No better, no worse

re: "Thailand should legalise prostitution" (BP, July 20, 2022) 

Dear editor,

As with so much other bad law, the criminal status of prostitution in Thailand reveals the hollow shallowness and echoing unreason of officially prescribed public morals and social norms that have too well characterized Thailand, among many similarly blighted nations, for many decades.

At best, the objections to prostitution are founded on nothing more substantive than dubious devotion to the mystical ideologies of some religion or other. Religion is an excellent reason for its true believers to follow the teachings claimed to have been handed down from their devotedly worshipped idols. It is no reason whatsoever to impose those principles and precepts on others in society, who might rationally prefer other religious beliefs, or none. Religion has never been a reliable guide either to objective reality or to moral right and wrong. The Earth was never at the centre of the universe, nor did humankind ever come to exist save through nature's mindless evolution on Earth over the course of 3.5 or so billion years, merely because a sacred text insists it be so. Burning witches or same-sex lovers was never morally right, however much some postulated god was said to condemn those human persons slaughtered in his or her name, nor was religiously endorsed slavery ever a morally right social institution merely because some god's sacred texts said it was so.

Religious belief is and should be a strictly personal matter, preferably indulged in private among consenting adults of like faith.

Thailand Development Research Institute's (TDRI) are right in their cogently argued call for Thailand to legalize prostitution. Humans choose their occupations according to their skills and demand. Paid-for sex is clearly in strong demand in Thai society, as are medical expertise, cooking skills, lawyering, teaching, cleaning, pop singing, and computer engineering. There is no obvious reason, save the mystical claims of religion, to support the claim that any of these work choices is morally better or worse than any other, so there can be no defensible grounds for criminalizing any of them merely because of the personal objections of some part of the population, even were it a large majority. Nothing is ever made right or wrong merely because is has majority support.

Ideologues, intolerant fanatics, and bigots think their personal prejudices must be imposed on all.

Good people, in contrast, accept that others will and do hold different values and beliefs to them, and that they will according make different life choices. The latter make for a healthy, flourishing society where all may freely, confidently live honest, open, productive lives. The former inherently retard freedom, confidence, honesty, creativity and productivity, today's Thailand being evidence. 

 Felix Qui

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The above letter to the editor is the text as submitted by Felix Qui to the Bangkok Post.

The text as edited was published in PostBag on July 23, 2022, under the title "No better, no worse" at https://www.bangkokpost.com/opinion/postbag/2352297/between-the-lines