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Blackstone on the law of nature:

Man, considered as a creature, must necessarily be subject to the laws of his creator, for he is entirely a dependent being. A being, independent of any other, has no rule to pursue, but such as he prescribes to himself; but a state of dependence will inevitably oblige the inferior to take the will of him, on whom he depends, as the rule of his conduct: not indeed in every particular, but in all those points wherein his dependence consists. This principle therefore has more or less extent and effect, in proportion as the superiority of the one and the dependence of the other is greater or less, absolute or limited. And consequently, as man depends absolutely upon his maker for every thing, it is necessary that he should in all points conform to his maker's will.

This will of his maker is called the law of nature. For as God, when he created matter, and endued it with a principle of mobility, established certain rules for the perpetual direction of that motion; so, when he created man, and endued him with freewill to conduct himself in all parts of life, he laid down certain immutable laws of human nature, whereby that freewill is in some degree regulated and restrained, and gave him also the faculty of reason to discover the purport of those laws.

Considering the creator only as a being of infinite power, he was able unquestionably to have prescribed whatever laws he pleased to his creature, man, however unjust or severe. But as be is also a being of infinite wisdom, he has laid down only such laws as were founded in those relations of justice, that existed in the nature of things antecedent to any positive precept. These are the eternal, immutable laws of good and evil, to which the creator himself in all his dispensations conforms; and which he has enabled human reason to discover, so far as they are necessary for the conduct of human actions. Such among others are these principles: that we should live honestly, should hurt nobody, and should render to every one his due; to which three general precepts Justinian[1] has reduced the whole doctrine of law.

But if the discovery of these first principles of the law of nature depended only upon the due exertion of right reason, and could not otherwise be obtained than by a chain of metaphysical disquisitions, mankind would have wanted some inducement to have quickened their inquiries, and the greater part of the world would have rested content in mental indolence, and ignorance it's inseparable companion. As therefore the creator is a being, not only of infinite power, and wisdom, but also of infinite goodness, he has been pleased so to contrive the constitution and frame of humanity, that we should want no other prompter to inquire after and pursue the rule of right, but only our own self-love, that universal principle of action. For he has so intimately connected, so inseparably interwoven the laws of eternal justice with the happiness of each individual, that the latter cannot be attained but by observing the former; and, if the former be punctually obeyed, it cannot but induce the latter. In consequence of which mutual connection of justice and human felicity, he has not perplexed the law of nature with a multitude of abstracted rules and precepts, referring merely to the fitness or unfitness of things, as some have vainly surmised; but has graciously reduced the rule of obedience to this one paternal precept, "that man should pursue his own true and substantial happiness." This is the foundation of what we call ethics, or natural law. For the several articles into which it is branched in our systems, amount to no more than demonstrating, that this or that action tends to man's real happiness, and therefore very justly concluding that the performance of it is a part of the law of nature; or, on the other hand, that this or that action is destructive of man's real happiness, and therefore that the law of nature forbids it.

Blackstone; law of God
This has given manifold occasion for the benign interposition of divine providence; which, in compassion to the frailty, the imperfection, and the blindness of human reason, hath been pleased, at sundry times and in divers manners, to discover and enforce it's laws by an immediate and direct revelation. The doctrines thus delivered we call the revealed or divine law, and they are to be found only in the holy scriptures. These precepts, when revealed, are found upon comparison to be really a part of the original law of nature, as they tend in all their consequences to man's felicity. But we are not from thence to conclude that the knowledge of these truths was attainable by reason, in it's present corrupted state; since we find that, until they were revealed, they were hid from the wisdom of ages. As then the moral precepts of this law are indeed of the same original with those of the law of nature, so their Intrinsic obligation is of equal strength and perpetuity. Yet undoubtedly the revealed law is of infinitely more authenticity than that moral system, which is framed by ethical writers, and denominated the natural law. Because one is the law of nature, expressly declared so to be by God himself; the other is only what, by the assistance of human reason, we imagine to be that law. If we could be as certain of the latter as we are of the former, both would have an equal authority; but, till then, they can never be put in any competition together...

http://www.constitution.org/tb/tb-1102.htm

Blackstone's Commentary, Introduction.

This is the proper hermenuetic for understanding Jefferson's phrase, laws of nature and nature's God.

Jefferson admitted himself that he did not invent any new thing when he wrote the Declaration, he only built on those gone before; primarily Blackstone and Locke.

