The Blind Eye of Moral Authority

Recently, Kathleen Sebelius, the Secretary of Heath and Human Services, overruled the FDA's decision to make Plan B available over the counter.  The FDA finally made a decision based on available science, which is medically sound; so it is overruled by Health and Human Services...

A morality that is not consistently applied is imperfect, to say the very least.   People who claim the moral authority to impose upon the powerless a moral code while failing to live by the same moral code themselves; are amoral.  Evidence of a supposed moral authority's amoral nature becomes manifest when self-appointed moral authorities justify failure to live by a moral code when doing so would mean a loss of money, power, privilege or prestige.   Self-appointed moral authoritarians who claim their authority is derived from their religious faith and claim they are acting on a moral imperative, need to first remove the plank that clouds their own vision; then lead by example.

Separation of Church and State does not permit the 'faithful' to impose their religious beliefs upon others.  When does religious belief grant the believer such authority or power?   It doesn't.  It is not piety, it is fanaticism that leads people to act as if religious beliefs bestow power and moral authority.



Photo by Nuno Rebelo