The Apostle Paul says that it is good for people to marry so that they do not burn with lust. Of course he is speaking to Christians. Now every community is going to have a large number of unbelievers some of whom will not get married for various reasons. Some because they are really awkward, ugly, deformed, ect. Of course, a visit to the “chicken ranch” will be sinful for these people but might it not be the case that such a visit could be less sinful than possible other alternatives?

Might this sin, at least sometimes, have social advantages in a fallen world.

I am not so sure using Prohibition to make the case for legalized prostitution works very well (some seem to also turn to it to make the case against the public bans on smoking to relatively little avail, if you ask me). The two phenomenon seem much too different. The driving out of drink came and went quickly as a failed experiment, but keeping the flesh trade underbelly has endured. Keeping prostitution illegal is not an effort to eliminate the sin of illicit sex as Prohibition was an effort to eliminate drunkeness. Some things are just good laws for a civilized society (i.e. prostitution being illegal), some are moral crusades done disguised as such (Prohibition). Please find another reference to make the case.

I would still think that a dose of localism might help here. I have no problem with legalized prostitution anymore than I do legalized abortion–I just think the local authority should decide. And were I the local authority, I’d say no hookers and no abortionists…the county down the road does though, if you’d like.

By the way, since the “sin” of drinking had no corresponding crime (penal sanctions) attached, I am tempted to say that it is only natural law thought that would impel the state to legislate where no biblical crime exists.

I cite here the American experience of legal “prohibition” of alcoholic drink. By trying to eliminate the sin of drunkenness the state destabilized society further by creating economic opportunities for criminal behavior much more serious than a few too many drinks.

Or, to be more Reformed, I will take Samuel Rutherford who reminds us that all the sanctions of the Old Covenant judicial laws were of particular equity and pointed to Israel’s unique theocratic status.

Did not realize that Aquinas held that kind of authority for you.

What is “general equity?” In the Oxford English Dictionary the word “equity” is dealt with thus: “equity of a statute according to its reason and spirit so as to make it apply to cases for which it does not expressly provide.”

The original WCF (before the 1788 revisions) seemed to include the supressiion of blasphemies and heresies among the understanding of “general equity.”

Gentry notes that “That which is “expired” in the judicial laws are those elements that structured it for Israel as a nation (the particular land arrangements which allowed for cities of refuge, blood avengers, elders in the gates, stoning [as typological of God's crushing judgment], levirate marriages, and the like) or are applicable to the peculiar ancient circumstances, the accidental historical and cultural factors of Israel (fences around rooftops, goring oxen, etc.).”

Now. Assuming that adultery is something that strikes at the heart of the family structure by (1) introducing a potential rival into the security of the husband/wife relationship and (2) introducing the same insecurity into another covenant head’s household, how is it that harlotry is something that disappears with “expiration of the sundry judicial laws” as a distinctive of Israelite polity, since there are specific sanctions applied to it and, as you admit, it is a universal sinful and , shall I say, distablizing, activity.

To be sure, Aquinas had many useful things to say. This would not be one of them.

(Re physical and emotional betrayal, I don’t mean to quibble unnecessarily, but I have a hard time with the idea that adultery can really be “worsened.” I get the sense that this might still be a function of just how triumphant the age of the therapeutic and relational really is. And, sorry, your example of Christ “falling in love” is way too Troubadourian for this Augustinian-Calvinist. Maybe that’s why I am so “harsh” on “Jane Doe’s” conversion story revolving around playing children and dancing butterflies?)

I think we tend very much to conflate sin and law as American religionists. We come by it fairly honestly. I tend to think the categories of law and gospel are highly useful. Just yesterday a Christian school teacher friend of mine was hit by a student. The principal muttered something about “we are all about forgiveness as Christians,” and rendered a weak-wristed verdict: the student was to decide his own punishment (which you can imagine was fairly easy-going) and all were supposed to let by-gones by by-gones. You hear the same tripe from believers who have lost their loved ones to a murderer: “We forgive and request that the defendant be shown utmost leniency.” Phooey. These are cases in which the categories of law and gospel have been quite confused. When I get robbed I don’t drop to my knees to pray for my violater, I get on the phone to my sheriff. This is why I get confused when you say that my W2K views are somehow about “grace swallowing up a damnable ethics.” I like law–a lot, I use it everyday–just in its rightful place is all.

The state should be in the business of policing lawbreakers, not sinners. The question isn’t so much THAT the state should be in the business of policing, but HOW. (This is my standing point about that ill-fated national debtate called “abortion.” It’s ill-fated because everyone assumes the question to be “may she or mayn’t she?” when it should be “who gets to decide?” My sense is that those who are on the conventionally conservative side of this debate [i.e. "pro-life," etc.] are really about policing sin). The state shouldn’t be policing sin anymore than the church should be rendering verdicts about who can serve in the military or what non/reproductive laws should be.

But I don’t think the answer is to legalize a certain thing (in this case prostitution). I don’t think this gets us away from the law/sin conflation very well at all.