The Moral Dilemma of Modern America

How the culture clash reflects basic differences in moral attitudes

Copyright © 2025 by Richard Smoley

The culture wars in the present-day United States have reached such a pitch that the nation seems more divided than at any time since the Civil War. In that case, the cause was clear: slavery. But there is no unique overriding cause for present culture clashes.

The furor suggests that what is going on is different from what is normally believed. The two sides may be broadly called the liberals and the conservatives—however little their positions may have to do with the original meaning of those terms.

The most prominent cultural areas where the two sides clash have to do with sexuality. In the first place, there is dispute of what kind of sexual behavior—and sexual identity—is or is not morally permissible. In the second place, there is conflict over the consequences of sexual behavior—notably abortion. Attitudes toward both of these issues point to fundamental differences in moral thinking.

There are very few universal moral principles. They can be summed up in a verse from the Gospels: “Do not commit adultery, Do not kill, Do not steal, Do not bear false witness, Defraud not, Honour thy father and mother” (Mark 10:19). It would be difficult to find a society—even ostensibly secular ones, like those of the modern West—that did not adhere to these principles in some fairly familiar form, whether or not that society has anything to do with the Judeo-Christian tradition.

Beyond these principles, moral conventions vary widely. As the twentieth-century Greco-Armenian philosopher G.I. Gurdjieff said, “What is moral in Petersburg is immoral in the Caucasus. And what is immoral in the Caucasus is moral in Petersburg.” Both Christianity and Islam adhere to the basic moral maxims I have set out above, but beyond that there are many discrepancies. A Christian can drink wine but can have only one wife. A Muslim cannot drink wine but can have four wives.

The present cultural conflict in the United States is partly due to enormous differences between different sectors of the populace—based on race, religion, region, social class, and so on—but these differences also have to do with different approaches to moral thinking.

There is not much discussion in the general culture about moral thinking. Even so, moral philosophy can illuminate these clashes remarkably well.

Present-day moral philosophy can be broadly broken down into two major approaches: consequentialism and deontology. Each approach has had an enormous literature devoted to it. The terms are almost unknown to the general public, but they illustrate the major approaches to moral reasoning that apply today.

<A>Morality by Consequences</A>

Consequentialism judges moral behavior by consequences. If an action hurts someone, it is bad; if it hurts no one, it is unobjectionable. Present-day consequentialism can be traced back to nineteenth-century British philosophy, notably the utilitarianism of Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill. It is frequently summed up in the maxim “The greatest good for the greatest number.” Although this idea is simplistic, it does reflect the highly quantifiable nature of consequentialist morality. Indeed Bentham devised a “felicific calculus” whereby the consequences of acts are judged principally by “intensity,” “duration,” “certainty or uncertainty,” and “propinquity or remoteness.” Moreover, the criteria are simply pain or pleasure (a view called hedonism, in a sense different from common usage). Mill widened the terrain to “higher pleasures” such as aesthetic and spiritual gratification and the pleasures of the intellect, which he considered superior to simple pain and pleasure.

Mill developed utilitarian thought in his book On Liberty—by which he principally meant the liberty of the individual as opposed to political liberty. Mill writes:

The sole end for which mankind are warranted, individually or collectively, in interfering with the liberty of action of any of their number, is self-protection. That the only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others. His own good, either physical or moral, is not a sufficient warrant. He cannot rightfully be compelled to do or forbear because it will be better for him to do so, because it will make him happier, because, in the opinions of others, to do so would be wise, or even right. These are good reasons for remonstrating with him, or reasoning with him, or persuading him, or entreating him, but not for compelling him, or visiting him with any evil in case he do otherwise.

Mill also insisted that the individual must be protected from the “tyranny of the majority.”

This may sound reasonable to us, but it ran at variance with the moral thinking of Victorian England. Mill tells us, “In England, from the peculiar circumstances of our political history, though the yoke of opinion is perhaps heavier, that of law is lighter, than in most other countries of Europe.” Anyone who has read any Victorian fiction, where “respectability” is guarded regardless of cost to financial security, comfort, loved ones, or personal happiness, will understand what Mill meant.

Mill’s views, though influential, took several generations before they were really put into effect in British society. Until 1967, homosexual behavior was an offense for which people could be, and often were, prosecuted and punished in the UK. But in consequentialist thinking, homosexual behavior is unexceptionable if it is carried out between consenting adults (no rape, no child abuse), and little by little Western society came to agree. At this point, gay marriage is valid and binding throughout the United States, and openly gay people are in many prominent positions.

