Moral Law and Legislated Morality

Kris Timeraus expresses some similar thoughts as I have when it comes to conviction and politics. Conversation with Phil Lohr last week was on a similar vein. I wanted to bring up the "which pocket is the potician interested in" trope (Republicans want governmental control of your sex, but want to take hands off your wallet, while Democrats want the other way round). Phil expressed, "Isn't law all about legislating morality? Isn't prohibition against Rape essentially legislating an intuitive moral convention?" Hmmm... Then I followed Gideon Strauss to J Budziszewski interviewed at Acton - who basically says the same thing. This is a good challenge to my intuitively liberal thinking. While I have a fairly intuitive objection for the Traditional Marriage movment (Protecting Marriage Ammendment) on the grounds that cultural change occurs in personal conviction and interaction. I cannot get away from Phil's point that there is a legitimate place for the government to leglisate moral convention. Even if that legislation is directional - ie providing a direction for culture to move - even if the culture is not there yet. But what seems to be happening in our culture is that the cultural conventions are moveing so widely apart as to make that legislated convevntion difficult, if not impossible. Christian History recently pointed to the epic victory of christian activism that was prohibition - lasting all of 13 years before it lapsed into laughable irrelevance. Is Traditional Marriage a similar situation? I do believe there is such a complete lack of consensus in our culture - that legislated solutions to the problem will be irrelevant. Does that absolve us from taking action within the situation? Absolutely Not! But I think the actions need to be personal, communal, relational and loving rather than legislative, activist, political and aggressive. But there is still this question - whither natural law?