Substitute any personally provided service for sexual service in the prostitution related criminal code and see if it still makes sense.
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(a) an indictable offence and liable to imprisonment for a term of not more than five years and a minimum punishment of, [...]
That being said, some of it makes sense: we should not force or coercion people of any age to engage in accounting services. We should not entice or coerce persons under the age of 18 to engage in accounting services?
We are talking about making it non-criminal to sell accounting services but criminal to purchase accounting services. Does that make sense? I don't think so.
Lastly, I suspect we would find it contrary to public standards of decency to suggest that adults should be denied freedom of the person to have
(2) The definition “common bawdy-house” in subsection 197(1) of the Act is replaced by the following: |
And considering some of the other legislation being passed, I'd say those are some indecent acts.
Just thinking.
1 comment:
The trouble is that society does not have any fear of people being forced into accounting. No religious groups are morally offended by accounting, and no children have grown up being told that accounting is illegal and therefore, wrong.
Prostitution is not just like any other personal service simply because society has deemed that it isn’t. Like it or not our laws are based on a collective morality and this morality is the same one that also decided murder for hire should be illegal. The fact that it is a personal service does not matter as we are all more than capable of offering plenty of other illegal or violent personal services.
I think a much better substitute for prostitution is marijuana. The debate on both of these issues requires the slow shift in public morality on contentious issues that has been a part of western society for a very long time. Just like the legalization of marijuana there may also be negative consequences of legalization and we as a society governed by moral laws have to decided which position represents the lesser of two evils. It is a lot harder to convince people to take responsibility for a change that carries ANY negative consequences than it is to convince them to carry on with the status quo.
The problem with equating prostitution and accounting is that it is a logical argument against a strongly held emotional and moral position. I think before we try to tell people why prostitution should not be illegal we have to first convince them why it is not wrong, which is sadly a much harder argument to make. Now if only we could get as many celebrities to admit to hiring a prostitute as have admitted to using marijuana.
While these laws being discussed may not be entirely logical I think they do represent a growing sense of cognitive dissonance in how our society thinks about the ethical implications of prostitution and if nothing else, is a step in the right direction.
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