No I took your argument on the hooker case and showed you that the statistics argument you used about VD is a nonvalid argument in this case. Tiki
Why? What relevance does a primitive animal have to me raising my son? None of those would even make a good pet much less something to base his life on! I love animals, but I would love to see you prove that they have anything to do with human behavior (even if you believe in evolution).
No, you took a small class of hookers to prove your case, rather than the entire group of hookers. Those hookers who have high priced Johns who are in control are in the vast minority. Hookers=general category of women engaged in prostitution, not just the high priced call girls. So you made an apple percentage argument to oranges percentages argument when the topic was general fruit. People do this all the time with statistics, they change the classification groups to support their points, and it is invalid.
Shoeshineboy - no one is arguing that whoring is a noble profession, or that they'd love their daughter to have sex with fat old men for a living. We're simply saying that people have the right to do it without being slung in jail or railroaded out of town. Equally, people should have the right to practise religion, even if I, or even the vast majority of people, personally dislike it. As for your zoning argument, IMO it should be allowed as long as there is no direct harmful impact on people who do not want to be affected. Catholic churches are allowed next to schools (some even ARE schools), despite the probability of predation from sexually frustrated Catholic priests. Society deals with it by prosecuting the harmful priests and leaving the rest alone. The same should apply to hookers - if hooker X and her unruly clients are endangering kids, then you have a legitimate reason to force them to stop or move out. But that doesn't give you any legitimate reason to ban hooker Y who causes no trouble, and in all likelihood is completely unknown to the kids & parents (unless the "morally upright" parents pay her a visit every now and again). It seems that you just don't get the concept of intrinsic rights. That is somewhat troubling, considering your country was founded on those principles, and made them explicit in its Constitution.
Check out what people on top of the world do, they are predators in behaviour, no tolerance of behaviour that stands in the way of their goal. Check out the losers in the world, getting all ran over like nothing, being spineless slobs who wont stand up for themselves. These people are prey. Im not saying one is better then the other, because there ALWAYS has to be prey and there ALWAYS will be predators, but if you'd like to figure out what you'd like your kids to grow up like, check out behaviour of strong animals (strong men) and model it for them. I can tell you this much that people that dont know the predators are 100% certainly the prey, and I wouldnt want my kid to grow up like that. Tiki
In that case, taken over the world population, i'd say hookers come out pretty good in terms of wealth and health Tiki
No - that is a demeaning cop out.(I don't think you meant it that way though.) it is our definition of intrinsic rights that is different! You are for violating rights just as much as I am. Example: you would outlaw (I hope!) child pornography because it exploits children. I simply draw my line in the sand MUCH sooner than you. I think that there are many more things that exploit children and destroy families and I think any given community has the right to set their own standards.
So the government has the right to tell you what to do with your body? It has the right to order you not to scratch your ass or pick your nose, and throw you in jail if you disobey? Perhaps if there's a shortage of kidneys, it has the right to order you get operated on and donate one of yours to help save someone else's life? Maybe if there's some nasty disease, it might want to start doing live experiments on elderly patients in order to find a quick cure? Perhaps it will exercise its right to remove vital organs before someone has even died, in order get your heart and liver still pumping fresh on the operating table, all in the name of the good of society? Hey, if people vote for it then it must be ok - after all, if you disagree, then you can just move to a foreign country. That's the logical conclusion of your position - the government owns you, and can tell you to do anything it wants, as long as whoever got 25% of the population to vote for them as the 2nd-worst candidate decrees so. Well, that's not my idea of a free and civilised society, nor was it the US founding fathers' idea of one. Hence the US constitution, which ascribes inalienable rights to individuals, and places very strict *limits* on what the government can legitimiately do - precisely to avoid the nightmare scenario of a totalitarian whacko perpetrating atrocities in the name of the greater good. I don't recall seeing "the US government has the right to tell people what to do with their own bodies" anywhere in the original constitution or in any of the amendments, nor have many respectable political or religious moral thinkers claimed that right to government either, so I'm afraid you're claim is not very well supported. In fact, the only governments that have asserted the right to control their citizens bodies have been ones like Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan, who performed live vivisections in the name of advancing their societies' knoweldge of medical science. Is that your role model for good government? If you control what someone can do with their body, then you control them and everything they do. That is slavery, not freedom. So much for the moral superiority of religious people.
I'm not saying you can't learn a few object lessons from the animal kingdom. Well, actually, that is all I'm saying: you can learn a few simple object lessons. And that's about it... Let's say you're a special ed teacher. Would you base raising your kids on what you'd seen working with the mentally retarded? Well, a mentally challenged human being makes a wolf or a chimp look like a chunk of granite! Wouldn't it be a better idea to use the knowledge of educators, psychologists, counselors, etc. that have worked with human children?
Educators - yes - because of course your kids have to be educated, their minds have to be stimulated to think. Psychologists and counselors are the ones that you should really avoid man, its ESPECIALLY the attitude & instinct lessons you need to take from the animals (instinct: get xyz, then the animal solution would be: jump in window and grab it, and the human solution could be a cunningly sharp schemed plan) of course! I hope you did not misunderstand, of course we need to keep em sharp and bright minded! Tiki