From a lefty I know..."Yeah, it's murder, but that's okay as long as I view the victim as an inconvenience."
(media.kotakuinaction2.win)
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I'm with u/current_horror in regard to lolbert fatigue. Nothing personal, but your standard moral vs legal line is pretty ridiculous and has been the means by which neoconservatives (ie Trotskyites) have backed leftists for 70 years. "You can't legislate morality" has been a conservative line my whole life and its dead wrong.
All laws are written to promote a moral good. Homocide laws are written because preventing and punishing murder is a moral good. The Crean Air Act was written because preventing a polluted country is a moral good. Even fucking tax laws exist because supporting the operations of the government is (perceived) to be a moral good. Now some of these may be bad calls, but the principle remains.
Or, I should say the principle remains unless an actual conservative advocates for a law or moral position out of line with progressive ideology, then it's back to "you can't legislate morality" as our betters often tell us.
I literally just identified a similarity that has far reaching legal and social implications. As to you 80s/90s moral panic complaints: how successful were the conservatives and who is Tipper Gore?
I disagree.
These things are done to maintain the authority of the state, which is based on moral principals enshrined in the Constitution. It may be a bit pedantic but I think it's an important distinction.
While it's acceptable to question, protest, and even disobey laws and still be a loyal citizen, opposing the Constitution is treason. While laws are dynamic, the Constitution is not (or at least shouldn't be).
The reason for this is that governments should never be the arbiters of the Constitution, that's for the courts to do in order to ensure a division of power so that special interest groups can't arbitrarily change everything.
You might think this is unimportant, but take a look at a country with no Constitutional authority, like Canada, to see the difference.
What is the third branch of government?
Opposing the Constitution is not treason. The Constitution is a well written document, but it is nevertheless just the current governing document of the USA. It was not the first, and there's nothing inherent to it that makes it the last one either. Waging war against the USA by a citizen is treason. There's nothing treasonous about, for example, arguing against the Constitution in favor of returning to the Articles of Confederation.