Won't take a job in a brothel
American minister in Freeport, Ken Baumgarten, who contributes to Times Record, recently rehearsed the interesting story of a 25 year old unemployed Berlin waitress (click) who was receiving some needed financial help from the government while she looked for work. She was offered a job in a brothel, refused it and was threatened by the government with the withdrawal of financial help because she wouldn't work. A lawyer assured her that as the law stood the government was perfectly within its rights.
Brothel management is a legitimate business like every other legitimate business that provides what the public wants; it's government inspected and regulated. Some people want to buy a car, others a loaf of bread and some want to buy sex for a price—where's the difference? One brothel owner needed workers so he did what every employer has the right to do; he went to the job centre and exercised his legal right to access to the workplace. The centre promptly offered our young waitress a job she promptly refused and that's when she ran foul of the government. [I wonder if she had taken the job and one customer wanted something especially "out of the way" and she had refused; I wonder if she would have been fired. Hmmm.]
No one would care to build a case for moral standards based on their benefit to society (actually, Utilitarians do) but make no mistake about it, as Baumgarten wants to remind us, at some point a society without morals disintegrates. But perhaps we're too shrewd for that; we'll fine tune our legal systems in an attempt to cater to everyone—well, to as many as possible—and commend ourselves for ridding society of "the morals" problem. We'll work something out where our young Berlin waitress doesn't have to engage in prostitution, S&M, animal or lesbian activities without making a moral judgement on any of it. How wise we are. Oh well. Romans 1:21-22.
©2004 Jim McGuiggan. All materials are free to be copied and used as long as money is not being made.
Many thanks to brother Ed Healy for allowing me to post from his website, the abiding word.com.