<A>Kant’s Moral Law</A>

We can now turn to consequentialism’s opposite: deontology. The term comes from the Greek dei—“it is necessary”—and it refers to moral thinking by which certain precepts and principles are absolute and must be adhered to apart from consequences. The classic deontological position was framed in the moral philosophy of Immanuel Kant, notably his “categorical imperative,” which he initially framed thus: “Act only in accordance with that maxim through which you can at the same time will that it become a universal law.”

The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy comments, “Kant holds that the fundamental principle of our moral duties is a categorical imperative. It is an imperative because it is a command addressed to agents who could follow it but might not (e.g., ‘Leave the gun. Take the cannoli.’). It is categorical in virtue of applying to us unconditionally, or simply because we possess rational wills, without reference to any ends that we might or might not have.”

Now we can see why deontology is opposed to consequentialism: for the former, a moral principle is to be adhered to “without reference to any ends that we might or might not have.” Pleasure and pain, the greatest good for the greatest number—none of that applies.

The encyclopedia article continues: “In Kant’s terms, a good will is a will whose decisions are wholly determined by moral demands or, as he often refers to this, by the Moral Law. Human beings inevitably feel this Law as a constraint on their natural desires, which is why such Laws, as applied to human beings, are imperatives and duties. A human will in which the Moral Law is decisive is motivated by the thought of duty.”

This brief sketch of these two perspectives can be illustrated by the hypothetical moral dilemmas that are so beloved of philosophers. Say there is a hospital in which five individuals are dying and in need of organ transplants. There is another patient, who is not fatally ill, who could supply organs to all of the five—at the cost, of course, of his own life. What would an ethical doctor do?

A consequentialist could reason that the benefit to five individuals outweighs the disadvantage to the sixth (death being generally reckoned a major disadvantage). So he might carve up patient six. Deontologists would object to treating patient six as a mere means to an end; furthermore, they would reason, it is never right for a doctor to kill a patient. (Note that these hypothetical situations, however fascinating, bear almost no relation to what someone might do in those actual conditions.)

Deontology, as I have expressed it above, is a rather abstruse doctrine, and there are probably few people who follow it in a purely philosophical form. Indeed deontology would be merely a matter of technical interest if it were not for one major fact: the typical deontologist acts, not from Kant’s categorical imperative, but a categorical imperative of quite another kind: the decrees, real or imagined, of God.

In Western Christianity, the decrees of God are expressed in the Bible and, for Catholics, by the decrees of their church. These categorical imperatives dictate the moral thinking of much of the American populace.

See how this plays out in regard to homosexuality. The consequentialist sees no objection to two men frolicking in a bedroom: nobody is suffering, and they are ostensibly enjoying themselves. For the religious deontologist, this is utterly irrelevant, because God has spoken. In the Old Testament: “If a man also lie with mankind, as he lieth with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination: they shall surely be put to death” (Leviticus 20:13). Paul in the New Testament is milder, but with the same import: “Know ye not that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God? Be not deceived: neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor abusers of themselves with mankind . . . shall inherit the kingdom of God” (1 Corinthians 6:9‒10). “Abusers of themselves with mankind” translates the Greek arsenokoitai: literally, “men who sleep with men.” Although this word is extremely rare, its meaning is clear: Liddell & Scott’s standard Greek lexicon translates it as “sodomite.”

Liberal theologians sometimes try to evade these condemnations with various absurdities (such as claiming, against all evidence, that homosexuality as such did not exist in the ancient world), but there is no getting around the facts.

There you have it: for the consequentialist, homosexual behavior is neutral or positive in that it provides pleasure for the participants and can and does exist in loving relationships. For the biblical deontologist, it is forbidden by the Almighty, and that is that. Nor is this latter individual likely to have more positive attitudes towards others whose identities fit under the rubric LGBTQ+. Now we can see why social attitudes toward homosexuality (and other variations in sexual practice and identity) are so deeply cloven.

<A>Abortion</A>

Abortion is a similar issue. Here the situation is somewhat different, because unlike homosexuality, abortion is never condemned in the Bible—in either testament. In Exodus 21:22, we find this peculiar statute: “If men strive, and hurt a woman with child, so that her fruit depart from her, and yet no mischief follow: he shall be surely punished according as the woman’s husband may lay upon him: and he shall pay as the judges determine.”

This statute deals with an extremely specialized case: two men are fighting and (accidentally, we may assume) hit a woman so that she miscarries. Punishment is certainly due, but the matter is treated not as a crime (unlike murder per se) but as a tort. The husband, who has lost an unborn child, is due compensation, but the one who causes the loss of the fetus is not to be put to death.

