Life imprisonment for adulterers, thieves, drunkards, slanderers?
Uganda has life in prison for homosexuals. Marvin Olasky (WORLD) calls it harsh. Family Research Institute has another view.
- 1 view
FRI’s angle has some interesting points. Ineffectiveness/enforceability of a law doesn’t all by itself make it a bad law. And sure there’s educational value/cultural influence in laws and penalties. And Olasky’s argument that Uganda’s law has more to do with cultural traditions than Christianity… I’m not seeing how that’s relevant.
On the other hand, piling up laws that are practically impossible to enforce just cheapens the currency of prohibition. After a while, “this is not allowed” becomes meaningless. Second, there are other and better ways to influence a culture than by passing laws.
Then you have the whole question of: if we reason that morally bad = ought to be legally prohibited, where do you stop? So deciding what ought to be law and what ought to be, and how to penalize… these have to have other reasons behind them.
Views expressed are always my own and not my employer's, my church's, my family's, my neighbors', or my pets'. The house plants have authorized me to speak for them, however, and they always agree with me.
Would you rather it be like it is here? Where homosexuals are free to marry and openly revel in their sins? When a government allows deviant behavior to exist, it loses the respect of law abiding citizens. Look how quickly the disease has spread throughout our nation? All it took was for one state to legalize homosexual marriage, then the rest began to fall like dominoes. And thanks to the liberal supreme court, states can no longer enforce their own laws.
Fortunately, those aren’t all the options.
(So to be clear, I would opt for neither Uganda’s approach nor our own current trends)
Views expressed are always my own and not my employer's, my church's, my family's, my neighbors', or my pets'. The house plants have authorized me to speak for them, however, and they always agree with me.
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