Can we legislate modesty? Louisiana state Rep. Derrick Shepherd, D-New Orleans, thought so. Disgusted at seeing the half-draped parading around publicly, he introduced a bill into the state Legislature that would impose up to a $500 fine and possible jail time for those caught wearing fashionable low-slung pants that expose skin and/or underwear.

“I’m sick of seeing it,” Shepherd said. “The community’s outraged. And if parents can’t do their job, if parents can’t regulate what their children wear, then there should be a law.”

I doubt Mr. Shepherd is alone in his sentiments. I certainly join him as one similarly disgusted at the continual carnival of immodesty that so defines our contemporary culture. But the question is, again, can we legislate modesty?

Before we answer that question, we must examine the more fundamental question, should we legislate modesty? Unfortunately, that drives us back even further, to a question yet more fundamental. Assuming that modesty is just one aspect of morality, we must ask: Should we legislate morality?

Alas, we are still not all the way to the bottom of things. Before all of these questions, we must ask: What is law? As we shall find out, here is where the real clash occurs, and it is about far more than low-slung pants.

Let us look at one understanding of law — a very ancient one — the natural law, the foundation of all Catholic moral reasoning.

According to natural law reasoning, prior to any human law is the divine law. This law is not written on a text but into nature. It is a decree made by God in the very act of creation. “This you shall be,” he says to the turtles, and so they follow their own nature. Turtle law. “This you shall be,” he says to the elephants. And behold, elephants must be elephants, and their respective good and evil has thereby been assigned to them. The elephant law.

In regard to human beings, God says, “This you shall be, made in my image, an animal with reason and free will.” The law written into our very being is called the natural law and defines what is good and evil for us by nature. In contrast to turtles and elephants — or gnats and gnus for that matter — the God-like gift of reason and free will means that human beings participate in the God-like activity of making human law.

Human laws, properly speaking, are enactments made by human reason to direct human will toward the perfection of human being, that is, our predetermined good. That is the proper and positive goal of all human law. Human laws also have a negative aspect, forbidding, as far as prudent and possible, those things that turn us away from or against our nature and its true good.

According to this ancient view of law, we may now answer the above questions. Yes, above all things we should legislate morality, because morality is simply the code of our natural perfection. Yes, we should legislate modesty, because sexuality is one especially volatile aspect of our nature and hence an essential part of our morality. Modesty is a sub-virtue of temperance, the virtue that deals with pleasure. The assumption behind modesty is that human sexuality is made for union in marriage. Sexual desire, therefore, is properly cultivated and directed only toward one’s spouse. Immodest clothing casts sexual intimacy indiscriminately in all directions and hence disperses the great gift of sexuality every which way, like so much cheap perfume.

But unfortunately, our society is not defined by this ancient and venerable notion of law. It has chosen another, one that defines law not according to our nature as created by God but simply by human desire itself. This alien view has been summed up best, sad to say, by our Supreme Court in the infamous Planned Parenthood v. Casey decision, which states: “Our obligation is to define the liberty of all, not to mandate our own moral code. … Our law affords constitutional protection to personal decisions relating to marriage, procreation, contraception, family relationships, child rearing and education. … These matters, involving the most intimate and personal choices a person may make in a lifetime, choices central to personal dignity and autonomy, are central to the liberty protected by the Fourteenth Amendment.

“At the heart of liberty is the right to define one’s own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe and of the mystery of human life. Beliefs about these matters could not define the attributes of personhood were they formed under compulsion of the state.”

This is now the controlling view of our judiciary, since it is the controlling view of our Supreme Court. Obviously, it will produce radically different answers to our questions. At the heart of liberty, so defined, is the right to define our own nature (let alone the right to define the entire nature of the universe). As a result, the goal of law is merely to maximize such limitless liberty. For this reason, the law should not mandate moral codes. Since it should not mandate moral codes, then it should not legislate about any moral matters in general and about modesty in particular.

And so given this clash in regard to the view of law in our culture, we turn to the very first question. Can we legislate morality? Probably not, given that the Supreme Court will devour any such attempt. I’m sorry, Mr. Shepherd.

But if we are currently prevented from legislating morality, we Catholics can lead the fight to evangelize morality, and we may begin by evangelizing modesty. This is no small point. We are called to be a witness to the world, and that means that even what we wear is a kind of apology, an argument for the proper ordering of sexuality.

Low-slung pants, far-too-tight shirts and skimpy skirts all proclaim all too loudly and far too clearly the cultural message that sexuality is not a sacred pleasure bound in the sacrament of marriage but rather a profane pleasure unbound and unleashed in any and all directions.

As summer is getting nearer, let us vow to evangelize even by the very clothes we wear. A modest proposal, indeed.

Benjamin Wiker

(www.benjaminwiker.com)

writes from Steubenville, Ohio.