Make porn illegal

Insanity is philosophy, in many cases. I'm not really calling you insane, I'm being hyperbolic. But so what if people have discussed these things before? We all know that. What's the point in appealing to authority when there's always an authority who disagrees?

 

according to the 10 commandments: thou shalt not kill.
then read in the bible that countless people were killed by god.
And it does not state: thou shalt not watch porn.
Maybe you are referring to the commandment about adultery, but it is open to interpretation what it exactly means.

 

Apparently a more accurate translation of the Hebrew is "Thou shalt not murder" I don't know why we have it wrong, there's a pretty big difference. Although, little distinction to a moral nihilist I suppose.

 

Thou shalt not murder is a better translation for it, because there could be times when killing is necessary (Self-defence, etc). God did kill for reasons, with damnation being a huge one of those, but when humans murder them it’s playing God.

Anyway, porn use could break #10, #7, #9 and sometimes even #5

 

When god wipes out countless people including innocent babies, would you not call this murder? You can only twist the meaning of the word murder.

 

We don't agree on the definition of morality, so of course we won't agree on the definition of murder.

 

Exactly. So maybe there are translation errors as you say, hundreds of years ago and we never will find out. Maybe even already moses wrote down the 10 commandments not exactly as god told him. Atheists will argue that moses is not even an authority. Muslims will say they trust for example mohammed more. So we have still no objective moral truth, it is all about BELIEVING.
Even if these were exactly the words hundreds of years ago, it still remains unclear how to interpret it in modern times.
For example when it states no adultery, you definitely do not commit adultery when you are not even married. It does not state that porn is definitely forbidden.

 

Yeah that's gonna be a no from me dog
https://goo.gl/images/LTK9EL

 

I actually think prostitution ought to be legal. Again, I think it comes down to two consenting adults making an agreement with one another. Both the prostitute and the customer are agreeing to mutually understood terms, and neither of them will necessarily be harmed by engaging in that sort of activity.

I don't think it's immoral to "sell your body". I've always thought that was a poor argument against prostitution because it's a double standard. Consider these careers:

• Professional athlete
• Construction worker
• Bouncer (at a club or bar)
• Modeling

In all of the above careers, you are essentially selling your body. They all require a particular type of body to do the job properly, yet we don't think it's immoral to do any of those sorts of jobs.

I think the reason prostitution is still illegal in the USA is because of these antiquated moral standards surrounding monogamy and sexuality that we still cling on to for some reason. If you think prostitution is immoral because prostitutes are "selling their bodies", but you think that being a professional athlete or a clothing model is perfectly fine, then I think your views on sexuality are blurring your moral judgement.

EDIT:
I want to go a step further with this... I actually think that the ban on prostitution in the USA is unethical, and causes more harm to innocent people than would otherwise be the case if prostitution were legal. Because prostitution is illegal here, there is essentially a black market of prostitutes. Even though it's banned in the US, there's still a demand for prostitutes, so people will become prostitutes because they know it will make money.

I can think of two major reasons the ban on prostitution harms people.

1. The ban on prostitution gives more power to abusive pimps and sex trafficking rings. As I stated before, there's a high demand for prostitution, but since it's illegal, it's not easy to find one. Therefore, if you decide to be a pimp, you can make a lot of money because you'll be the one of the only people out there who can reliably provide a prostitution service. Because there's such a high demand for prostitutes, women will often be kidnapped by criminals and forced into that line of work. If prostitution were legal, people would be more likely to find the services of a prostitute who is working for a fair and legitimate business, as opposed to finding one who works for an abusive pimp or an illegal sex ring.
2. Prostitutes always get the short end of the stick in legal troubles. Suppose a prostitute meets up with a client and the client tries to harm her? Who can she go to for help? She would be arrested for prostitution if she went to the police. Suppose a woman was kidnapped and forced into prostitution and gets caught in a police sting operation while offering her services on the street. She would be arrested for prostitution, but the criminal who kidnapped her would likely get away with it and continue in that line of work.

Overall, I think prostitution ought to be legal because there's nothing inherently wrong with prostitution and because the ban on prostitution is actually harming prostitutes.

One last argument in favor of legalization: If people are going to offer sex services for a living, they might as well be able to do it in such a way that they are protected by the law the same way everyone else is. I think that's a reason to legalize it whether you think prostitution is morally permissible or not. Think of legal prostitution as an analogy to clean needle exchanges for meth or heroin. Obviously, it's not a good choice to use meth or heroin (it's probably not a good choice to hire a prostitute, either). However, people are going to do it regardless of the fact that it's not a good decision. Therefore, we might as well offer clean needles to reduce the risk of infection. If addicts are using clean needles, it increases their chance of survival, which increases their chances of recovery, which increases their chances of being a harmonious member of society. I think a similar argument can be made for prostitution. People are going to do sex work whether it's a good decision or not. Since they're going to do it anyway, we might as well use the law to protect them when doing that kind of work instead of arresting them and making their lives even harder.

