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Monday, February 27, 2006 12:00 AM

Pornographic persuasion

How to make your girlfriend OK with your porn habit.

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  • Tuesday, February 28, 2006 08:35 AM

    Commoditization isn't Immoral

    I'd like to speak out against the outdated belief that because someone was paid for something (fresh lemons, housecleaning services, an appearance in a porn movie) that it is evil. This was the specious argument originally put forth by Aristotle ("species (currency) has no intrinsic value because it cannot create") that was repeated in Western Civilization by St. Thomas Aquinas and ended up resulting in the belief that Jews were evil because they dealt in money (arguably; Chaim Potok would take issue with this theory).

    Sex is beautiful. Viewing people having sex can be enjoyable. Paying for things is not immoral. Watching beautiful (in the eye of the beholder) sex that someone was paid to have is not intrinsically immoral. But, there is a slippery slope to deciding that "money is the root of all evil," a slippery slope that leads to intellectual laziness and laying the blame for humanity's faults at the door of a simple tool.

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