> It's a bad career choice, it's not safe almost by definition, it involves the sale of a person's body which is dehumanizing
Any form of manual labor is selling your body, all work done out of necessity is dehumanizing to a degree, lots of work is not safe and pay usually reflects that.
> and it's bad for marriage and for people being in long-term relationships.
The average rate of divorce is 50% in the US. 50% of all marriages. And you have to imagine that most of those divorced get remarried, so most people have been divorced! I don't see how legalizing an existing behavior that is widely engaged in would change it much either way. Try to imagine a scenario in which a couple stays married 30 years, but wouldn't have if it weren't illegal for one partner to pay for sex, does that sound like a likely scenario to you? One might argue that people would be less likely to marry out of desperation, or that equalizing sexual options across the board increases people's likelihood to treat their partners well. If anything you'd get a smaller number of marriages that more often last, and that's speculation, but it is the most reasonable speculation.
> The questions are whether you think it's appropriate for the law to have an opinion about these things, whether you think the current law is effective, and whether you think the current law infringes on people's liberty too much.
Yes, I believe this was the question you were responding to.
> I don't think it's obvious that we can afford to stop enforcing laws that are essentially about guiding people to avoid bad choices
Really? I think it is fairly obvious. The job of the law and the role of deterrent is to protect people from others, not to protect people from themselves. This is a pretty foundational point when talking about liberty and tyranny. It's why seat belts were not required in New Hampshire (the "live free or die" state) up until very recently. It is why we lobby to legalize everything that is illegal that we want legalized, that an individual has the right to do things that are potentially bad for themselves, that their own judgment is the one they best defer to.
Maybe masturbation and anal sex should be illegal as well? What do you think?
> It's a bad career choice, it's not safe almost by definition, it involves the sale of a person's body which is dehumanizing
Any form of manual labor is selling your body, all work done out of necessity is dehumanizing to a degree, lots of work is not safe and pay usually reflects that.
> and it's bad for marriage and for people being in long-term relationships.
The average rate of divorce is 50% in the US. 50% of all marriages. And you have to imagine that most of those divorced get remarried, so most people have been divorced! I don't see how legalizing an existing behavior that is widely engaged in would change it much either way. Try to imagine a scenario in which a couple stays married 30 years, but wouldn't have if it weren't illegal for one partner to pay for sex, does that sound like a likely scenario to you? One might argue that people would be less likely to marry out of desperation, or that equalizing sexual options across the board increases people's likelihood to treat their partners well. If anything you'd get a smaller number of marriages that more often last, and that's speculation, but it is the most reasonable speculation.
> The questions are whether you think it's appropriate for the law to have an opinion about these things, whether you think the current law is effective, and whether you think the current law infringes on people's liberty too much.
Yes, I believe this was the question you were responding to.
> I don't think it's obvious that we can afford to stop enforcing laws that are essentially about guiding people to avoid bad choices
Really? I think it is fairly obvious. The job of the law and the role of deterrent is to protect people from others, not to protect people from themselves. This is a pretty foundational point when talking about liberty and tyranny. It's why seat belts were not required in New Hampshire (the "live free or die" state) up until very recently. It is why we lobby to legalize everything that is illegal that we want legalized, that an individual has the right to do things that are potentially bad for themselves, that their own judgment is the one they best defer to.
Maybe masturbation and anal sex should be illegal as well? What do you think?