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Timmy elsewhere

At the ASI.

Canada’s quite remarkable human rights ruling on prostitution

6 thoughts on “Timmy elsewhere”

  1. Well, good news on the face of it but we should be cautious. The puritans are hardly going to take this lying down, and the Supreme Court has given the State a year to write new legislation, rather than just declaring the laws void.

    What they’ll do in response nobody seems to be saying yet; might be a registration scheme, might be a chance to introduce the “Swedish Model”, and there’ll probably be some strong input from the once again fashionable “White Slave Traffic” myth. Whatever they do, the chance of the State and the Feminist ulama just giving up and leaving a free for all is round about zero.

  2. Come to think of it, I’ll make a prediction so that in a year’s time I’m either saying “told ya” or “whoops, I look teh silly”.

    It’ll be some form of the Swedish Model (criminalising clients).

  3. I agree with IanB – there’s no way the usual suspects will allow a little thing like a legal ruling get in the way of their social engineering.

  4. So Much For Subtlety

    It is a remarkable conclusion that says prostitution only affects the client and the prostitute. That it has no other effects on society at all.

    Britain has entered a much nastier phase in its history. Like the Netherlands we have boys from Third World countries who prey on the weak and vulnerable, telling them they love them – and then forcing them into prostitution. It is bizarre to think that when this becomes not merely normal but socially accepted it is not going to have any larger impact on the whole of British society.

    But even if we put all that aside, the fact is this is law created in the worst possible way. The Canadian Courts have ignored the Western legal tradition, the whole idea of democracy, and foisted an out come on the Canadian people that should have been theirs to make through the ballot box. This is outrageous. Even if you support this outcome, you ought to be appalled by the way it has been done.

  5. SMFS-

    I may as well say this again; organised suppression of prostitution (like drugs, drink, smoking, gambling etc) is a recent innovation/experiment, not some deep western tradition. Indeed, the western tradition is quite the opposite. We were a land of brothels until the 19th century. English prostitutes were once famed all over Europe. And so on. So, if we get re-liberalisation, it won’t be “entering a new phase” but reverting to an older normal.

    There is an argument for unrestrained democracy, in which case courts striking down laws can be argued to be undemocratic. But unrestrained democracy is no boon, when unjust laws are passed. Democracy, as we’ve been discussing in other threads, is rarely the will of the people; it is the outcome of machinations by special interests. In this case, these laws are all the result of coordinated politics by the social purity movement.

    So, there is little justification for the idea that something is being foisted on the people, when what we really see is an un-foisting- a reversal- when liberalisations occur.

    There is nothing we do that has no effect on society. We are all interconnected. A generally christian society, for instance, affects everyone, and atheists may consider that to be a negative effect. But if you want a free society, you accept how other people wish to live. I have no natural right to get the local church shut down, even if I can get a pressure group together to pass such a law. If such an awful thing did happen, then a Supreme Court ruled the prohibition unconstitutional, allowing teh church to open again and serve its parishioners, that would be a Good Thing. Even if that upset atheists.

  6. So Much For Subtlety

    Ian B – “I may as well say this again; organised suppression of prostitution (like drugs, drink, smoking, gambling etc) is a recent innovation/experiment, not some deep western tradition.”

    I am not so sure about that. I would agree there were still prostitutes around. But I doubt the law was silent on their existence. However that was before identity became so important so the context has changed.

    “There is an argument for unrestrained democracy, in which case courts striking down laws can be argued to be undemocratic. But unrestrained democracy is no boon, when unjust laws are passed.”

    I do not mind Courts striking down laws per se. But it has to be restrained and limited. This is not what we have. I do not need to make an argument for unrestrained democracy to make an argument against rule by a tiny clique of unelected and unremovable judges and lawyers. It is incompatible with any sort of democracy. Nor have the Courts been friends to freedom and liberty. They have been a consistent enemy. Do not assume that because your near enemy is your enemy, your far enemy is your friend.

    “Democracy, as we’ve been discussing in other threads, is rarely the will of the people; it is the outcome of machinations by special interests.”

    Replacing people who are elected to represent special interests with people who are appointed to represent special interests is no improvement. With elections we have some small chance of influencing the out come. We can only hang judges.

    “So, there is little justification for the idea that something is being foisted on the people, when what we really see is an un-foisting- a reversal- when liberalisations occur.”

    Elected officials passed laws. Unelected judges have struck them down. Only one of those is being foisted on us. You may not like the prostitution laws, but they were passed in days gone by when we were much more free.

    “There is nothing we do that has no effect on society. We are all interconnected. A generally christian society, for instance, affects everyone, and atheists may consider that to be a negative effect. But if you want a free society, you accept how other people wish to live.”

    I am not sure that is true. I think it is more likely that if you want a free society you have to accept limits on what people can do. Polygamy being a recently discussed example. In every case reformers have presented a change as a small thing, no big deal, freedom for the individuals concerned. It has not turned out that way with abortion, divorce or Gay rights. Indeed we are coming to a point where people can be jailed for what were mainstream views a generation ago. It looks to me that the price of freedom for most of us is the prosecution of some of us. The question is who is doing the jailing and who is going to jail.

    If such an awful thing did happen, then a Supreme Court ruled the prohibition unconstitutional, allowing teh church to open again and serve its parishioners, that would be a Good Thing. Even if that upset atheists.

    Sure. But that is not what we are faced with. The option before you is a small group of radicals gets the Supreme Court to close down all the Churches. That is not a good thing. Courts no longer protect our rights.

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