Anthony Esolen writing on the degree to which a Christian must submit to the law or the state.

He calls the law secular sharia.

But really sharia would be much better, because, in sharia law I would at least find a governing authority whose thinking I respected.

Islam is not my religion, but I understand and respect its demands. The pornocracy I hold in utter contempt.

“For Thomas, as opposed to Augustine, the state is not simply a necessary evil, something we have to endure because we are sinners who would otherwise pitch ourselves into bloodshed and riot.  When man uses right reason to order his affairs on earth, he is actually participating in God’s providential governing of the world.  Now that, I think, is a fruitful position to take.  It does render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s, granting to the secular powers a legitimate sphere of action, while subordinating that action to the common good.  And, since the common good is a human good, it cannot be conceived apart from what makes man good in himself; so the ultimate object of the lawgiver, says Thomas, is to make his subjects good.  That does not mean blessed; he cannot take one tiny step towards accomplishing that.  But he can encourage them, by law and example and custom, to become more temperate, braver, wiser, and more just.  It is a noble calling, which the lawgiver cannot fulfill unless he acknowledges the limits of his rights.  That is, Caesar receives what is Caesar’s due, when Caesar acknowledges that God must receive God’s due…..

…Them’s fighting words now — or I wish they were.  But what do you do when the state does not know what it is and what it is for, and flattens the legitimate societies beneath it, including the family?  Well, Thomas gives us two ways in which laws may be unjust.  The first way is divided, as is typical of the medieval summa, into three subordinate ways: the law may be unjust because the wrong authority has enacted it (which may be the case in California, though I have heard arguments defending the judge’s interpretation of the foolish law), because it was enacted with no thought for the common good (for instance, as when a tyrant or a tyrannical faction uses public means for private ends), or because it distributes rewards and burdens inequitably (as when the publican takes half of the middle class contractor’s next dollar). 

The second way a law may be unjust is if it commands what is malum in se, evil in itself. For instance, a law that overrides the natural right of parents to educate their children is demanding, of its enforcers, actions that are evil in themselves.  Or a law that would require all citizens to expose their children to pornography — say, the popular bit of pornoganda, Angels in America, now returning to public schools in Illinois; that too would be evil in itself.  Such laws, says Thomas, are not laws at all; they do not have the character of lex — meaning that which justly binds the conscience.  They are violences, he says.”