Law and Morality
Law is written by people, usually upperclass men. It's nominally or ideally an attempt to codify means to enforce morality and say, in short, "No, you don't get to willy nilly hurt people and see no meaningful negative consequences."
In some sense, I'm not interested in morality because I'm not really a judgy bitch like people think I am. I'm interested in a certain kind of social analysis and curious about how, when and why different solutions sometimes work in different contexts.
Most cultures the world over nominally place a high value on monogamy and then handle the details of it differently, with different outcomes. All have some exceptions which typically boil down to an explicit tolerance for men having more than one lover.
This is fostered by men serving as soldiers and working in dangerous jobs, so the older you get, the more women outnumber men. It's also fostered by women being willing to share a good man rather than endure a bad one.
But in some sense the crux of morality boils down to "How do we do x -- get laid or meet our material needs -- without shafting other people to do it?" So in some sense, authentic morality is my entire interest.
Not just "Let's hang people high for breaking the rules in the current context." But why do we have those rules? Are they serving us well? What happens as society changes?
And it's always changing. This makes best practices both a moving target and a mixed bag.
"Mixed bag" because ideally you should honor the rights of, say, older women who played by the rules and social expectations that were in force when they made a decision to marry, have kids and support the husband's career without actively encouraging young women to imagine that translates to "We like and want to grow more parasitic women called gold digging whores!"
Because historically women not only had sex with the husband and had children by them, they raised those children, personally made sure they did well in school, cooked and cleaned and helped their husband succeed at his career. And today we have enough very well paid jobs that if you are a woman who is lazy and has no ethics, you can potentially marry well, order take out, hire a maid, have a nanny, get a tutor if the kids aren't doing well in school or simply punish them and act like they need to try harder and not really do fuck all to meaningfully contribute to his success or their success while living in the lap of luxury.
If a married woman is, say, getting work via sexual favors and men only want a go at her because of to whom she's married while she doesn't cook or clean or really raise her own children, she's a net negative for society big time.
When it comes to things that end up in the courts, there's a few patterns you need to be aware of and try to figure out which one this case fits.
1. Sometimes you have educated privileged people intentionally breaking laws they feel are morally abhorrent.
It was student protestors in Iran who sought to throw the US out and overthrow the Shah who was a puppet of the US government.
2. Very privileged often more wealthy than highly educated people who grew up with daddy bailing them or making a phone call who feel the rules don't really apply to them.
They are typically breaking the rules for personal gain not some larger social cause. See also: Our current penal system is a joke.
3. Under privileged people doing the best they can and being screwed by the system.
One study found that poor high school kids in bad neighborhoods out on the street after the start of school we're typically just running late. Maybe they overslept because they are working while going to school because they are poor and trying to make a better life.
Nonetheless some jurisdictions pass laws making it a crime for them to be caught on the street after school starts, which means now they can break the law to try to make it to school or just miss the day entirely knowing they automatically flunk you if you miss too many days.
4. Under privileged people who are sort of the poor person version of number two: They are bitter, know the odds and law are stacked against them and the law has been written by upper class people who neither understand nor really care what their situation is like.
They've given up on trying to have ethics because they feel only a chump has ethics. They see rich people in category two above intentionally being awful people and everyone knows they are awful and some of them are chronically in the news for being awful and some see no meaningful consequences while we all watch them continue to openly flaut the rules and flaunt their lavish lives where they get rich for being immoral criminal scum and the courts lecture and fine them at worst.
Rich people like that openly call such fines "the cost of doing business." And not because the system is so broken no good guys can make a buck but because if they make a billion dollars being a horrible person and get harsh language and a million dollar fine for it, this is a JOKE and they are laughing all the way to the bank.
I don't really know good ways to deal with category four. But category three can frequently be relatively easily addressed by making sane rules and getting them practical help.
I don't know how much categories two and four are just "born that way" and any excuse will do for their intentionally shitty behavior.
People in category one sometimes are genuinely righteous people doing good but sometimes need therapy and need to go try to make their lives work. Some people have a hero complex and want to do something incredible to feel good about themselves.
Some people in category two are trying to pretend they are in category one. Very much watch out for people painting themselves as the hero. They may be doing bad things and then covering it up with heroics or doing bad things with plausible deniability to facilitate playing hero.
Those tend to generally be patterns for men. Most women make most of their money via whom they are sleeping with.
If it's a woman, her financial interest is usually tied up with some man. You should wonder if she's boinking the boss, covering up her husband's crimes or similar.
If she's nominally a dirt poor single mom providing for multiple children and grandchildren with a part-time entry-level job, maybe wonder why and how. Good guesses include she's molesting the kids and committing financial crimes to facilitate that by keeping them living with her or prostituting them to pay her bills.
And it bothers me to say that because I'm a poor single mom whose adult sons still live with me. Because two of us have the same condition and the third is a carrier and this is the highest high road answer available to us and it is getting us healthier when that's not supposed to be possible.
I am arguably very straight and narrow because no one believes my medical story. I don't want to have to explain it to law enforcement knowing fact is stranger than fiction and probably won't be believed.
But I'm definitely a statistical outlier. It's more common for women to feel forced to choose between her children and a roof over her head.
When I was homeless in San Diego, I knew a woman of color who had to cut ties with her when he turned 18 as the only means to get either of them help from a system that acts like poor people should be treated as independent adults capable of standing on their own two feet the minute they turn eighteen while Obamacare implicitly recognizes that a high percentage of middle class kids still live with mom and dad until age 26 and need health coverage through their parents because they defacto remain dependents though they are no longer minors.