Legality and Morality – Sunday, June 10, 1945
It was an ancient prophet, reputed for much wisdom, who observed with seeming discouragement: “Of making many books there is no end.” (Ecclesiastes 12:12.) We would paraphrase the utterance with equal truth and with much more of consternation, to observe that, likewise of the making of many laws there is no end. It is common to our time, as also to other times, that there is much of reliance upon the multiplicity of laws as also upon the technicalities of law, sometimes accompanied by the erroneous assumption that everything that is legal or licensed is, necessarily moral or ethical. But with our endless making of many laws, with our innumerable legal conflicts and contradictions, there are many acts of expediency and convenience which may have little or nothing to do with morality or ethics.
For example, many nations and peoples, many legal agencies, past and present, have seen fit for one cause or another to regulate some forms of vice, rather than to prohibit them. Then, having taxed or licensed the vice in question and having found it to be a profitable source of revenue, there is always present the temptation to broaden the base of the evil, that it may produce yet more revenue. To this temptation there has sometimes been yielding. But vice which is profitable is still vice—no matter to whom it is profitable, and no matter how the profits are used. Profit does not change the nature of evil. Nor does all inherently dishonest act, done with the appearance of legal honesty, thereby become inherently honest. Nor does legal license change the basic character of a moral offense. For example, if in principle gambling were demonstrated to be in itself an evil, then it would not cease to be an evil merely because it had somewhere somehow become licensed—or even should it become sponsored and conducted by an otherwise respectable authority. And so we might make a long list of practices, some more grievous than others, the real moral nature of which is not changed by their becoming legal or licensed. And no man is justified in whitewashing his conscience by telling himself that something basically wrong, but legally tolerated, is morally permissible.
There are some principles operative, both in this world and beyond it, which are accompanied with a certainty of consequences which are quite beyond legal loopholes and concerning which no decision can be influenced, which no legislative body can amend or revoke, before which the shrewdest of legal dexterity is helpless, with respect to which no jury can be confused or persuaded, and from which there is no appeal—and one such certainty is that a man cannot escape himself. Seemingly, there are many ways of avoiding friction with the law, increasingly complex and confusing though it be—but there is no way of avoiding the moral consequences of an unethical or immoral act.
“The Spoken Word,” heard over Radio Station K S L and the nationwide Columbia Broadcasting System, from the Tabernacle, Temple Square, Salt Lake City, Sunday, June 10, 1945. Copyright 1945.
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June 10, 1945
Broadcast Number 0,825