The Purpose of the US Constitution is to Legislate Morality

1. Morality cannot be determined by legislationWhat is morally right and wrong is not determined by what is legislated. Some believe that morality is determined by God. Many of the Founders were Deists who believed morality is determined by human nature. No thinking person, least of all the writers of the Constitution, believes it is possible to determine morality by legislation. Because he impossibility is so well accepted, it is not plausible that the purpose of the Constitution was to legislate morality. The resolution is dead on arrival.One may argue that "legislate morality" doesn't mean to "define what is moral" but rather that what is legislated in the Constitution is supposed to conform with morality, to "legislate morally." That, however, is not a purpose, it is a constraint. Consider "The purpose of airplane design is gravity." No, the purpose of airplane design is to accomplish a useful purpose, flying, within the constraints imposed by gravity. The purpose of the Constitution is to accomplish a useful purpose, government, under the constraints of morality. The purpose of the Constitution is given in the Preamble: "We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America." With the arguable exception of "establish Justice," those are practical goals, not moral goals. The purpose of establishing justice, however, does not determine what is just. It only organizes a system to accomplish that ultimate purpose. Theocratic and ideological countries have the purpose of enforcing morality, but the US does not.2. The main purpose of the Constitution is provide organizational structureA simple example of a law that does not determine morality is: "Cars shall drive on the right side of the road." The purpose is purely practical, and enacting the law does not imply that right-hand driving is morally superior to left-hand driving. The Constitution mandates that each state shall have two Senators. That does not imply that having one or three or four would be immoral. The purpose is purely practical. It fair to say that having elective office rather than, say, a nobility, reflects a moral judgement in favor of democracy, but that again is a constraint, not a defining purpose.Pro's definition of morality is inadequate. We can say that a "good" design for an airplane is one that flies efficiently, and that a "bad" design is one that fails to fly efficiently. In that context "good" means "suitable to achieving a purpose." Similarly, we can say a "good" design for a government has three branches with checks and balances, but the measure of it's being good is that it "promotes the general welfare," and so forth. 3. Moral behaviors are generally not prescribedSuppose that anarchy became immensely popular. If the Constitution is legislating morality, we would expect to have to repeal large sections of it to get the government out of the business of legislating morality. But such is not the case. The Constitution sets up a legislature, but it does not require that the legislature pass any moral laws. With no legislation to enforce, the executive would have nothing to do. Without laws to be violated, the judiciary would have no cases to judge. Therefore, morality was not legislated by the Constitution. The Bill of Rights reflects moral standards, but it does so by prohibiting government from legislating in ways that infringe personal rights. A government that does not legislate at all will not have acted to infringe rights. There are government-mandated actions in the Constitution, such as conducting a census every decade and conducting elections according to certain rules. But such requirements are not for the purposes of morality; their purpose is practical.