U.S. Society

Ethics Quiz: Oh No, Not Legalized Prostitution Again…

/ Jack Marshall / 43 Comments

In Colorado, a bill that would decriminalize prostitution statewide is moving through the legislature. Its sponsor, member of the Party of Terrible Ideas (at least lately) Sen. Nick Hinrichsen, argues that the measure “would improve safety and health outcomes for sex workers.” More about that presently.

Senate Bill 26-097 would eliminate criminal penalties for consensual commercial sexual activity between adults, repealing existing laws against prostitution, soliciting for prostitution, keeping a place of prostitution and patronizing a prostitute. Pimping would remain illegal.

Commenter JutGory flagged the story for me and the commentariate with a post on yesterday’s Friday Open Forum, where it sparked some lively and thoughtful responses. I decided that the issue was complex and contentious enough to move the discussion here, under its own banner via an ethics quiz.

I recognize that quizzing on this topic is a departure for Ethics Alarms. Ethics quizzes are usually prompted by ethics close calls, dilemmas and conflicts where I lack my usual certitude about their ethical standing. That’s not the case with legalized prostitution. Way back in 2009, I began a post,

“A stimulating ethics alarm drill surfaced over at Freakonomics, where Stephen Dubner challenged the site’s  readers to help him compile a list of goods, services and activities that one can legally give away or perform gratis, but that  when money changes hands, the transactions become illegal. It is a provocative exercise, especially when one ponders why the addition of  money should change the nature of the act from benign to objectionable in the view of culture, society, or government. It is even more revealing to expand the list to include uses of money that may not create illegality, but which change an act from ethical to unethical.

Sometimes commerce turns the act wrongful only for the individual do the paying. Sometimes only the individual accepting the cash becomes unethical.  Money doesn’t corrupt these transactions for the same reasons in all cases. I see three distinct categories:

1.Abuses of economic power: situations where an individual or organization uses money to coerce or induce people to do something that is bad for them, those to whom they have duties, or society, such as prostitution…“

I stated thatwith prostitution, both the payer and the payee were engaging in unethical conduct. And they are.

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Ethics Quote of the Month: Jill Foster in “The Telegraph”

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

“Far from being isolated incidents, the two attacks are just the latest mass shootings involving trans-identified perpetrators in recent years. And they will doubtless reignite speculation among Republican figures in the US that transgender treatment is making people more likely to carry out such attacks.”

—-Freelance journalist and long-time UK editor and life-style reporter Jill Foster in “Are cross-sex drugs driving trans shooters to kill?”

I love this quote! It’s a “bias makes you stupid” all-time classic. It’s a self-awareness void all-time classic! It’s a “My mind’s made up, don’t confuse me with facts” all-time classic! It’s a “Yoo’s Rationalization,” or “It isn’t what it is” all-time classic!

What a perfect example of the Left’s woke delusions and amazing ability to see only what it wants to see. I want to frame that quote. I want to put it on T-shirts and coffee mugs.

Never mind pondering whether trans individuals are mentally ill: what does it say about progressives who can read that statement and react by shaking their heads, tut-tutting, and thinking, “How true, how true. Those hateful Republicans, and conservatives of course, will definitely speculate that because a tiny sliver of the population has been disproportionately engaging in mass murder, there might be a reason related to the radical treatment we good and rational people call “gender affirming care. What’s the matter with those bigots?”

Funny, I have been wondering, since so many individuals of dubious gender identity have been killing people lately while the news media, in its coverage that emphasizes the only their favorite anti-gun angle, never mentions the possibility that there may be a link between trans murderers snapping and their…what can I call it? Malady? No, that’s pejorative. Condition? Confusion? Delusion? Medical abuse?…if I’m the only one whose Holmesian instincts detect a possible cause and effect.

Now, thanks to Jill’s incisive reportage, I realize that my politically incorrect thoughts are simply attributable to the fact that I would rather have an orangutan rip my face off and eat it than vote for a Democrat in November.

