Seminar Response

Recently I participated in a Socratic seminar in my senior humanities class. We were discussing a few stories and speeches that clashed together laws, morals, and ethics. During this discussion I kept thinking about the relationship between laws and one's moral code. Questions instantly popped in and out of my head. Are our laws based on morality, if so who's? who actually makes a law? People with the money to do it? The people of this country? The government? Are laws just the morals of the majority? A good example where some of these questions have been turning up is the debate on the gay marriage vote.

Debates on the outcome of the vote have come and gone. We can come to some answers by just looking at the actual vote in California. Voters seemed to take a more moral standing, be that personal or religious morals, when making their decision. Since the majority rules in our country, the right for the gay population to marry in the state of California was declined. This thought then made me think about the Jim Crow Laws in the 1930's. If we take the issue of years of racism out of the equation these two situations are very similar. People, voters, are taking a moral standpoint which is separation a particular group of people from a right that, according to the Declaration of Independence, all people should have. The right to peruse happiness. Even if voters took a religious moral standpoint they are now disregarding the Separation between church and State, which was a main moral decision that this country was founded on.

In conclusion by bringing the subject of gay marriage, or segregation, to a state/governmental level, the government is being quite unethical. Firstly because it takes away a large group of people's inaliable rights which, according to the Declaration of Independence, can not be taken away. It is also unethical because the subjects themselves, though maybe not intentionally, allows people to take a more religious morals standpoint which contractions Separation of church and State.