Below is part of a email I received from GAB

"Yes, You Can Legislate Morality

By: Pastor Andrew Isker

Any time a conservative Christian proposes laws to address issues of public morality, he is always told “you can’t legislate morality.” This is a mantra that is deep in the bones of liberal, democratic society. You hear it all the time.

Want to pass laws to stop abortion? “You can’t legislate morality.”
Want to eliminate gay marriage? “You can’t legislate morality.”
Want to stop children being castrated? “You can’t legislate morality.”
Want to stop the dissemination of pornography? “You can’t legislate morality.”

But simply repeating something ad nauseam doesn’t make it true.

The reality is that law really does “legislate morality.”

The very idea that morality is separable from external society—from the norms and standards of everyone else around you—betrays a liberal individualism that is completely out of touch with reality. Human beings do not develop their moral bearings in isolation. Only the most antisocial personalities and the mentally ill are capable of bootstrapping a novel and idiosyncratic morality apart from what everyone around them believes.

The overwhelming majority of people acquire their moral senses from those around them, especially those in authority over them. Parents, teachers, peers, media, and yes, even government instill moral principles upon them. The Bible commands Christian parents to do this very thing (Pr. 22:6, Eph. 6:4). Naturally, it isn’t as simple as giving a child a set of rules and downloading them into their brain. The human heart does not work this way. However, the moral training parents give their children does become internalized over time. Children really do believe what their parents tell them is right and wrong, and though some can and do rebel against it, the majority will more or less follow what they have been taught. Outward conformity to external rules usually becomes internalized over time.
Rules don’t change a person’s heart directly and on their own, but they absolutely do train you before you are even able to understand why those rules are given. When I tell my young child not to touch the hot stove, he doesn’t understand the reason why he has been given this command. All he knows is that his father told him something and he must obey. Only when he matures will he understand the reason he was given this command is because I love him and do not want him to harm himself. That is how the exercise of authority brings about moral formation. Whether that authority is father over son or king over subject is immaterial.

You can see this demonstrated in political and cultural developments over the last century. Attitudes regarding race relations have changed dramatically since the Second World War. During the war, the overwhelming majority of soldiers were in favor of maintaining the military policy of segregating units by race. When the United State Supreme Court declared school segregation unconstitutional in 1954, over 40% of Americans disagreed with the decision. Forty years later, in 1994, the same poll was conducted and only 11% disapproved of the ruling while 87% approved.

No polling recent polling exists on the decision, but it would be safe to estimate opposition to Brown is in the very low single digits. How did Americans go from believing segregation was good to nearly everyone believing it was bad in the space of half a century? While law was obviously not the only factor in cultural change, it quite evidently had a major role. Law changes the moral principles of a people. Law has a pedagogical function. The Bible even talks about the Old Covenant law in this way (Gal. 3:24-27) Furthermore, people see a preference cascade and they want to be in the majority. This doesn’t imply that they are insincere. It is simply human psychology. Human beings adapt to the their surroundings, including their moral surroundings.

The very same process played out with the acceptance of homosexuality and gay “marriage.” In the late 1990s into the early 2000s, defense of marriage acts and gay “marriage” bans were extremely popular even winning majorities in places like California in 2008. That same year the then-Senator Obama campaigned for President publicly opposing gay “marriage.” Then, all-of-a-sudden, the United States Supreme Court ruled in Obergefell v. Hodges that the United States Constitution guarantees a right for homosexual men to play act as married man and wife. Immediately all the Civil Rights Act provisions became applied to homosexuals and eventually to virtually every other conceivable sexual perversion.
Concurrently, public opinion of homosexuality rapidly changed. The majority that had only years earlier opposed homosexuality now approved of it. Their moral views were legislated for them. It wasn’t as though every, single American sat down to deeply meditate upon their own moral principles, sifting through complex philosophical and ethical conundrums. They saw which way the wind was blowing and conformed. Again, while some may be insincere, human beings are pack animals. We do whatever everyone else is doing. Anyone who has ever been in a traffic jam knows this is true.
So when a Christian proposes laws for the purposes of public morality, the you-can’t-legislate-morality-ers who naysay don’t truly believe what they are saying. There is always going to be a public morality enforced by law. It is not “whether,” but “which.” Our current legally enforced public morality makes “racism” and “discrimination” the most damnable offenses. The official public morality makes every sexual practice except for pederasty—for now—all but illegal to criticize.

There is a public morality and the laws we have passed have enshrined it. If Christian laws were passed that make adultery a crime once again, prohibit the production and distribution of pornography, prohibit public displays of homosexuality, criminalize all abortion, and eliminate no-fault divorce, the culture would necessarily change. And such change would be rapid. And just like all other cultural change, it wouldn’t be insincere. People would conform to the influences that surround them just as they have with other cultural change.

Laws would not make men Christian. The Christian influence of a Christian culture everywhere around them would however make the preaching of the gospel significantly easier. Take for example the unfortunate Congresswoman Nancy Mace. Last week Mace spoke at a pastors’ prayer breakfast held by Senator Tim Scott where she openly bragged about cohabitating with a man not her husband and turning down intercourse with him in order to make it on time. In a society governed by Christian-influenced law, something like America a century ago, such a thing would be unheard of by anyone, much less a person with major political influence who makes much of being a regular church-goer. No one would be expected to individually exegete the Bible in order to arrive at a Christian sexual morality. It would be in the air around them and implicitly understood by everyone. You simply would not do that, just as everyone today knows there are certain words you are forbidden from uttering.