I’m gradually viewing Jill’s matter of fact statement that only U.S. Republicans are capable of processing reality as excellent reporting. Far from being the unethical, biased, incredibly stupid assertion it appeared to be at first reading, I realize this is a factual assertion. Democrats will deny even an unavoidable conclusion if it in any way undermines their favored world view. If it is an inconvenient fact, they will made sure their captive propagandists in the media bury it or deny it, or better still, demonize those who dare to utter such Wrongthink out loud.

Thanks, Jill! You’ve given us a lot not to think about.

A Psychology “Expert” Reveals “the No. 1 Phrase to Shut Down a Manipulator” [Bad Link Fixed!]

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

And to that I say, “Bite me.”

Shadé Zahrai, a CNBC contributor, weighs in with her advice regarding “one of the most effective ways to stop a manipulator.“ She says that the magic phrase is: “That’s interesting. Tell me more.”

This is passive-aggressive weenieism, as well as dishonest. I don’t tell people that I find something interesting unless it is, in fact interesting. Doing so is a lie. If I’m using “interesting” sarcastically but want “the manipulator” to think I’m sincere, that’s deceit, another form of dishonesty. Much of the time the “expert’s” use of “That’s interesting” is just another version of “Why bless your heart!”

So the expert says that the way to foil “manipulators” is to be manipulative. How expert of her! She recommends versions of her all-purpose defense if someone is trying to subtly coerce you, if someone is trying to guilt-trip you, and if someone is trying to gaslight you. Her discovery is nothing but warmed over 70’s era versions of the obnoxious (and and manipulative) deflections “I hear you” and “I acknowledge the validity of your feelings.” It’s conflict avoidance when conflict is needed.

If someone attacks me with an unfounded or unfair accusation, I might say, “Ok, produce your evidence, if you have any.” I might say, “That doesn’t deserve a response.” I might say, “What’s the matter with you?” But “That’s interesting” isn’t in the cards.

I don’t find it interesting when someone denies what I know to be true. I’ll say, “Nope, you’re wrong; your memory has betrayed you, or you’re lying. Which is it?” If someone says, “After everything I’ve done for you, this is how you repay me?” I will say, “I’m not repaying you. I’m doing what I believe has to be done, and our past interaction has nothing to do with it. I’m sorry my decision upsets you.” If someone says, “If you really cared, you’d agree with me, ” I’ll respond with, “Don’t try that emotional blackmail on me. It’s insulting, and I resent it.”

All around us now we are under psychological attack by people who want us be passive, fearful wimps, terrified on taking on liars, bullies and jerks directly. Don’t let them get away with it.

Dear Prof. Turley: Clean Up Your Comments Section

/ Jack Marshall / 24 Comments

I check Jonathan Turley’s blog “Res Ipsa Loquitur” a couple times a week. Why? First, he often covers a topic I am already focusing on; second, he writes well and scrupulously tries to give a balanced analysis. He also knows his lane, and generally stays in it. The professor has definitely been red-pilled in the Trump era; he is as disgusted with Democratic Party’s deceit and double standards as I am, and the Axis news media’s bias has become evident to him as well, as in this recent post.

Yes, it’s true, I also enjoy Turley’s column because I almost always agree with him (and he with me), as in his expressed disgust with Representative Roe Kahana.

But I come to admonish Turley, not to praise him. His reader comments are a disgrace. The comments on every post typically deteriorate into general Trump derangement screeds, non-substantive snarking, and rants about topics not even slightly related to Turley’s post, with an occasional substantive contribution buried in there somewhere if one is willing to scroll through meters of garbage.

In addition, most of the comments are anonymous, with three or four commenters named “Anonymous” sometimes arguing in the same thread. Turley, as a national figure with periodic columns in The Hill and New York Post as well frequent appearances on Fox News, has a lot of readers on his blog and consequently many comments, usually over a hundred per post. Today I spent over an hour on an extensive post of over a thousand words, and as of this minute, a grand total of 63 people have bothered to look at it. But quantity doesn’t mean quality on Turley’s blog because he doesn’t bother to moderate comments beyond removing spam. For the most part, the readers comments add nothing to his site. In fact, they diminish its value.

I am very proud of the tough, substantive, perceptive and thought provoking comments I see on the Ethics Alarms posts. I don’t pretend that my work here can match the professor’s for scholarship and erudition, but the commentariate laps any other blog I have encountered.

