Politicians and fundamentalist religious leaders have for decades been engaged in an attempt to reduce morality to things that happen below the waist. On some level it makes sense – concrete thinkers relate to concrete ideas, and there are few things people get more excited about than genitals in motion. Unfortunately, when morality is groin-based it becomes easy to ignore a host of evil. Even genocide can get the cold shoulder, as is seen by Americans’ general inability to respond to genocide around the world while prattling on about the evils of homosexuality in the developing world. You might even say that one of the reasons some of our politicians don’t want to fund education is that an uneducated public lacks the foundation necessary to understand complex moral questions. The other side of that coin is that without the ability to develop a complex moral code we will be unable to develop a compassionate, truly advanced society.