The problem in that scenario is surely not the sex but the inaffordability of crack? If I may ask, what did you tick here?
(And I was aware of sodomy laws and the like, MEB - I was wondering whether there would actually be anyone here willing to defend them.)
Sage Rat (1, -1)
Strongly Agree. I would even be fine with the German cannibal couple–except of course that he must still prove in court that the murdered person was there of his own willl and desired such to happen.
Strongly agree, though I think criminality is a limiting factor. The problem becomes proving criminal activity without invading the bedroom privacy between two consenting adults.
Agree. I think in general it’s a fair statement, but there are exceptions.
She might equally accept $50 to wade into a sewage-filled basement and haul bucket after bucket of human waste out of it, to satisfy a local business-owner. (Something fairly similar to this happened at a local bar, where the owner paid something like $250 to a couple local drug addicts to clean out a sewage-filled basement).
Is that consent? Assuming that the business owner paid all appropriate taxes on the expenditure, ought it be illegal to make such a hiring?
Daniel
My overall:
Economic Left/Right: 6.50
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: 1.33
It may not be consent. And there may be room for making it illegal – did the businessman seek out desparate crack addicts in an effort to pay rock-bottom prices? I’d be willing to explore the consequences of making such behavior illegal.
What if they were desperate to feed their stomach rather than their crack addiction? What is the salient difference between the work-for-food and the sex-for-drugs transactions that makes the former consensual but not the latter?
(-3.75, -4.97)
I could not care less about what other humans fuck unless they did it on public sidewalks and I tripped over them while they did it.
This society has mechanisms in place to feed the hungry. Under what circumstances might someone be starving and unable to feed themselves in the US today?
We do not have mechanisms to get crack to the addicted.
(-3.63,-6.21)
Strongly agree. Lady Sally McGee had it right–consenting behavior among adults is prefectly fine as long as it doesn’t involve former food or former people. And even the first is negotiable.
Economic Left/Right: -4.38
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -5.49
Hey! I’m in the same corner as the Dalai Lama and Nelson Mandela! 
IÈll start out by saying that I strongly agree with the OP. “The State has no business in the bedrooms of the Nation.”
I take that to mean that the State has no business dictating the forms of sexual and romantic activity among adults who can give consent. This includes marriage. So, yes, I guess that means I’m in favour of legalising group or multiple marriage (whatever you want to call it).
I draw the line at including people or other entities who are unable to give informed consent, who are being coerced, or who are at a power disadvantage. So this excludes animals, children, and slaves or subordinates. Although, presumably, it would include intelligent aliens. (Anything that’s a ‘people’…)
More after I read the rest of the thread.
I didn’t realize this was about the US. The question still stands.
Some countries actually do provide drugs legally to addicts who do not respond to methadone treatment. Would the behavior of the hapless person in your earlier example be consensual if she lived in such a country?
(-3.38, -5.54)
Strongly agree.
I see this statement as a subset of “What goes on in a private bedroom between consenting individuals is no business of the state,” which I strongly agree with, and I take “no business” to mean that the state should not attempt to limit or prevent any consensual activities that might occur there. “Consent” is the tricky part; my definition is probably in the minority here, but that may be beside the point.
In the case of prostitution, which I believe this statement supports, the state does have a legitimate interest in knowing what happens in the private bedroom, but only to the extent that it’s necessary to show that no one was (e.g.) defrauded or raped. They have no business telling the prostitute what services s/he may offer or what s/he may charge for them.
It is consensual. The decision is derived from a weighting of conflicting desires
a)The 18 year old rather not have sex with the man. Emotional desire.
b)OTOH, the 18 year old certainly doesn’t want the withdrawal (or craving) to remain unattacked. Emotional desire.
Resolution: The craving wins out over the repulsion. The sex is simply a means to an end.
I think you believe this nonconsensual because of the romantic notion of sex as exclusively a currency of love. Well, people use sex as a barter in many different social dynamics. Your example happens to be economic. You may find the behaviour repulsive, but it’s hard to call it not consensual.
(-0.50, -4.00)
Agree.
This is a tricky question. The impulse is to strongly agree. But we have laws for a reason.
There are atleast two types of reasons for laws.
The first type, is when individuals are harmed by a transaction, such transaction is banned, e.g. murder. On this basis, govt. has no business in consensual sexual activity.
The second type, is when the effects of certain behaviour are aggregated over society, the emergent dynamics leave society in an undesirable position or create an ethos which don’t sit well with the existing ethos, even if such transactions among the direct willing actors don’t harm the actors themselves. The questions are, should laws be decided on this basis (even if they aren’t advertised as such)? …and… how and who should calculate the emergent effects and acceptable threshold for liberties? The answers to these determine the moral basis for the drug war, prostitution, abortion, euthanasia, gay marriage…etc.
I can see a valid point being made that all or most human interactions have spillover effects or undesired effects when aggregated, and in some cases, the ‘society’ may force restrictions. I don’t know how to calculate it, or who ought to decide, though.
Correction: I can see a valid point being made that human interactions can have spillover effects or undesired effects when aggregated…
Then answer my counter: under what circumstances would someone in the US go hungry, when there are numerous programs in place to deliver food to the hungry?
I don’t know. The answer depends on the totality of circumstances in the country in question.
When you go around killing people and getting killed for the sake of an orgasm, you’re batshit crazy and the state has a right to put you in the looney bin. I’d argue further that if you’re just plain maiming yourself – definable as losing digits, limbs an d/or organs, or maiming others, you are also batshit crazy and the state needs to lock you in a looney bin so you can’t harm yourself aor others needlessly.
Now, say you have testicular cancer and are going to HAVE to lose the testicles, I guess it would be OK to do them in the format of an SM ritual, since they’re gonna have to go anyway.
I don’t agree. “Emotional desire” is not an accurate term to describe physical addiction to a substance.