A Tale of Two Moralities

A Judge in Ontario recently struck down the laws concerning keeping a Bawdy house, and communication for the purpose of prostitution. Predictably the religious and other moral busy-bodies have come out in opposition to the ruling and are promising an appeal.

With the voices raised in "moral" opposition to the ruling calling for the reinstatement of the old laws, this article is calling for us to leave morality out of the prostitution debate... and that is wrong.

Prostitution is a degrading, dangerous and often demeaning profession. I can’t for the life of me think of one single reason why any person who has the least bit of intelligence, self respect or personal integrity would want to be a prostitute. In my opinion, the person who seeks sex for hire is a lonely, miserable creature seeking to ameliorate some personal psychological defect, and the person supplying it is most likely equally as damaged.

But that moral judgment on the physical and psychological act of prostitution is an issue separate from the meta-ethical assessment of prostitution as a profession. By meta-ethical in this instance I mean how we support or defend our ethical judgments.

Ayn Rand said “Morality ends where a gun begins”. Not only does this mean that one can not be commanded to act “morally” (as one would in normal circumstances) when confronted with the choice of life or death through force but also, and more importantly, that the initiation of force is itself immoral.

For me the question of meta-ethics rests on one thing the initiation of force (or fraud). It is the initiation of force against a human being that is immoral. So meta-ethically speaking something which does not initiate force is not immoral. Since prostitution, (the exchange of money for sex) as defined does not involve the initiation of force it is not immoral meta-ethically, and for this reason morality must remain a part of our current debate about prostitution.

While anyone and everyone has the right to pronounce moral judgments on the nature of the world’s oldest profession these are personal judgments only, and can not be ripped out of our minds to be used as an ideal which we then impose upon all people. This is true no matter how many (or few) of us may believe in that ideal.

The only meta-ethical reason for the prohibition of prostitution or any other act is the initiation of force against another human being. As defined, prostitution is a contractual agreement and is fundamentally no different than the purchase of any other tradesman’s labour and skill.

What we need with regard to this issue (and morality in general) is not to forget about it, but to discover it, and to differentiate between its personal and meta-ethical applications in our lives and in our governance.

No Escape Hatch

This kind of forthright honesty ought not to be a rarity in politics. The fact that it is indicates how much more effort modern politicians put into maintaining their place at the government trough than anything else. Their desire to hold on to power wins out over principle, over conscience, over law and even over ideology.



Congratulations to Governor Christie for being in the 1 percentile.

Don’t Call It Moral.

The Scottish Judge who released Terrorist bomber Abdelbaset Ali al-Megrahi the killer of 270 people over Lockerbie Scotland said in an interview with CNN that;

“Equally, we have values that we seek to live by, even if those who perpetrate crimes against us have not respected us or shown any compassion. Here is a dying man. He didn't show compassion to the victims, American or Scottish. That does not mean that we should lower ourselves, debase ourselves, or abandon our values.

He was justly convicted, but we're allowing him some mercy to return home to die.”

This statement by the judge implies the application of a moral standard, but morals are defined as; of, pertaining to, or concerned with the principles or rules of right conduct or the distinction between right and wrong;

The last part is central to my point. Under Christian religious morality one should always find it in their heart to forgive a transgressor, no matter what it is that they have done wrong. This is the central tenant of Christian “morality”.

The problem is that it isn’t moral; it is specifically and implicitly amoral. It discards all concept of right and wrong and replaces it with the vilest abdication of thought imaginable. Christianity tries to make the devout follower indifferent to questions of right or wrong and wholly dependent and subservient to some mystical whim which is itself contradicted in Christian religious writings (including anecdotal evidence of god’s actions).

So here is your choice. You can believe in the Christian morality and try to walk your religious tightrope which lists a multitude of things as evil but also states that you should forgive any transgression no matter how vile, or you can apply the morality encapsulated in the sentence “In any compromise between good and evil, it is only evil that can profit.”

Quickly… Choose. Choose to compromise on any and all moral decisions, to abandon any principal based on the whim of a deity who himself fails to apply what he teaches, or you can take the hard line, the resolute stance to believe in right and wrong regardless of circumstance, immovable by whim, immutable by the mystic babbling of an invisible unknowable and completely inconsistent god.

This is John Galt Speaking: Part 6