Peter,

It is possible to hold two seemingly contradictory views at one time. I would be deeply upset if a daughter of mine were to choose to poledance in a nudie bar. However, I do not believe that someone to whom I was not related should be prohibited from making that choice.

Similarly, it is one thing to say that someone with S/M inclinations should be allowed to open 'Helga's House of Pain' and quite another to say that some unfortunate must be compelled to work there. Secular people are just as repelled by sex slavery when the slavers are Muslim Kosovar narco-terrorists as when they are the German government. There are standards of decency which do not require the application of the divine.

One need not believe in the Lord to see that murder is wrong.

Bart:
Bart:

C'mon, now. Murder and assault are easy because you can use the physical harm and consent tests. It's in the area of sexual morals (actually, most aspects of male-female relations) that materialism breaks down. Nobody is forcing this woman to take the position; they are just saying she has to take any available lawful job to get her benefits. We wouldn't bat an eye if she lost them for turning down a waitressing job, would we?

One problem here is that item (1) about Germany turns out to be an urban legend. Kind of rips the heart out of the argument, in my view.

Give it time.

Urban legend..not!

http://www.nationalreview.com/thecorner/05_02_13_corner-archive.asp#056229

The Snopes debunking did strike me as kind of mealy-mouthed. The site admitted that the situation was a "technical possibility" under German law, They didn't absolutely deny that some actual examples may have occurred. They only said the examples lacked "any source or documentation" at this time.

I think Snopes is doing a CYA in case some examples actually surface of German government employment offices referring women out for work as prostitutes.

Frankly, with prositution legalized in Germany, why couldn't the situation occur? Why couldn't employers of prostitutes contact German government employment offices to advertise their job offers?

Peter
If religious people can go against the impulses of their faith and condemn the burning of heretics, than secularists can go against the impulse of their "faith" (in your view) and condemn state coercion for the sex trade.

In the end, personal behaviour is not determined by faiths (religious or materialist), faiths and behaviors are determined by personal will. We have free will, remember?

Anon:

Are you suggesting ideas don't matter and that what we believe has nothing to do with how we act or what we think is right or wrong? Presumably those religious people who rebelled against their churches had some idea as to why a true interpretation of their religion backed them and why the church had fallen into theological or religious error. I'm not arguing that there aren't many, many right-thinking atheists out there. I'm asking these stout-hearted types to explain how they conclude on ther the basis of their own beliefs that the German welfare office is wrong.

Since prostitution is legal in Nevada, why can't the same senario occur there as well as Germany.

h-man;

I think because the USA goes by time limits instead of job seeking.

Pat H;

Note that of the putative examples, the only one described at all consists of an incident where a woman was mistakenly set to work as a bartender in a brothel. It seems that if this has happened, there'd be at least a brief description of it in articles about the subject.

I don't think it could happen in Nevada, but only because of the system's design. In the past (I left in '95), Nevada's Employment Security office would post jobs and you could apply to any that interested you. When I was unemployed in Reno during the 80's I had to apply for three jobs per week. In the German system, the names and numbers of the unemployed are given to interested employers who then contact prospective workers. At that point, it seems you must take a job if it is offered. In Nevada you choose the job. In Germany, the job chooses you.

According to my lawyer friend in Hamburg, Mechthild Garweg, the attorney quoted in these articles, is well known for her attention-grabbing, hard-left comments; basically, she's Germany's answer to Gloria Allred. Remember, this tempest in a teapot originated not as a right-wing argument against legalized prostitution, but as a left-wing argument against welfare and unemployment reform. That it has spun this far beyond even Garweg's comments appears to have depended on an unholy alliance between the German left and the British right, who share nothing in common ideologically except an eagerness to believe the worst about Germany.

As to Snopes, I agree they have a left of center bias, and have called them out on it on more than one occasion. This time, however, their only error was in holding out on their determination as long as they did. Until their 2/6 revision, they had the story listed as
"undetermined," despite the fact that Chicago Boyz and I had fully debunked it. The Chicago Boyz discussion nicely sums up which half-truths Chapman cribbed from the left-wing TAZ article, and which ones she cribbed from the communist Jungle-World (fka "Junge Welt"). The only thing no one has been able to determine is where Chapman came up with the spelling "Merchthild." That part appears to be her creation alone.

Peter:

" ... materialism breaks down."

So how is it the mythical woman in question would not make decisions in her own material self interests?

Jeff;

You are ducking again, and you know it.

(BTW, congratulations on the job front. It gives me great comfort as I've always believed an omniscient deity created materialists to fly our airplanes.)

Yes, congratulations, Jeff. Did you hear the one about the airline pilot who died peacefully, in his sleep?

Joe:

Would that be the one where the copilot and all the passengers are screaming?

Peter:

I'm not trying to duck the question--perhaps I don't understand what it is.

Thanks to both of you, BTW.