You can't legislate morality...

is a rather silly statement.

All laws are passed to enforce someone's concept of morality, including such seemly inconsequential things as protecting the spotted owl.   Because, you see, to someone it's immoral not to make sure these birds have a long and healthy life.

That's what makes Roe v Wade bad law.  We all agree that under normal circumstances it's immoral to kill another human being.   Yet this law ignores basic reasoning to declare that a woman has a "right to choose" to commit murder in the interests of her privacy.  The real problem arises because when a bad law such as this hangs around long enough it subverts moral thinking in the citizens.  Slowly but surely, the immoral becomes moral in the culture of a society.  This is why we now encounter the arguments for euthanizing old or sick people when it shouldn't even be a topic for conversation. 

The choice facing the citizens is whose moral code are you willing to follow?

“I love it when the Left, and the president, says, ‘Don’t try to impose your values on us, you folks who hold your Bibles in your hand and cling to your guns."  “It’s equally imposing values.   It’s just in their world, if it’s Biblically based or religiously based, it’s out.  If it’s anything else, bring it on.” Rick Santorum  source

Why we can’t not legislate morality

“You can’t legislate morality” has become a common turn of phrase. The truth, however, is that every law and regulation that is proposed, passed, and enforced has inherent in it some idea of the good that it seeks to promote or preserve. Indeed, no governing authority can in any way be understood to be morally neutral. Those who think such a chimerical understanding is possible could hardly be more wrong. For, in fact, the opposite is true: You cannot not legislate morality.

It is of course true that some laws will be better conceived than others, and many may fail entirely to achieve their purpose. But that they have a purpose, and that the purpose includes at least an implicit moral element, is incontrovertible. One need only ask of any law or action of government, “What is the law for?” The answer at some point will include a conception of what is good for the community in which the law holds. The inversion of the question makes the point even more clearly. What would provide a rationale for a law or governmental action apart from a moral purpose? read the rest and ponder