When I talk of moral help, I am referring to programs designed to help people to be better people, as opposed to financially better off. While there can be some overlap such as with education, but here I am referring to programs which deal with non-financial morality. Examples of this would be anti-drug laws and programs or things like sex education. Some public decency laws and the like would also fall into this category.
The moral issue is far more complicated than the financial one because there are several factors at play when it comes to morality. Some moral issues are beneficial to society. A clear example of this is a prohibition against murder. Other moral issues have less clear benefit to society, such as a prohibition against abortion. It is further complicated by the fact that society does not have a unified moral code, but rather has a large variety of moral codes which mostly overlap in a few major areas. While many laws are based on some aspect of a moral code their intent is rarely focused on the individual, but rather on the protection of society as a whole.
So when looking to provide moral assistance to someone, then, there are two important questions to look at. First, there is the question, as with financial help, of how much help is beneficial. Second, there is the question of which moral code to use.
Let us begin with the first question and look at one of the larger examples of moral law in US history: Prohibition. In 1920 the US nationally banned the sale, manufacture, transportation, and consumption of alcohol. Those who supported prohibition did so for both individual and societal reasons. Religious groups were split on the issue, but there were many who saw drinking as a sin and wanted the law to help prevent people from doing so. The vast majority, however, supported prohibition because they believed it would have six primary effects: reduction of crime, protection of families(from effects of alcohol abusers), reduced drunkenness, reduces cases of insanity, reduced government cost (primarily through crime reduction), and a greater general respect for the law. It was inarguable that alcohol had negative effects on all of those areas. Alcohol was at the center of a great deal of lawless behavior and caused many societal problems. What they didn't realize was that the problems created by banning alcohol were far worse.
The years of prohibition in the US showed that banning alcohol was not only worse for society overall, but it was worse in all six areas that it was intended to improve. Though there were many positive effects to prohibition, they were greatly overshadowed by the negatives. Overall alcohol consumption declined. It was the moderate alcohol consumption which disappeared rather than the excessive drinking which was the source of problems. Excessive drinking actually increased. Crime actually increased due to the creation of a vast black market in alcohol and the violence between gangs which came with fighting for control of that market. Government spending was greatly increased in an attempt to deal with the gangs. Because of the clear ineffectiveness of the government to enforce the law, and the growing unpopularity of the law as it failed to have positive effects, respect for the law greatly decreased. In the end the attempts to help improve society with a moral and very popular law proved to be harmful and lead to a less moral society.
That one case certainly doesn't invalidate all attempts to use government to help people morally, but it does show that there can be harmful unintended consequences to the attempts to do so. Any law compelling moral behavior limits personal freedom, which means it comes with a high cost. In many cases that cost is justified. There is nearly universal support for laws against murder, assault, theft, fraud, and the like. These are laws which agree with nearly everyone's moral code and which consequently have clearly seen benefits to society by most people.
In other cases it is less clear. Take, for example, sex. There are two aspects to government involvement in sex laws and sex education. First there is an interest in protecting society. There are problems with sexual predation or teens and children, unwanted pregnancies, and disease which almost all people agree are damaging to society. Laws and programs designed to eliminate these problems are typically popular as long as they are not too extreme.
Some people wish to take the issue further. Most of the population believes that teenagers, especially those under 18 should not have sex. There is a pretty wide range on how strongly people feel about the issue and many who agree that that teenage sex is a bad idea don't support any action taken to limit it. Aside from laws which are designed to prevent adults from taking advantage of teenagers, there has not been much legal action to address the problem. Instead the focus has mostly been on sex education and subsidized birth control and disease prevention.
It is here that there is a pretty strong divide. On one side people argue that providing teenagers with condoms and other devices used to prevent disease and pregnancy will lead to an increase in teenage sexual activity. This is probably true, however, the greatest increase will be in the more responsible sex and it will result in a decline of unprotected sex. So you have both desirable and undesirable outcomes. This is further complicated by the fact that birth control and disease prevention are not completely effective. Even responsible sex leads to the outcomes society is attempting to prevent.
This goes to the other argument which is that sex should not be promoted among teenagers by supplying them with what they need to have sex more responsibly. This is mostly supported more strongly by those who believe that teenage sex is always irresponsible. They argue that there is an emotional toll on people who engage in sexual activity at an early age and that teenagers should be protected from making such harmful decisions. This is much the same rational as is used for laws against alcohol and tobacco for teens and children.
What we have is that overall teenage sex is leads to a number of problems. There are many things which can be done to reduce the problems created, but these same actions will also result in an overall increase. At the same time, strong discouragement can drive the more responsible to act less responsibly if they have limited access. In many ways this is similar to the alcohol situation, though there are certainly some significant differences. Still, you are faces with some of the same challenges. Does reducing the overall activity result in greater or less harm than does increasing the activity and reducing the harm per incident?
The real problem is that there is great disagreement on how harmful different aspects are with the greatest disagreement on the amount of harm caused by any teenage sex, which is why you have such a difference of public opinion. There are many who believe that responsible teenage sex is not a problem at all, so increasing total activity, if you decrease irresponsible activity is a good thing. On the other side you have those who believe there is still great harm in responsible teenage sex, so increasing the total to increase responsibility is not a good thing. Most people fall between the two positions believing that teenage sex is somewhat bad and that responsible teenage sex is less bad.
The result is that there is great disagreement on which path is better, which is largely why there has been little activity in attempting to pass laws in the area and instead the focus is on education and subsidizing programs.
My personal belief is that teenagers should not be having sex, I think that there is great harm to them in doing so. Ultimately, however, it is their choice and while I agree that they are often not yet responsible enough to make that choice wisely, limiting their options is not a good idea. I strongly support teaching that abstinence is the best way, but I also believe you should teach teenagers who choose to have sex how to do so more responsibly. I realize that will probably lead to greater choices which I think are harmful, but it will also reduce the most harmful ones. Finally, as much as I would like to protect young adults from making decisions which have such consequences, I don't want to use ignorance to do so. The truth is that while they may not be prepared to make such decisions wisely, they are the ones who have to make the decision. I believe we should do everything we can to help them make a better decision, even if that means fewer blindly choose to make the best one.
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