[vTLWqa1l]

I'm not a scholar of jurisprudence but this is a fascinating area of enquiry. In the western world, there has been the displacement of moral certainty and common moral values and the introduction of what is commonly called moral relativism but which is probably more correctly moral pluralism. It must be a trite observation that our current condition has grown from the spread of ideas of the (so-called) Enlightenment and the decline of religion. The idea that the state could legislate (in the broadest sense) merely to preserve itself in accordance with what the legislators (really, the executive and the judiciary) perceived to be the moral foundation of the state was abandoned about forty years ago. Our views on matters such as homosexual activity and abortion, which views were, until forty years ago or so, widely held and supported by law, are now peripheral and even pejoratively labelled 'fundamentalist'. Our current condition is supposedly valid because it is presented in terms of rights and democracy. Furthermore, it is assumed that this condition is universally applicable.