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A common example of right/wrong versus legal/illegal: A society in which it is legal to own slaves, and illegal to help a slave escape. Laws are about expedience, about order, and about the protection and increase of the power of those with the power to make laws. Some of the most tyrannical governments on Earth, past and present, have been amply provided with laws that legalize their abuses (the word Ermächtigungsgesetz should have some meaning in this context).
On a forum which required users to not violate any law, anywhere, I used to have a sig that said something like "Liberty ... Democracy ... Human Rights ... this post is illegal in China."
Or here's one to really throw some gasoline on the fire: If abortion is illegal, does that make it wrong? If it is legal, does that make it right? Does your opinion about it change if you walk across a state or national border to a jurisdiction with the opposite law?
No government, no matter how well-meaning, is immune to errors of judgment and the creation of unjust laws. The less well-meaning, the more likely it is that it's no error. Free people cannot allow their morality and their ethics to be dictated by the rules laid down by any government. No matter what you find the most praiseworthy, some government somewhere, somewhen, has banned it; no matter what you find most appalling, some government has likewise legalized, even mandated, it. A government can choose what to make legal or illegal, but it cannot choose what to make right or wrong. And we, as individuals, must not -- by adopting their laws as our morality -- allow them to do so.
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