In such a world, where Christian understanding of right and wrong is fundamental to the entire society, there is a pathway where the gospel can be understood and applied. In our world today, much of what the Bible calls “sin” is celebrated as a virtue. Just to reach a point where people can admit something they do is a sin is a steep mountain to climb. Law is a teacher. What the king commands trains his people in what is moral and immoral. When the Bible describes the evil kings of Israel, it often says “who made Israel to sin.” This does not imply that the average person in Israel had no moral agency or was not responsible for what he or she did. What it does mean is that what the political leader commands has a very real effect on how his people understand right from wrong. A people will follow their leader for good or for ill. That is how God made human beings.

So with this in mind, Christians should absolutely want to pursue law for the sake of public morality. “Cultural Christianity” is good. All legislation is legislating one morality or another. God changes men’s hearts. And one instrument He uses is the commands of those He places in authority. To that end, we must pray for godly rulers who will wield the authority God gives them to reform a very corrupt and godless society. Kings have led great moral reforms in the past. And they will do so once again."

Pastor Isker as so often happens mischaracterizes the meaning of a bit of folk wisdom.  The saying that you can't legislate morality means you can change the law but it won't change people's hearts.  "What evil lurks in the hearts of men, the shadow knows".

Prohibition is a good example.  There is no denying that alcohol abuse was causing a great deal of misery at the beginning of the 20th century.  It was especially causing a lot of misery for women who were still dependent on drunken males.  As soon as suffrage was universal "church" women did something about it.  In the end because it was an unenforceable law all it did was corrupt every level of law enforcement and government and turned cities into hellscapes of gang violence.  What had not changed was the "hearts of men".

It is self-evident that laws should be moral but the law is amoral because morality can only exist at the individual level where freewill exists.  The law has no will of its own, no responsibility, no independent agency, and can't be punished for irresponsibility.

The problem with the perspective that the clergy such as Pastor Isker have is that they are arguing from a position of authority.  They know god's law and they are here to enforce it.  They forget one of the fundamental teachings of Christianity "give to Caesar what is Caesar's and to god what is god's".  People in the modern world forget that there was no separation between philosophy and religion in the ancient world.  From a secular point of view Christianity is a philosophy of how to live.  It is an egalitarian philosophy in which everyone is equal before God where the poor will inherit the earth.  It is a philosophy that is hard to understand because it is so far removed in time and culture.  The meaning of "give to Caesar what is Caesar's and and to god what is god's"  is you can't fight Rome with the sword you fight it by changing the hearts and minds of people one at a time without reference to social status.  A philosophy you may note was hated by the authorities of the Jewish establishment more than the Romans at first.

What is so powerful about Christianity is that it is based on freewill.  To be saved all you have to do is accept god of your own freewill independent of reward.  You can't get to heaven on go works alone because you can't resolve yourself of original sin.  What is original sin? that would be the knowledge of good and evil.  The loss of innocents and the necessity of responsibility.  Responsibility that can only exist if freewill is present.

Modern people of high intelligence foolishly assume that Christianity is just superstition without any philosophical legitimacy.  Even Christian often turn elsewhere when the topic is philosophy.  In their hubris they forget they are the product of thousands of generations of cultural evolution.  Those things that over time have proven to make civilization workable.  That is especially true today as determinism has become the dominant philosophical stance.

Our religious leaders make the same mistake that secular authorities make.  They see the world through a deterministic perspective.  They become obsessed with the law and forget the role of freewill.  They come to think of themselves as the law forgetting their role is to free people from the shackles of determinism to accept god of their own freewill.

Moral people will pass moral laws but moral laws will not restrain the immoral.  The abstraction of civilization is only possible through the abstraction of freewill.  No freewill, no agency, no human dignity, no Morality.  I used the example of prohibition earlier and it is fitting at the end as well.  What makes alcohol evil?  the removal of agency and the enslavement of the will.  The difference between a "good" alcoholic and a "bad" alcoholic is that the good alcoholic retains their freewill and responsibility.  What is the difference between a "good" authoritarian and a "bad" authoritarian? the good authoritarian does not become a slave to authority but freely accepts that their responsibility is to all the members of society, the populus, the only legitimate source of authority.

The first rule of law making should be that no law should be passed that is not enforceable by the will of the population.  That may seem at first to not be a pragmatic rule.  Keep in mind though that the only thing that makes any law enforceable is the morality of the populus.  The authoritarian nature of the Soviet Union, Nazi Germany, etc. demonstrate that illegitimate morality collapses civilization.  We can turn to the history of civilization to see what legitimate morality looks like.  Those aspects of virtue that have evolved cross culturally. For Western civilization virtue is best defined by the ideas of Christian philosophers.  They are as follows:Chastity or Purity and abstinence as opposed to lust or Luxuria. Temperance or Humanity, equanimity as opposed to Gluttony or Gula. Charity or Will, benevolence, generosity, sacrifice as opposed to Greed or Avaritia. Diligence or Persistence, effortfulness, ethics as opposed to Sloth or Acedia. Patience or Forgiveness, mercy as opposed to Wrath or Ira. Kindness or Satisfaction, compassion as opposed to Envy or Invidia. Humility or Bravery, modesty, reverence as opposed to Pride.

Select truly virtuous leaders and you will not have to worry that much about the law.  Never select leaders steeped in determinism including religious leaders.

P.S. To be fair I think Pastor Isker agrees with me. Our difference is mainly over how you get to a society that chooses morality. In a way he has chosen the same route that the secular engineers have chosen. You can't do it through a top down process because of complexity. It has to be a bottom up process that mimics evolution. Yes you can change the environment and that will have some effect but it will be highly unpredictable. You do it the old fashion way one person at a time. I understand we may not have the time to do that. We may have to give to Caesar what is god's. A kind of compromise of principles. We may have to accept the weight of that sin.