This is as far as the Bible goes in talking about abortion. The New Testament does not mention it at all. In his article “Teaching Abortion in Bible and Religious Studies Courses,” Eric J. Harvey observes, “Biblical literature says very little about abortion, and what it does say is neither clear nor relevant to our modern social and political concerns.” Nevertheless, evangelical Protestants, whose moral use of the Bible is often uneven and capricious, claim that it forbids abortion.

With Catholicism it is another story, because the Catholic church has long forbidden and does forbid abortion—and the Catholic church claims an authority for itself on a par with Scripture. Abortion is certainly against Catholic teaching, but there are many things that are against Catholic teaching that are not and ought not to be illegal.

The oldest condemnation of abortion I can find in the Christian tradition appears in a text called the Didache, the “Teaching of the Twelve Apostles,” usually dated to the first quarter of the second century AD. It says, “Commit no murder, adultery, sodomy, fornication, or theft. Practice no magic, sorcery, abortion, or infanticide.” A similar injunction appears in the more or less contemporaneous Epistle of Barnabas. But the Didache is not in the Bible and has never enjoyed any widespread authority. In fact, it was lost and forgotten for centuries until a copy of the text was discovered in 1873. The pseudonymous Epistle of Barnabas was regarded as scripture by some early Christians, but none have done so since the fourth century.

Again, we can contrast consequentialism with deontology. The consequentialist sees a pregnant woman—often poor, unwed, with no resources—and decides that the greatest benefit to her would be to have an abortion. The benefit in a way extends to the child, because an unwanted and neglected child is sure to suffer misery from day one. But for the religious deontologist, God (somewhere or another) has forbidden abortion, so it is not only unethical but should be illegal, regardless of the consequences to the woman, her child, or society at large. The old Roman adage applies: Fiat iustitia, ruat coelum: “Let justice be done even though the heavens fall.”

The above discussion clarifies many of the moral assumptions that underlay current cultural clashes, but it does not solve them. Note that most of current deontology is religiously based: I do not know of anyone who is opposed to abortion as a legal act other than those who are arguing for implicitly religious reasons. Since the majority of Americans are neither Catholics nor evangelical Protestants, banning abortion is essentially making a secular authority—the United States government at one level or another—enforce the moral attitudes of certain religious groups. One could object to antiabortion measures, if nothing else, as violations of the constitutional rights of Americans to religious freedom. Sometimes this argument is used in the abortion debate, although surprisingly infrequently.

<A>The Genealogy of Morals</A>

Let me return to a point made at the beginning of this article. Certain moral codes are both simple and more or less universal: condemnations of murder, deceit, adultery, and theft are prominent among them. Where did they come from? Who laid down these laws? Were they, as some suggest, handed down by the gods at an early and remote point in human history?

One could argue thus (and some have), but it requires granting a lot of assumptions that one may not want to grant, such as the existence of God or gods, as well as their interaction with the human race at an early point in its history. I think it is more sensible to suppose that over tens if not hundreds of thousands of years, the human race has found these moral principles to be essential to a functioning society. They constitute tradition in the sense that they have been handed down from generation to generation as practical solutions to living in a human community. Long experience has shown their validity, and the wisdom literature of practically every culture has warned about the dangers of violating them.

Nevertheless, these basic moral principles do not give any real answers to the issues of homosexuality and abortion, since attitudes toward these practices vary wildly from culture to culture and from age to age: what is moral in Petersburg is immoral in the Caucasus. The Catholic claim that abortion is murder is not supported in this way: abortion is not universally equated with murder, and as we are learning in the present time, there are important reasons for differentiating the two.

As a result, we are thrown back to our own judgment, which will almost certainly be dictated by one of the two moral positions I have described above.

Moral reasoning of the kind I have attempted in this article is useful for clarifying one’s own views, but perhaps one should not expect too much of it. Philosophical discussions rarely change fundamental attitudes toward moral questions. If anything, they illustrate how easy it is for anyone to adhere to moral teachings that may be mutually inconsistent—even when those inconsistencies have been pointed out. That is because morality has been inculcated in us at a very deep level from a very early age: it is a major part of what psychologist Charles Tart calls the “consensus trance” of the human race. As such it often inculcates moral imperatives that are completely inconsistent (“Love thy neighbor” and “a man who lieth with a man should be put to death”). Awakening to this trance—and sorting out a truer and more authentic moral position for ourselves—is only possible to the degree that we understand how much we are subject to our own inner contradictions.