Law and Chastity

In the most recent issue of America, Notre Dame Law professor Robert E. Rodes, Jr. urges those concerned with moral standards in public life to focus on the erosion of respect for chastity as a normative virtue.  Here is a snapshot:

[The] erosion of respect for chastity is not peculiar to the law, nor is the law its principal cause. But of all the social forces affecting the perception of chastity, the law is the only one over which society has significant control. The power of the law as a force of moral persuasion should be exercised toward restoring chastity as a broadly accepted moral standard. The current erosion of respect for chastity has led to a wholesale trivialization of sex in our society. And where sex is trivialized, the human person is trivialized as well.

Read the whole thing here (must be a subscriber).

Professor Rodes does not advocate punishing illicit sex, but rather asserts that the law "can and should encourage those who opt for chastity and offer guidance to those who confront its challenges." 

This seems like a good forum in which to offer suggestions for how the law might do so.