Hearing Alan Sears promote his anti-ACLU book (The Aclu Vs. America: Exposing the Agenda to Redefine Moral Values) on the radio (see my previous posts, and Sears' previous book) I was reminded once again that there remains a major stumbling block over the definition of a simple word -- morality.

That's because regardless of what anyone might say about the absolute, permanent, unchanging nature of morality, there is an absence of agreement over what morality is.

Or whose morality it is. Who gets to say? If God gets to say, then who gets to say what God says? And then who gets to interpret whatever it is that whoever it is who gets to say what God says actually says?

I'll start with the oft-enunciated absolutist position that morality is absolute and unchanging in all places, with all peoples, at all times. In the logical sense, this cannot be so, because (regardless of whether one believes in evolution) man has existed in his present form since Pleistocene times, yet the morality said to be "unchanging" is usually said to derive from the Bible, which is only a few thousand years old. The form of morality deriving from Old Testament law was written for ancient Hebrews, and other cultures in the Western tradition (namely Greek and Roman) were not bound by it. It was not until early Roman Christians decided to incorporate Jewish scripture into the earliest Christian bible (as compiled by order of Constantine) that the law of the Hebrews can be said to be a part of what is argued to be "unchanging." Yet before Constantine, Western sexual morality was not based on Jewish law. Unless my logic is faulty, the creation of the Christian Bible by Constantine represented a change. Which means that morality -- at least the sexual form which so often plagues these endless arguments -- cannot be said to be unchanging, absolute or eternal.

This, of course, begs the question of what is morality. For the most part, sexual morality is what people think about when they hear the word. "Moral conservative," for example, usually denotes someone whose primary concerns involve sexual matters like abortion, homosexuality and pornography. (Abortion really should be treated as a separate issue because the moral argument involves a disagreement not over the definition of morality itself -- but whether or not a fetus is a human being, and at what point. For the most part, I think both sides of the abortion dispute agree that murder is immoral. Which means that if the fetus or embryo is a person, abortion is immoral. And if it isn't a person, then killing it is no more immoral than killing a dog.)

Analysis is complicated by the fact that words like "adultery" and "sodomy" do not have precise and ascertainable meanings.

I think the reason it's such a strain to analyze the morality of consensual sex is because there really isn't absolute agreement among all people as to what that morality is, and there never will be. The huge majority of human beings can agree that crimes against other people -- murder, theft, rape, robbery -- are immoral. That's because of things like the social compact, enlightened self interest, and common sense all militate in favor of the right of society to defend itself as well as the members in it. Resort to religion is not necessary, nor does it especially matter whether these things have always been immoral for all peoples in all times.

But with consensual, private sex, enlightened self interest and common sense fail to supply a moral rule, and that is because those who are not involved with the sex are not affected, and have no more logical reason to care than they would about any other non-threatening behavior. Thus, while humans might pass sexual laws, it would not do to have men asserting moral sexual rules so readily subject to disagreement, so the moral rules about sex end up being said to come not from man, but from deities. Depending on the deity, polygamy might be OK in one culture, divorce in another, wife swapping in another, and homosexuality in still another.

Absent a religious standard, personal loyalty and fidelity are certainly desirable qualities, and I think disloyalty to a spouse is pretty shabby conduct by anyone. I don't think resort to religion is necessary to make such a determination. Many people would feel that homosexuality would be a bad thing -- a sexual mistake, if you will -- without needing a reference to religion to make that determination for them.

Many people wouldn't.

But few people equate the type of personal morality that prevents them from engaging in adultery or homosexuality with the kind of morality which would prevent them from robbing or killing another person. Yet those few -- the ones who insist that sodomy is like murder or robbery -- claim that their opinions are based on a system of morality which has always been there and never changes, and they would see Julius Caesar or Hadrian as violating an "eternal" moral standard those men had never contemplated.

People who think that way certainly just as much right to their opinion as I do mine, and just as much right to be mistaken as I do. It's not my goal here to say that they're wrong or that I am right; only to highlight once again the utter hopelessness of debating sexual morality.

If you're in the sort of argument where there's no agreement on the definition of morality, there are only a few ways to engage in dialogue. One is to disagree over the definition of morality. Another (the deconstructionist approach) is simply to disagree with the idea that there is any such thing as morality. The last is simply concede that a given thing is immoral under the definition of morality as they have defined it. (A little like admitting to being a liberal, or being a conservative; where would anyone go from there?)

One of the reasons I use the dietary analogy is because it is a form of religious morality which is not as inflammatory as sex. To those who believe the eating of pork is immoral, I am by definition immoral if I sometimes engage in an activity which is by definition immoral. That's OK, and I can live with that. I guess it would be a bit more complicated if I were a stricter vegetarian than I am, because then I would never eat pork (instead of occasionally). But if I refrain from eating pork for reasons having nothing to do with morality, can I really be said to be a more moral person for it? I fail to see how.

In logic, I am no more threatened by the fact that people consider pork eating immoral than I am by people who consider non-marital, non missionary position sex to be immoral. Yet for the most part, people who refrain from eating pork for religious reasons are less likely to seek to impose their laws on pork eaters (and far less insistent that pork eaters are "immoral") than the people concerned about religious restrictions on sex.

But let's just suppose that I don't like pork. Should my not eating it make me a better person in the eyes of those who think pork eating is immoral? I can think of no logical reason why, because in not eating it I am not deliberately obeying any dietary law -- any more than I am "observing the Sabbath" if I stay at home and do absolutely nothing on Sunday because I just don't feel like doing anything. Analogizing to an activity completely outside the sweep of morality, take golf. As I've discussed before, I hate playing golf, but for years I was told that I "should" play golf because it was a desirable social activity. There are many people who love golf, and who'd be miserable if they did what I did. Absent any moral rule, these two groups of people -- golf lovers and golf haters -- are just doing what they want. So why would we say that someone who hasn't the slightest desire to engage in certain sexual activities is being "morally virtuous" if he does not do what he does not want to do? Why would a heterosexual who refrains from homosexual activity be considered virtuous for not engaging in homosexual acts? (Reversing the question sounds almost absurd, yet the mechanism is the same.) It strikes me that aside from the question of what morality is, moral authority ought not to attach to people not doing what they don't want to do. But it does.

None of this would really be a problem if sexual morality were seen as a private matter in the way that matters of choice in diet were private. Disagreement would then be possible in the same way. Increasingly, though, the division is not over what people do; it's over what they think.

It's tougher and tougher to agree to disagree. Especially over definitions.

The result is that morality -- once a word as important as it was ambiguous -- has degenerated into unambiguous code language.

When words can no longer be used in meaningful conversation, they're effectively redefined out of useful existence.