Governments are to sustain those just rights that are granted by God to mankind. Sodomy is not one of them; forbidden and damned by the laws of nature and nature's God.

That is how the founders understood law.

All well and good, but it still doesn't make the Declaration of Independence any governing law of thr US. The Constitution, as amended, is the foundation of law in this nation.

You don't get, or won't admit, that.

So temporary immorality, such as owning people, is OK, as long as it promotes the common good and maybe fixes itself later? Isn�t that the relativism that you eschew? YOUR premise is that slavery and genocide were justifiable in 1787 because the benefits of the Constitution far outweighed the downside for a few decades� worth of slaves.

Logic does not dictate that adults who consensually choose their own private sexual practices somehow justify involuntary servitude and genocide. The position you took in your post did, if only for a period of time. A lot of madmen through history have followed the same logic.

Cheyenne, please don't make sense. It just humps them all up.

As to Jefferson NOT having children by Sally Hemmings, that's just nuts. The DNA evidence is pretty damned clear and conclusive. Every Jefferson historian worth his or her salt recognizes that. Then again, none of them would cite Jefferson as a basis for "God's law" governing the US through the Declaration of Independence, either.

Cheyenne and 4ager have been precisely on point with their posts.

Be not deceived, God is not mocked. Whatsoever a man sows, that shall he also reap.

Wrong again. The United States code defines the "organic laws" of the United States of America as including the Declaration of Independence, the Articles of Confederation, the Northwest Ordinance and the Constitution of 1987. An organic law is a law or system of laws which forms the foundation of a government, corporation or other organization's body of rules. A constitution is a particular form of organic law for a sovereign state. The organic law of the United States includes the Declaration of Independence, per no less an authority than the United States Code.

BTW, it was on an appeal to the principles of the Declaration of Independence that Abraham Lincoln put an end to chattel slavery. As we all know, The Consitution of 1787 made concessions to slavery (the 3/5s clause, the fugitive slave clause and the importation clause). The movement (begun by John Calhoun) to transform slavery from a necessary evil (the Founder's view) into a positive moral good (the view of the antebellum South leading up to the civii war) necessarily meant that since the Constitution nowhere condemned slavery and actually made concessions to it that in actuality, this nation "concieved in liberty" was actually concieved in tyranny and that this was the intent of the Founders! This was of course, nothing more or less than an attempt by the moral relativists of the antebellum South to re-found the nation, not on its original, natural law and natural right principles but upon principles of legal and moral positivism indistinguishable from those that came to govern in Nazi Germany and Stalinist Russia.

It was with reference to the principles of the Declaration that Lincoln was able to distinguish the genuine principles of freedom and liberty contained in the Constitution from its prudential compromises with those principles. But a prudential compromise is nevertheless a moral compromise if it serves a greater good. In this case, the greater good was the formation of a Union of sufficient strength to place an end to chattel slavery just 70 years after the adoption of the Constitutionb of 1787.

Here is Lincoln: "All honor to Jefferson--to the man who, in the concrete pressure of a struggle for national independence by a single people, had the coolness, forecast, and capacity to introduce into a merely revolutionary document, an abstract truth, applicable to all men and all times, and so to embalm it there, that to-day, and in all coming days, it shall be a rebuke and a stumbling-block to the very harbingers of re-appearing tyranny and oppression."

Jordan

You are confusing morality with ethics. Morality is God-based. Whereas, ethics is natural law-based. Natural law recognizes man's innate sense of justice, man's animal instincts compared to moral law.

We libertarians/leftists go ape-chit with Biblical morality not so much with natural ethics. As long as some Christians are going to push their Biblical morality/law down our throats there will be blow back from non-Christians.

Of course, on the other side of the coin as long as natural law ethics is pushed down the throats of Christians there will be blow back from Christians.

Around and around she goes, where she stops nobody knows.

The terms are virtually synonymous. Whether you call it "morality" or "ethics" is immaterial. The effect is the same. Not legislating ethics creates its own ethical (or unethical) system every bit as much as legislating ethics. It is therefore as impossible to not legislate ethics as it is impossible to not legislate morality. Government legislates ethics every day of the week. The decision what my tax rate should be is not an empirical one, it is a philosophic one (viz., one concerned with morality, fairness, what is ethical).

