Scott Kamps
Debates and arguments over morality will continue as long as fallen human beings live around each other.
We all have blind spots and need clarity to live in this fallen world. While objective morality doesn’t change, we should always be willing to examine other points of view, striving toward more righteous standards for ourselves and society.
This is especially true if justice is the foundation for society and human flourishing.
A well-known example – illustrating morality is immutable, but a society can improve in its understanding of right and wrong – is the issue of slavery.
In famous debates with Stephen Douglas, Abraham Lincoln expressed opposition to slavery, saying, “If slavery is not wrong, nothing is wrong.” He then used the Declaration of Independence to illustrate how slavery directly contradicted the inherent right of all men to liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
While the issue of slavery was costly to change in American culture – primarily because of its economic benefits – thankfully, a superior morality prevailed and virtually no one argues for it today.
In our time, we don’t even need an Abraham Lincoln to shine a light on the inconsistencies and absurdities of what we call right and wrong.
Consider the recent charges against Justin Banta in Texas last week. He was arrested and charged with capital murder for secretly slipping abortion pills (Plan C pills) into his girlfriend’s drink in October 2024, killing her baby against her will. According to the news report: “Authorities said the woman, who wanted to keep the baby, lost the six-week-old fetus days after she was allegedly drugged.”
The incoherence and absurdity of our culture is put on full display in this case. We all know that it’s wrong to intentionally kill a baby, born or unborn. To repurpose Lincoln’s quote, “If killing a baby is not wrong, then nothing is wrong.” We see the justice of that man’s arrest and murder charges. He didn’t want the child and wanted an abortion while the mother didn’t.
But when a mother doesn’t want her child and the father doesn’t want an abortion, then much of our society argues for her right to terminate a pregnancy and demands the mother have unfettered, government-paid murder privileges. Only an incoherent morality can try to hold both propositions: the same pill for the same purpose, causing murder in one instance and exercising a fundamental right in another?
It’s a morality that frankly, is as clear as mud. Nothing seems to be guiding it but the financial gains of Planned Parenthood and the self-centeredness of a culture that has – by and large – embraced the sexual revolution.
These kind of inconsistencies/contradictions show up everywhere in society today. We’ve had our own moral dilemma here in Graham County, with similarly-incongruent ideas when the Ella pill controversy happened in 2022.
We don’t need wisdom to know right from wrong in many situations: we need courage to consider and stand for what’s right when it’s inconvenient.
Scott Kamps writes a bi-weekly column for The Graham Star. He can be reached via email, thestableguy@frontier.com.