And by 'morality' you mean...?

I've complained before about how conservatives hijack moral language, but I didn't go into much detail. Now I don't have to, thanks to Philosoraptor's excellent post on Morality vs. Sexual Morality:

Even though our hypothetical tele-preacher purports to be concerned about and discussing morality, he is, in fact, not at all concerned with any of the most important moral problems. He is, rather, concerned with a rather narrow and peripheral set of moral issues that no serious thinker has ever considered central to moral action or moral theorizing. He is concerned only with sexual morality.

[...] The right sometimes seems to own the words “moral” and “morality” like they sometimes seem to own the flag. But that has happened only because of a confluence of two factors: first, the fact that ‘moral’ and ‘morality’ have come to carry sexual overtones, and second the fact that it is the right that is perversely fixated on other people’s sexuality. The unfortunate result of this is that Republicans can say things like “we are the party of morality” with a straight face, playing on the ambiguity between “we are the party that emphasizes doing what is right” and “we are the party that thinks that sex is dirty.”

Ha, nicely put. Anyway, read the whole thing...