Humanist Ethics and Eliot Spitzer

Well, what’s wrong with paying for tail, if you think outside of a religious framework which states that sex outside marriage is a sin?

I’m an atheist and not a humanist, but no, I see no problem with prostitution.

It should be legal. It should be regulated, licensed and policed (mmm, diseases), but it should be legal.

Yep. Here’s what I wrote about it on my blog:

who cares?
May I just say that I don’t give a rat’s ass who Eliot Spitzer — or any politician — screws, as long as they are consenting adults? There.

Here’s why sex work bothers me.

In a perfect world, it would be legal (decriminalized, not necessarily regulated*) and that would be fine. However, we as people have a million years of treating women like shit, and I am not sure that given that we have been raised in a world where for a million years, women were treated like shit, and it seems unlikely we could have a fair economic trade when the commodity (a person, mind) has been treated like shit for a million years. It would be the same as a black person renting themselves out by the hour as slave labor.

Again, the IDEA of sex work doesn’t bother me. But I don’t think it works the way it is working now.

*See the latest issue of $pread, a magazine for/run by sex workers, for some arguments on why legalization (as opposed to decriminalization) is bad. Short answer: in Nevada and Amsterdam, women are basically locked in and not allowed to leave the compound, and its all perfectly legal.

I’m with Jen—there’s nothing inherently wrong with the concept of exchanging money for sex, however little the sex worker may enjoy it. Or nothing inherently wrong with said concept that isn’t also wrong with the concept of exchanging money for fast food—food service workers tend not to like their jobs either.

The difficulties with sex work are sexism (common to all females), exploitation (common to all full-time jobs that pay less than a living wage, and common to and triply prevalent in all jobs where if the worker calls the authorities to do something about the exploitation, the worker is promptly arrested for working illegally), and (unique to sex work) rape being treated as theft of services.

Also the morality, but I think someone who freely chooses to be a sex worker has no moral problem with being a sex worker (note the ‘freely chooses’; if they’re forced into it, their moral issues are forced into irrelevance, and that goes back to the sexism and exploitation), and I don’t think there’s a moral system in existence that treats visiting a prostitute as worse than having sex with a random person on the street.

I don’t think prostitution is “bad” as long as it is between two consenting adults. I do, however, have a problem with him being married. I think it is a “golden rule” violation. How would Eliot Spitzer feel if it was his wife who had done the cheating? But then again, he’s a politician.

Long way of saying, yes, Vaughn is right.

I would highly recommend to Silda Wall Spitzer the 1996 British miniseries The Politician’s Wife, in which the cheated on wife gets revenge…

I don’t really see what the big deal is because I didn’t really know the guy. My parents have told me, and some research has confirmed, that he was big in cracking down on prostitution rings. What makes this so horrible is that he’s a total fucking hypocrite.

It’s not for nothing that prostitution is known as “the oldest profession”. People have been paying for sex for longer than there have been organized religions, so if it didn’t “work”, I think we’d know by now.

I don’t know whether being or using a prostitute is wrong, but it’s wrong to force women (or men?) into prostitution against their will, as is all-too-common. I imagine – not knowing the details – that Spitzer’s “high class” hooker didn’t to be coerced, but was happy to do it for the lucre.

I agree what Spitzer did was hypocritical. Normally I am a big proponent for not judging one’s ability to perform a job based on shortcomings in one’s marriage or most other flaws in one’s ‘personal’ life. That said, I suppose I am glad that, yet another, in a LONG line of political hypocrites has been exposed. I can dream that eventually, we will not have to be lied to and have a ‘phony’ sense of ‘morality’ appealed to- in order to secure an election. Maybe one day we won’t need that, but I suppose we will all have to stop bleating first.

Regardless of your feelings on prostitution the fact is that it is currently illegal. I’m not saying that makes it morally wrong. Is it any of our business with whom politicians have sex? No it’s not but when his having sex is a violation of the laws that he helped put in place and enforce that’s a huge problem that concerns us as citizens. I haven’t seen anyone raise the question of blackmail here. Doing something as incredibly stupid as this opened Spitzer up to being blackmailed. And that makes it the public’s business and concern. This all really just boils down to the legality of his actions. He flaunted the law. Hell he got caught by the banks monitoring his transactions because he qualifies as a higher risk person (being in politics) so his funds are automatically subject to more scrutiny by the banks and that’s also a system that he pushed and helped put in place. I just don’t see the use of trying to break down this issue on multiple levels of right and wrong. You can argue the merits or problems with prostitution all day. And everyone can see that it’s just dickish and dishonest to cheat on your wife but those are moot points for this situation.

Does anyone really believe the woman in question was free to decline at any time?

I don’t know. Maybe someone was controlling her. But, maybe she could have turned down this lucrative occupation and gone to work at some dead-end job or struggled her way through college, just like many other Americans. Absent proof that she was some kind of sex-slave I have no pity for her. As for the wrongdoing in this, I concur with the consensus view.

IMO, the business that goes on between two consenting adults is theirs and theirs alone. I, too, find it silly that it is only legal for two (unmarried) people to have sex if no one is paid for it.

I wouldn’t become or utilize a prostitute myself, but I understand the value that they can have in society, so I’m cool with that.