I’m in debt to you all. Thanks.

On Lincoln’s Favorite Poem, and the Poems’ We Memorize…

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

This topic is almost tangential to ethics, but not entirely. I give Althouse credit for raising it: she sometimes comments on crossword puzzles—I hate crossword puzzles and have never finished one in my life—and was set off into one of her tangents by the clue, “8 letters: “Poem so beloved by Abraham Lincoln that he carried it in his pocket and memorized it.” As it happens, I know the answer (Ann did not): it’s Poe’s “The Raven.” No surprise there: Abe was a depressive, and that dark poem about lingering suicidal thoughts fits his character and also his taste in poetry. I think “The Raven” is doggerel, and so were Lincoln’s poems: yes, he wrote poems, and was always puzzling to me that such a poetic writer would write such pedestrian poetry. He’s nt the only one who fits that description: Herman Melville’s poems, save for the one that ends “Billy Budd, ” is also shockingly bad. But I digress…

Ann guessed that the poem was “Invictus,” which would make sense if Abe favored a poem that inspired him, as, I believe, many of us do. That one ends with the famous verse,

“It matters not how strait the gate,

How charged with punishments the scroll,

I am the master of my fate,

I am the captain of my soul.”

Teddy Roosevelt loved that one, as you might guess. The topic got me thinking about how our schools used to teach ethics as well as literature, not to mention mental acuity, by requiring us to memorize poems. I’m sure they don’t do this now, and I’m also confident that the declining ethical instincts as well as literary competence of today’s youth are in part rooted in this sad development.

Poetry is becoming a dead genre. Althouse excluded songs from her musings about what favorite poems say about our values and character, and I find that strange. Song lyrics are poems, at least the best of them. No unscored poem touches me as much as Irving Kahal’s lyrics to Sammy Fain’s haunting melody, one of my late wife’s favorites….

I’ll be seeing you
In all the old familiar places
That this heart of mine embraces
All day through

In that small cafe
The park across the way
The children’s carousel
The chestnut tree, the wishing well 
I’ll be seeing you
In every lovely summer’s day
In everything that’s light and gay
I’ll always think of you that way

I’ll find you in the morning sun
And when the night is new
I’ll be looking at the moon
But I’ll be seeing you…

Similarly, the touching Longfellow poem about his depression during the Civil War over the death of his wife, the wounding of his son and the conflict dividing his country was set to music, making it classic Christmas song that has endured in the culture beyond most of his poems. Putting a poem to music shouldn’t disqualify the poem as a poem, though the melody can enhance its power and popularly.

My favorite poems were narrative poems the celebrated heroism, courage, sacrifice, devotion and nobility. I have written several times about my father’s favorite poem, Rudyard Kipling’s “If” : the lines “If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster…And treat those two impostors just the same”; has become my credo over the years, and served me well. This past Halloween I posted my favorite poem, “The Highwayman,” which I memorized when I was 10 and have recited to audiences many times since. It is about a young woman who gives her life to warn her lover. I also memorized Longfellow’s “Paul Revere’s Ride,” an inspiring poem about an American patriot.

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Ethics Observations on the A.I. Tom Cruise-Brad Pitt Fake Fight Video

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

That video was posted two days ago by Irish filmmaker Ruairi Robinson, who was nominated for an Oscar in the short film category in 2002. He says his faux fight came from a two-line prompt into A.I. bot Seedance 2.0, owned by the Chinese parent company of TikTok, ByteDance.

The video went viral after screenwriter Rhett Reese (“Deadpool & Wolverine”, “Zombieland”) posted dire thoughts about what it portends on Twitter/”X.” earlier this week.“I hate to say it,” Reese wrote. “It’s likely over for us.”

““In next to no time,” he wrote later, ” one person is going to be able to sit at a computer and create a movie indistinguishable from what Hollywood now releases. True, if that person is no good, it will suck. But if that person possesses Christopher Nolan’s talent and taste (and someone like that will rapidly come along), it will be tremendous.” Now Hollywood is trembling in terror.

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Why No, I Didn’t Know That!