 

You keep going on about there being no objective morality, as if this is a genius idea that absolves you from further thought.

Biblical law once defined the morality of many lands, formally, it was the authority, though it has always been interpreted in many different ways, because it is not perfect and men are not perfect. Today, you are absolutely right to say that we cannot appeal to the bible as an authority, because no one respects it, they'll say "I don't care what's in the bible".

I'm not appealing to authority, I'm arguing that dealing heroin is immoral because I perceive it to be harmful to society, and that which is harmful, particularly to others in the longer-term, I call immoral.

If you disagree with my opinion that dealing heroin is harmful, then we could debate about that.

 

Ok you find porn morally reprehensable. Lets ban it.

Some find guns reprehensable, ban them.

Some find swearing disrespectful, lets ban it.

Some find cars to be major polluters, and a net negative for the environment, ban them.

Some men might become aroused by a woman showing anything below the knees, enforce clothing standards.

Some find hunting and/or killing animals for food to be immoral/reprehensible, ban meat.

I can argue (argue not agree) that most of those examples are as bad or worse in some cases than the net effect of porn. It's not up to the government to coddle you, you need to take personal responsibility, and make up your own code of morals and ethics.

 

Where I disagree with you is that the "two consenting adults" are never the only two involved, because everything is connected. If I shoot up heroin in my room, there is no one around, but I'm not in a vacuum. There will very likely be negative consequences for other people eventually, most obviously for my family and my employer, but ultimately my society.

 

I said it is basic philosophy.

It may be only harmful, if somebody buys it and then uses it. You are not forced to buy drugs and you are not forced to watch porn.
And only on paper you can ban drugs, in reality the mafia will deal it and will make tons of money. Or people brew their drugs at home etc.

 

The worse part about heroin is the illegality causes the black market to produce a low quality dirty product, and the effects of heroin addiction could be far lessened if it could be made in a safe pharmaceutical environment away from contaminants.

 

That was the important part of the quote, that you missed out. You need to accept that morality is subjective and move beyond it. It's like "free will doesn't exist", OK, in an autistic way I could agree with that statement, it's all atoms at the end of the day, but I think that you would agree that we need to move beyond that level of objectivity and act as though we do have free will.

I say consumption is immoral as well.

 

I think I raised the question of heroin in this thread, and I wasn't talking about it in the context of legality, I'm sort of derailing the thread with the more interesting question of morality.

Yes, people won't act the way you want them to just because you make laws, that's why I'm more interested in the question "how do we want people to behave?" not "how should we make them do it?"

 

My further thought is, that even regardless of morals, I don´t see how we can ban everything harmful in real life effectively without creating a very dangerous police state which is harmful itself.
And my further thought is, we need to be responsible for ourselves, get rid of our addictions and warn/inform others.

 

I have to take an ethics class once a week, and speaking from my Professional Ethics side, you set up Laws upon the bear minimum to uphold the public safety and maintain general order. Porn falls well outside this standard. The way to really make a dent is to effect the morals and ethics of the individual through education.

Also keep in mind, you're addicted to stimulus right now. Many many people experience a net neutral or dare I say a net positive experience with porn. Like drink, you crossed the precipice.

 

I think you're cherry picking here if you're trying to use that as an argument in favor of a ban on prostitution. If you're going to apply that argument to drug usage or prostitution, why not apply it to everything we do? Nothing happens in a vacuum. The universe is always affected by every little action you do, so I agree that using drugs could potentially harm people somewhere along the line. However, I don't think this is an argument in favor of a ban on drugs, because it sounds silly when applied to other things we do:

If you have a laptop or a smartphone, it was most likely made by a factory worker working in horrible conditions for poverty-level wages. Are you going to say that it's immoral to own a laptop or smartphone? What if you're required to have one for work? I, for example, need a laptop for my job. Are you going to say that my job should be illegal because it requires the use of a laptop, which means indirectly causing harm for a factory worker somewhere overseas?

If you are a US resident, you've likely shopped at a Target or WalMart. Those businesses are essentially monopolies that are responsible (in one way or another) for taking customers away from other, smaller businesses in your community. Are you going to argue that it should be illegal to shop at one of these stores because doing so will indirectly harm small business owners?

I don't think our government has a responsibility to protect overseas factory workers from our demand for laptops, and I don't think our government has a responsibility to protect small business from WalMart and Target. Similarly, I don't think our government has a responsibility to protect your employer or family should you decide to use drugs. I think it's our responsibility as individuals to use whatever means we have available to protect ourselves and our loved ones from those sorts of things.

 

I don't necessarily disagree, as I say I'm not interested in talking about "how".

I agree, there are positives and negatives to everything, we have to weigh the balance. I expect you agree with me on the heroin front, so you have changed to pornography (which is the real subject of the thread, but not what we were just discussing) which we might regard as less harmful. But I would definitely say that pornography is more harmful than good on balance by a colossal margin. I can't prove it, but it's my opinion and we could discuss it in depth.