Robert George on Public Morality

Many of us have blogged and written about the question, "to what extent should the law embody and enforce morality?"  Now available over at First Things is Robert George's recent essay, "Public Morality, Public Reason."  (This might be worth reading in conjunction with the recent Skeel / Stuntz paper on legal moralism, "Christianity and the (Modest) Rule of Law.)  The conclusion:

[F]rom the Catholic vantage point, there is something scandalous in the effort of theorists such as Rawls and Habermas to remove such issues from public debate by arbitrarily restricting reasons on one side of the debate over the nature, dignity, and destiny of the human person. There is nothing “liberal,” “democratic,” “reasonable,” “moral,” or “ethical” about that.