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

Free-lance journalist Michael Tracy pointed out on “X” that all of the “victims” who Rep. Jayapal demanded that Pam Bondi apologize to were adults at the time of their claimed victimization by Jeffrey Epstein. Tracy asked if any news organization bothered to mention that rather salient point, especially since the Left’s narrative connecting President Trump to Epstein rests on calling Trump a presumed “pedo”-by-association.

It seems the answer is no. I certainly assumed the hand-raising women at Bondi’s hearing were all sexually exploited as minors.

The Epstein obsession is such an Ethics Train Wreck, and such a dumb one my eye-balls hurt from rolling. If Democrats succeed in the mid-terms because of the duel mendacities of the Epstein innuendos and the even dumber “affordability” talking point (“How dare Trump not lower the prices our incompetence raised?”), I think it will be fair to say that the American public is no longer intelligent enough for a republic.

I recommend a conservatorship.

In an excellent Wall Street Journal piece (which I no longer can find) on what the Epstein files didn’t include, the author wrote that the news media and Democrats are focusing on Trump’s past denials that he ever knew or suspected what his fellow billionaire was doing, when what they should be focusing on was that he alone among the many names being exposed in the files “got the hell out of there,” as soon as Epstein’s teenage girls turned up.

But that wouldn’t be “advocacy journalism.”

The Fantasy Headline

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

I don’t want to dwell on the headline above from the Times, but this is just another example of how, as in democracy’s death of a thousand cuts, our journalists deceive, confuse and manipulate public opinion. They also think they are clever about it, just as they think they are smarter than they are.

“President Trump on Thursday announced he was erasing the scientific finding that climate change endangers human health and the environment, ending the federal government’s legal authority to control the pollution that is dangerously heating the planet,” the Times piece begins. “The action is a key step in removing limits on carbon dioxide, methane and four other greenhouse gases that scientists say are supercharging heat waves, droughts, wildfires and other extreme weather.”

Well.

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Pre-Valentines Day and Lincoln’s Birthday Ethics Warm-Up, Feb. 12, 2026

/ Jack Marshall / 23 Comments

Stop me if you’ve heard this one…

My favorite Valentine’s Day memory comes from when I was a student at Harvard, directing my first show at nearby M.I.T. I had bemoaned to my cast how the holiday was bound to be a lonely one for me, as I had no girlfriend at the time and my room mates, who were all from far-flung states, where certain to be getting copious love notes in their mail boxes while mine would be, as usual, empty. (My home was in Arlington, Mass., a quick bus ride from Cambridge.) When February 14th arrived and the usual morning mail call with it, my room mate who was on mail duty that day announced, “Dick, you have eight cards. Slip, you have two. Mark, you got 12 cards. Worldman [he was Hawaiian], you also have 12. I have three, and Shithead (my room mates often called me “Shithead”) you have…these.”

And he poured out 58 little envelopes on the floor, each containing one of those little Valentines we used to exchange in elementary school. An M.I.T. coed named Nancy Green (not the original Aunt Jemima) in my chorus had persuaded every student in her dorm to write a personal message on one of those little cards, and she stamped, addressed and mailed them. It was a classic random act of kindness. Thanks, Nancy—wherever you are.

Meanwhile…

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Catching Up With “The Lincoln Lawyer” Part 3

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

This one really troubled me, because it reinforces a public misunderstanding about lawyer ethics and one that many lawyers don’t understand either. [The first two installments of this limited Ethics Alarms series are here and here.]

In Season Two of “The Lincoln Lawyer,” Mickey represented a seductive restaurant owner (above) who was accused of murdering a local real estate developer with whom she had been in conflict.

Sidebar: Mickey had intimate relations with the woman immediately prior to her being arrested and retaining him s her attorney. Not afterwards, however, because it is an ethics violation in most states to have sex with your client. Some randy lawyers have had ethics complaints dismissed by proving that they had already been making whoopee with the client, so the usual reasons for the prohibition no longer applied.

That may be true, but I regard it as unethical (and stupid) for a lawyer to ever represent a client with whom he or she has had…or even wants to have..sexual relations. The restaurant owner was obviously using her lawyer’s attraction to her to cloud his judgment.

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