* Sometimes, adults make choices for their own lives that other adults perceive to be bad choices. When that happens, the adults who know better have the right to step in, pass laws to restrict the bad choices, and even make the bad choices criminal -- all for the good of the adults who don't know what's good for them.
Simply put - sometimes people do not know what is good for them, in their own best interests, and make bad choices based on impaired reasoning. I am not just speaking of clinically diagnosed mentally ill individuals, but of people impaired in any number of ways from making sound judgments. Whether these include a history of emotional, psychological, or physical abuse and/or neglect; chemical dependence of one sort or another; or the limitations placed upon individuals by class, which restrict the perceptions of what is available as a "choice" for people - people, both men and women, very often do not know what is in their own best interests. When they make bad choices about how to live their lives, it entails a cost not just to themselves, but to the entire society. While, in an ideal world, the answer to this might be education or counseling or an end to the legal and moral restrictions we place upon lifestyle choices, we do not now nor will we ever live in an ideal world. When bad judgments lead individuals to make choices that threaten them with violence, dehumanization, and the hyper-commodification of themselves, it becomes an issue the entire society needs to address for the simple reason that human dignity is something we all should be upholding.
It is not enough to say, "Boy, that woman really messed up her life by becoming a prostitute. How was your day, dear?" This kind of glib public amorality ignores the simple reality that others in our society are, or at least should be, a focus of our concern, even love. It isn't that becoming a prostitute sometimes entails all sorts of dangers, or could be made after a perfectly sound, rational assessment of the possibilities open for financial or other independence. The same could be said about becoming all sorts of things - CEO of Enron, a drug dealer, Presidential press secretary, any dehumanizing role or occupation carries the potential to threaten us all.
And, yes, sometimes it does take those who do know better, at least as far as our contemporary understanding of what is right or wrong, better or worse for us individually and collectively, to step in and prevent individuals, who might make bad choices, from so doing.
Let me just say that my opposition to legalizing prostitution is not based on hating "sex". In fact, prostitution debases human sexuality, reducing something beautiful and sublime to yet another market transaction, no better than buying butter or a new car (hopefully the warranty on the car lasts longer). Just because human beings have engaged in prostitution for thousands of years is also no reason to throw up one's hands and say, "Ah, well, human nature." Human beings have been ritually slaughtering each other for thousands of years, so we might as well give in and embrace war. Human beings have been enslaving other human beings for thousands of years. Why should we try to end such a financially rewarding pursuit, which has the added benefit of providing work, housing, etc. for our surplus populations?
The amoral obtuseness of such a fallacious argument should be clear from the above example. Human societies exist to protect and uphold not just the whole body as a whole body, but the individual members who comprise it. When these individuals make bad choices, these choices threaten the integrity of the whole. For reasons of simple group survival, it seems to me we face the necessity of stepping in, intervening, helping people make better choices for their lives.