The issue also remains whose: ethics shall govern. The Declaration of indepepence founded this country on an appeal to a non-sectarian moral law in "the laws of nature and of nature's God". The "law of nature" is properly understood (as it was by Jefferson) as referring to human reason, unassisted by revelation whereas the "laws of nature's God" refers to the law of revealed religion. In the understanding of Jefferson and the Founders unassisted human reason and biblical revelation were in virtual agreement as to what constitued moral/ethical behavior---and both condemn chattel slavery and with the very same voice they also sodomy and certainly sodomite marriage.

But when you legislate morality you take it out of the hands of the individual and make it law, then it is no longer a individual moral issue. You have not changed one thing in the hearts of the people where morality resides.

That's beautiful philosophy and quite frankly I agree with it in the land of Utopia.

However, that's not the history of marriage. Marriage has always been about ownership of women (woman as chattel (legal property)), politics, uniting powerful clans, male heirs, etc. Marriage was a luxury of the aristocracy. As to the lower classes all the aristocracy cared about was that the lower classes produced enough off spring for the war bands whether the lower classes were married or not did not matter. In fact, among the ancient Celtics a marriage was for five years with the main woman, while a concubinage marriage was for a year. Marriage could be renewed at the end but it appears few were. Foster ship and adoption was normal practices among the Celts and most likely among the other ancient Western European tribes as well.

Now I'll grant that Christianity went a long ways toward stabilizing marriage but ancient Christian marriage was no peach for woman either.

Here is a reference to a list of synonyms and antonyms of "ethics". This shows your complete confusion on the claimed distinction between ethics and morals. There is none.

http://www.thesaurus.com/browse/morals

Everyone pays taxes as individuals, so while we can argue about whether paying taxes or not is an issue, we don't generally see paying taxes as a morality delimma - lets talk about examples where its generally accepted the government legislates morality to the exclusion of individuals. I'm sure there are some examples.

As for the argument that lack of morality in legislation is yet a form of forced morality, I would have to believe that Jefferson would defer lack of government regulation than the creation of it, even if he found some of the excluded behavior abhorrent.

That's laughably incorrect. Read Marbury v. Madison. Cases and controversies arise under the Constitution, not the Declaration. The Constitution is the foundational law of the nation, not the Declaration. The Declaration was cited by Lincoln as he abrogated the Constitution to a degree that would be breath-taking even to Hussein the First, and yet YOU want to bring Lincoln in as a bulwark of law in the U.S.? That's funny.

There also was no Constitution of 1987 cited by the Founders (that'd have been some doing on their part). All of those earlier documents that actually had legal precedence (the Declaration NEVER did) were replaced in their entirety by the Constitution, as amended.

It is rather amazing how supposed conservatives are siding with increased governmental intervention into daily lives as opposed to getting the government out of an aspect where they have no business at all in the first place.

The solution is simple, and I stated it earlier. Get the government at all levels out of the marriage business completely and let religious institutions govern the religious aspects of marriage for those that choose to have such matters involved in their lives.

You did notice that Blackstone separates natural law (ethics) and divine law (moral) as two distinct laws.

Now there is no doubt that divine law and natural law follow the same path in many areas but many times divine law and natural law go separate ways.

The problem with divine law or revelation law as Blackstone calls it is who's revelation are we going to follow? Are we all to follow Christian revealed law at the point of a sword?

Your characterization of marriage throughout human history is very selective and way too truncated. Calling it "utopian" also suggests it is unattainable. That is certainly contrary to the belief of the Founders. Our success in attaining the desired goal might vary over time, but that fact is no evidence whatsoever whether the desired goal, the intended outcome, is preferable to its alternative. We are witnessing the fruits of the alternative and they are an unmitigated disaster for our society and country. You must really enjoy high taxes.

Yin any event, your trnucated and selective rendition of the history of marriage is irrelevant to the contemporary issue: all societies have recognized the marriage meaans natural marriage---a union between a man and a woman (sometimes several women!). No society in the known history of the world has given status parity to homosexual behavior, let alone defined marriage to include the union of same-sex couples. The human family comes ot sight as a river flowing through time. That river is consituted (and only constituted) in and buy the generative distinction between male and female. Every human friendship, to say nothing of all of human existence, traces its beginnings to that first friendship, that sexual friendship between a man and a woman. This is why marriage, properly undersood, is only between a man and a woman.