Quote from Ghost of Cutten:
What about a woman who likes prostitution and enters it of her own free will?
I would have no problem with a woman that genuinely chooses prostitution as her career choice. You misunderstand my objection. I do not mean to judge, only to help. So if someone does not think they are in this need, I am content in stepping aside. I would wager that if a woman was visited by two men, one would offer to marry her and expect her to be his wife, the other would offer to marry her, bring her to America, help her get a job and a place to live, and then would expect to be released from the marriage with no responsibility on my part, well we can theorize which choice she would make, but the point is that if she made the real wife choice, at least those of us who watch this can say, she made the choice from her heart.
Why should she be turned into a criminal because, in a rather patronising sexist way, you think all women are damsels in distress and incapable of making their own decisions? Do you want to "rescue" male gigolos too?
Not at all. See above. In fact, I want to remove the sex from the equation of barter. If I were truly sexist, I would want to persist it.
As for "mail order brides", are you suggesting that marrying across national boundaries or cultures should be illegal? Or that marrying for money, or reasons other than "true love" should be criminalised?
Huh? I have no idea what you are talking about. How you reached this conclusion, from what I posted, does not follow.
Bear in mind that the "thousand year wisdom" of the law allowed slavery, segregation, and outlawed homosexuality, religious freedom and divorce for most of human history, along with witch trials, paedophilia, torture, trial by combat etc. It succeeded in normalizing that for most of the world's societies at the time. Most civilised people today view that for what it was - irrational and violent oppression of people who were doing nothing wrong. Drug usage and consenting adult sexual relations are treated the same and outlawed today purely because they go against bourgeois social norms too. See a pattern here?
See above. I do not wish to remove choice, only expand it. If theoretically Paris Hilton would want to become a prostitute or exchange sexual favors for money, I would be content in knowing that was a choice made from desire, not need. I would therefore have zero desire to enlist my help in that circumstance (although I would think she had gone off the deep end.)
Something is not right or wrong because "that's how it's always been done", otherwise there would be no such thing as progress and everything legal in the past would be acceptable to us today, instead of horrifying. An individual's life is not there for your benefit, or for you to violently force into social and cultural norms that you personally find gratifying. Every society and culture that has ever existed has norms and values that other societies and cultures would find horrifying and evil, therefore social and cultural values cannot have any legitimacy in making moral decisions. Effectively, you are trying to make it a crime for people to live life in a way that you find abnormal, rather than for actually doing something morally wrong and harmful.
Again, I think you are assuming something that is not there. Perhaps the above comments will clarify my position.