Moral Transgressions

Moral transgressions are where people violate their own moral codes. Your morals are like personal standards and rules you have for yourself which can shape your behavior as a human being. These can be influenced by your friends, family and personal experiences. Examples could be, not to cheat on your partner or to physically harm another person. At some point in your life, almost all people will break their own moral codes. When we hear stories in the news about people doing horrible things, that break the standard morals of society we can be disgusted and hateful of them.

Many people with traditional or religious views may have more constricting moral codes. Most religions and traditional societies place a high value on virginity and see sex as something that should be kept within marriage. This particularly refers to women. Men's virginity's were not so precious. Part of a moral code with people like this would be to not have sex. In the poem 'The Flea' the man is trying to get a women to break her moral code by convincing her that in a way she already had.

Uganda is known for being the worst place on earth to be gay. But last year they celebrated their first gay pride despite the punishment for being homosexual being the death penalty. Despite how much their society and government told them being gay was wrong and they may have even believed it they accepted it as a part of themselves and protested for their rights. This reminded me of Artuad's idea that we all have evil and darkness inside us. In most youth British society homosexuality is seen as acceptable, of course with many exceptions. Artuad believed that showing the evil inside us onstage meant that people would be less likely to commit the evil things within society. In a way this protest was trying to work in the opposite, to allow people to be themselves, even if they believe what they are is wrong.

As people you want to be accepted by peers, friends and families so often you will go along with what other people in order to do so. Seeing other people in a gay pride protest when you are struggling with being gay yourself may give you some confidence in yourself to maybe break the moral codes of your family or religion or maybe what you once thought of as normal. This is an example of moral codes being broken in a positive way. But this can often work in a totally opposite way. In gang culture peer pressure can cause people to break moral codes of themselves and of the society around them.

The sociologist James Patrick studied gang culture within Glasgow in the 1960s. What he did was known as covert observation. This is where he joins in with the group he is studying and they do not know about it. In this case he needed a way in. The gang leader knew what he was doing and allowed him in. However, he nearly got caught out by other members due to what he wore and him constantly taking a back seat in operations. If it wasn't for the input of the gang leader he could have found himself in serious trouble. There was one incident where the gang were sent to raid a library. They were burning books and demolishing the place. James had the role of look out in case the police came. He saw the gang were about to cause real damage so he called out saying the police were there even though they weren't. He got away with it luckily. The issue with research like this although it is the only way of getting truthful information it has complications. If James was ever to have been caught with the gang having committed a crime he cannot then get out of it by saying he was doing research. In the eyes of the law you are a person who committed a crime regardless of the reasoning behind it. However, in a situation like that people might break their moral codes in order to get information or fit in with the culture.