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Immoral to violate an immoral law?

Is it immoral to violate an immoral law?

  • Yes

    Votes: 0 0.0%

  • No

    Votes: 7 100.0%

  • Tom Cruise is a God

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Total voters
    7

Hercules56

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Messages
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Is it immoral to violate an immoral law?

Are we morally bound to follow the law of the land, even laws that are clearly immoral?

If no, how does one, or a group, decide which laws are soo immoral that they should be ignored?



Case in point: laws against interracial relationships & marriage in The South back in the 1970s.
 
I think its clearly not immoral to violate some of our more historically immoral laws, such as the ban on homosexuality, interracial dating, drinking alcohol.

However, there are people today who firmly believe that income taxes are immoral, that bans on heroine are immoral.

What do we tell them?
 
Case by case.
Violating a victimless crime is never Immoral.
Violation a law that cannot be enforced might be a good way to get better laws
 
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Hercules56 said:
...that bans on heroine are immoral.

What do we tell them?
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That Captain Marvel will kick their asses six ways from Sunday.

To the actual OP question: laws are not gods. They are often little more than contrivances made to be a nuisance.

But who declares what to be moral or not means you gotta face the music first as a criminal if disobeying, then make your case before the judge.
 
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Hercules56 said:
Is it immoral to violate an immoral law?
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No (IMO).

Hercules56 said:
Are we morally bound to follow the law of the land, even laws that are clearly immoral?
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No (again, IMO. Assume all my answers are IMO, given that we are discussing morality), but we are legally bound to follow it, or risk suffering the consequences.

Hercules56 said:
If no, how does one, or a group, decide which laws are soo immoral that they should be ignored?
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Weigh up how invested you are in your moral beliefs against the potential consequences, and make a decision you can live with. Same as any morality-based decision.

Hercules56 said:
Case in point: laws against interracial relationships & marriage in The South back in the 1970s.
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Obsolete example. Those laws no longer exist, and I was not in a position to either breach or follow them when they did.

Do you have a current example?
 
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Seems self evident. If the law is immoral then the moral thing would be to violate it. The tricky part is figuring out if it is immoral and why do I think I'm so high and mighty that I know better than the folks who wrote the law and voted for it.
 
I did not bother to respond to the poll yet because I don't think the question as asked has definite meaning. It's an old and well worn path anyway, and I would suggest that one might start with Thoreau's Civil Disobedience, and work from there. The short answer is that it depends. The moral content of the law is not as important as the moral content of compliance. Many laws can be seen as immoral in that they should not exist and do not coincide with one's moral code, but there's a huge difference between a law that says you should not do something, and a law that says you should.
 
Hercules56 said:
Do you consider insurance fraud to be a victimless crime?
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financial crimes are pretty easy to prove harm, and a moral action that ends up inflicting harm is off to a pretty rough start. although it's definitely possible to contrive up a case that in a particular case stealing money is moral, you'd have to make it. so i suppose what i'm saying is that if you can bear the consequences of the crime that you're inflicting on yourself and others, you can console yourself with the idea that you did the right thing. even if it's not true, i suppose. and it's probably not even that uncommon to do.
 
Come on, even DnD nerds have figured this one out, and that's a game about killing evil undead creatures with your +5 Longsword of Inexplicable Righteousness: Lawful Evil and Chaotic Good.
 
Olmstead said:
Come on, even DnD nerds have figured this one out, and that's a game about killing evil undead creatures with your +5 Longsword of Inexplicable Righteousness: Lawful Evil and Chaotic Good.
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DnD nerds have no clue.

In reality, everything has a cost. Undermining the rule of law and the social order is not something to be done casually, even for an immoral law.

Obeying the law is also a moral act. Be mindful of both sides of the trade-off, before giving your self-righteousness free rein.
 
Hercules56 said:
Case in point: laws against interracial relationships & marriage in The South back in the 1970s.
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Loving v. Virginia was decided in 1967. And while I would say it was not immoral for people to couple with members of a different race before that time, I would certainly classify it as suicidal in the South.
 
Olmstead said:
Come on, even DnD nerds have figured this one out, and that's a game about killing evil undead creatures with your +5 Longsword of Inexplicable Righteousness: Lawful Evil and Chaotic Good.
Click to expand...
The problem is that in D&D, Law and Chaos and Good and Evil (and even Neutrality) are tangible, objectively defined things.

It's hard to be morally ambiguous when gods are walking around literally embodying morality.

The real world doesn't work like that. It's why D&D is called "fantasy".
 
There is the law, then there is punishment and sentencing.

If a judge thinks a person is technically guilty of an outdated law, they can issue a light sentence.
 
Orphia Nay said:
There is the law, then there is punishment and sentencing.

If a judge thinks a person is technically guilty of an outdated law, they can issue a light sentence.
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Australia has sentencing guidelines and mandatory minimum sentences for some categories of crime.

I bet you can't name three cases in the past thirty years, where a judge has exercised their discretion to impose a minimum sentence for breaking an outdated law.

I bet you can't even identify three "outdated" laws that Australian judges are currently charged with ruling on.
 
theprestige said:
DnD nerds have no clue.

In reality, everything has a cost. Undermining the rule of law and the social order is not something to be done casually, even for an immoral law.

Obeying the law is also a moral act. Be mindful of both sides of the trade-off, before giving your self-righteousness free rein.
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If everything has a cost, then so does following or not challenging immoral laws, which is just a long-winded way of saying that actions have consequences.

I don't see how that's terribly helpful in this case. Only break immoral laws if you believe the positives will outweigh the negatives?
 
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