves and become oppressive over time, the question needs to be “why?” not “why not?”

In the case of these private consensual sexual practices, the practical problems are pretty obvious (how do you prosecute, the court system load vs more serious offenses, etc., etc.). But the biggest problem is that one of principle: government should focus on reducing harm inflicted on unwilling victims. It’s that simple. Of course people will self-victimize through immoral choices. But there is no justice issue there, either distributive justice or retributive.

In short, if we don’t think police states are good, we can’t believe that legislating these kinds of behaviors is good.

Occurred to me later that no sin can really be victimless, and certainly adultery almost always has victims. In the first case, victims—other than ourselves—can be indirect by a few degrees or many. In the case of the latter, it’s not unusual for there be other offenses in the marriage that violate the vows/contract just as much as adultery, on the other side of the relationship. Not that one offense justifies another, but if countries are going to prosecute adultery as a breach of contract or something like that, why stop with adultery?

I have to concede that at the moment I don’t see a crystal clear line between victimless offenses (really ‘complex victimization offenses’), “minor” victimizing offenses, and “major” victimizing offenses. So it’s hard to draw a firm boundary on “what’s the government’s business?” along those lines. Fortunately, we really don’t need to. The boundary can be pretty much drawn at life/health and property.

So, assault/murder/injury = government business. Robbery and fraud (which is fancier robbery) = government’s business. Where it gets really murky is the whole “public decency” tradition. Lots and lots of municipal codes have public decency ordinances. It’s not “life/health/property,” so sometimes there is a “public good” category. But it invites government overreach. The libertarians are pretty consistent against government involvement in the whole ‘public good’/quality of life area I think. I understand why.

I’m basically debating with myself here on how to draw these boundaries, but I still still think “why?” is a much better question than “why not?” when it comes to making laws against things that are mostly moral matters vs. justice matters.