Olie;
Forgive my blunt reaction. I was reacting entirely to your statement that if it's illegal it's immoral.
In the news recently there was a story about a man in Afghanistan who at some point in his life had converted from Islam to Christianity. In Afghanistan it is against the law to do that. Now this person didn't really stand a chance of changing the law; in fact the punishment for breaking that law was death and apparently most people there felt that he should have been punished to the full extent of the law. This particular person wasn't intending to hurt anyone else by breaking the law; in fact he tried to keep his law-breaking from being publicly known, but he was turned in by a relative. In your view, since he was breaking the law, he was acting immorally when he converted to Christianity. But I would imagine that in his view, he converted because he thought by doing so he might lead a more moral life. So I guess this just suggests that one person's immorality is another person's morality.
Now to answer your question directly. You appear to think that I think it's ok for people to break laws whenever they want. I don't. Your statements suggest that you think all laws are just and moral. They are not.
There are all kinds of reasons why laws are enacted. Many of these reasons have nothing to do with morality. Some laws are enacted because they help solve problems. For instance, in New York, there are streets where you park on one side of the street on some days and on the other side of the street on other days. If you forget which day it is and park on the wrong side, it doesn't make you immoral, it means you forgot which day it was.
Some laws are so confusing people don't know when or if they are breaking the law. The tax code is an example. I would imagine there are people that you know well that you think are moral people but who probably did not file an accurate use tax return this past year.
Another interesting thing about the federal tax code is that some district courts have ruled that certain actions are legal under the tax code while other district courts have ruled that those same actions are illegal. Does that mean that some people are immoral and others moral when they take the same actions?
Then there is the case where one law making authority makes an action legal and another makes it illegal. Is a person who breaks that law immoral even though his actions are legal?
Some laws are based on a society's ideas of morality. In the US, the vast majority of the people think it is immoral to murder people. These people would think this way even if there was not a law against murder. The fact that there is a law against murder isn't what makes murder immoral.
So, do I think it is ok for Jeffrey Dahmer to kill people? No I do not. But the reason I think it is not ok is not because it is against the law. A person's morality, what a person thinks is right and wrong, what a person feels in their heart, is not dictated by laws.
Many people believe that capital punishment is immoral. And yet, in the US it is legal. The law doesn't make it moral; it just makes it the law.
History is full of examples where people disobeyed laws because the laws were unjust and immoral. The US was founded by people who broke a lot of the King's laws. The fact that the founding fathers chose to break those laws doesn't necessarily make the founding fathers immoral.
When Rosa Parks refused to sit at the back of the bus she wasn't acting immorally; some would say that she was acting morally in standing up to an unjust and immoral law. Sometimes blindly following unjust laws can itself be seen as immoral.
There are lots of moral reasons for breaking laws.
Burning draft cards to protest the Viet Nam war.
Prescribing medical marijuana to a suffering patient.
Importing prescription drugs from Canada.
Helping slaves escape a cruel plantation owner.
Teaching women to read in Afghanistan under Taliban rule.
To me, your statement, that if it's illegal it's immoral, doesn't seem to make sense. This is what I was reacting to. When you look at the history of civilizations, when you look at all the cruel, unjust and immoral laws that governments have enacted throughout history, when you look at the suffering that laws have caused to humans throughout history, it just doesn't make sense to equate laws with morality. Morality seems to have something to do with your heart, how you treat people; morality seems to be about opening your heart and treating everyone you meet with compassion. Just because a dictator, king, or congress makes a law, doesn't mean it's immoral to break that law.
I guess what I'm getting at here is that perhaps when you said if it's illegal it's immoral that perhaps that's not exactly what you meant to say.
