"You can't legislate morality." Oh really?

Along the lines of dealing with challenges to our Christian faith and morality, let me start with a very simple example.

How many times have you heard this: "You can't legislate morality"?

Sounds good, doesn't it. As long as you don't really think about it. But what if you do think about it for a second?

Of course you can legislate morality. What about our laws against theft, murder, defamation, fraud, etc. Aren't those legislating morality? Of course they are! You should not murder. You should not steal. These are moral statements. I.e. you should not do them because they are wrong. Wrong is a moral judgment. I would venture to say that most of our laws are based on moral judgments.

So, there's a simple one. It's amazing what a little bit of thinking can do. :-) Given the silliness of this statement, let's lead the charge of pointing out its silliness and getting it out of our faith and morality discussions.