Comments on: Punish sex buyers to reduce prostitution 2014/01/23/punish-sex-buyers-to-reduce-prostitution/ London MEP European Parliament Tue, 01 Mar 2016 17:00:58 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.com/ By: Martin 2014/01/23/punish-sex-buyers-to-reduce-prostitution/#comment-19379 Thu, 23 Jan 2014 11:47:33 +0000 ?p=22428#comment-19379 The best way to combat prostitution is to combat homophobia. I wrote an article on this,
http://www.thephilosophytakeaway.com/2013/03/homophobia-intuition-and-logic-by.html
and while the journal’s house style required a light touch, towareds the end I said:
“To my mind, homosexuality is an essential part of an evolving species: evolution requires variability. Furthermore, for much of human evolution I believe there has been a surplus of women, and society will be more stable if the imbalance is alleviated through gay women. This is less problematic than polygamy – perhaps.
“But then when missionaries impose polygamy on a society with a surplus of women, the imbalance is made much worse, and we can easily comprehend why another feature of Christianity, homophobia, was also taken up.
“A caveat here: what I have said above should be regarded as hypotheses rather than proven fact or argument. More on scientific method below.

“To my mind we should not only tolerate homosexuality, but accept it as a positive force, as did the pre-missionary First Nations in Canada and America, who called them ‘two-spirit people’. Their role might approximate to avuncular. If they were called ‘aunties’ as a colloquial description, this might capture such a role, though as I have said, it would depend on who used the term whether it was a homophobic or positive term.”

I think it is always problematic, when some social ideal is mathematically unattainable for everybody, to try to uphold that ideal by stigmatizing and banning alternative activity where there is consent.

]]> By: Martin 2014/01/23/punish-sex-buyers-to-reduce-prostitution/#comment-19377 Thu, 23 Jan 2014 11:33:36 +0000 ?p=22428#comment-19377 I am sorry, I maintain my view that prostitution should be regulated as in New Zealand.

“My report, approved by 14 votes to 2 with 6 abstentions, stresses the need to reduce prostitution and trafficking and to help victims of sexual exploitation to reintegrate again into society.”

This is an issue that clearly divides: can you ban activity between consenting adults to reduce the incidence of abuse? Someone from the sex industry said you cannot ban fruit because of slave labour or exploitative labour somewhere, which in fact I cannot fault.
As a NZer, I’d say you cannot ban kiwi-fruit because some is grown by West Bank settlers.

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