By T.J. Ray
Columnist
Right, wrong, good, and bad are adjectives one hears constantly these days. Probably
just as frequently in times past! One of the aspects of this quartet’s usage involves the
code of conduct by which the judgment is rendered.
Codes (rules) that we live by: etiquette, religious, legal. Acts that may elicit one
of the four labels are sometimes ill defined. The person making such a judgment may
be someone of a different group than the speaker. And if the person being corrected is
from a different gang, the rules may be irrelevant. Nowadays any group can operate
with its own set of guidelines: male, female, young, old, Christian, Muslim, people of
different color, Yankees, Southerners. Well, you get the idea. Each group, knowingly
or unknowingly, follow their code.
The difficulty in society is that conditions and codes undergo change over time.
For instance, in high school, I had a teacher who drilled us on good manners. Such
things as who goes through a door first, who gets introduced to whom, whom to stand
up for when they enter a room. Time has blurred such niceties, as is seen today when
no one seems to wait on anyone to enter a place ahead of others. The exception is that
many younger folks will wait for an old gray-hair to go first, even when the old guy is
holding a door open for the lady or ladies. Oh, to have Emily Post back!
Religious codes are problematic. I well recall some human activities that my
Sunday School teachers schooled us on that are no longer no-no’s in current life. And
some real juggling is done with the words of a holy book to except or include various
acts. Religion and science seem to clash these days in the matter of sexual
identification. And with that are the issues relating to how members of each sex may
interact with the opposite. In the meantime, society wrestles with gender issues, even
to deciding which people can be in which sports competitions. And the Archbishop of
Canterbury has announced that bishops who have wives may not bring their spouses to
a major conference this year.
And there is evidence that attitudes can do a 180 on their adherents. For
instance, about 1920 laws prohibited the manufacture or sale of alcoholic drinks. But
then prohibition was scrubbed by the President in 1933, and to celebrate such a
significant occasion, New Beer Day was declared on April 7. Without doubt the
passionate members of the Women’s Christian Temperances Union were angry about
this. Now one wonders when that organization disappeared.
Perhaps the most far reaching code, of course, is the legal one. One might
expect (at least hope) that laws would be well thought out and uniformly implemented
for all citizens. Ready for a surprise? The foregoing is far from reality! First of all, what
is legal or illegal may change from one Congressional or Legislative session to the next.
(Consider Prohibition.) Now individuals must be wary of which set of legal guidelines
they must follow. What the law is in California may not square with its counterpart in
Georgia. What any particular law is in almost any state may not conform to the national
law. Perhaps the most flagrant illustration of this disagreement among jurisdictions can
be seen in the matter of sanctuary cities, municipalities that decide not to follow the

rules of the federal government. A complicated contradiction is also found when the
religious code a person—say a Senator or Representative—professes requires
disobedience to the U. S. Constitution.
Two random thoughts: Should religious preference enable a parent to refuse to
have a child vaccinated in the face of an outbreak? And what will be the consequence
of the approval for an Air Force JAG officer to wear a hijab in uniform?
Ah, for the good old days when kids made up their own rules for games without
the help of social organizations, the ACLU, or a deity.