ORGIVENESS strikes me as far more virtuous than I had heretofore realized.  Of course, like any other good, we should not forgive no matter what.  It is certainly possible for a person not to merit forgiveness.  But what I should like to reject is the idea that there are certain acts which in and of themselves are unforgivable—acts which, by their very nature, are unforgivable.  I am not sure that this idea even makes sense; and, in any case, I am not sure that this is a good idea from the standpoint of humanity.

Lest there be any misunderstanding, I do not accept the Christian idea that we should forgive merely because, in virtue of being human, we all make mistakes.  That is true enough.  Still, there are lots and lots of mistakes that I am not about to make—at least not in the absence of a quite radical change in my life.  Thus, it is exceedingly difficult to imagine a situation in which I would commit cold-blooded murder or a situation in which I would rape another person. 

Why, I can barely imagine myself getting into a good fight.  So committing cold-blooded murder or rape is way beyond the pale.  I am undoubtedly flawed.  But there are, in fact, limits to the ways in which I am flawed, in that some modes of evil are not something that I would ever do.  So the Christian idea alluded to in the preceding paragraph does not seem quite applicable in those cases where a person has every good reason to believe that the wrong in question is utterly beyond anything that I would ever do.  We may all make mistakes.  However, it is simply false that all of us make all the mistakes that there are to be made. 

My view is not what I referred to as the Christian review.  Rather, I hold that it is in principle possible for anyone to redeem herself or himself, whereas the Christian view can often be seen as requiring that a person forgives even if the wrongdoes not redeem herself or himself.

Imagine, for instance, a person such as Opidopo who commits a violent rape.  I think that it is possible for such a person to redeem himself.  In prison Opidopo could come to grips with the wickedness of what he did; and devote the rest of his life giving lectures about the wrong that he did; and helping others not to commit that wrong.  He might, for instance, provide those who would commit rape with insights that would help them to recognize when they are on the verge of committing such a deep and that would help them to take steps to prevent them from committing such a deed.  Opidopo begins each lecture with a deep and contrite apology for the wrong that he committed.  He begs for forgiveness over and over again. 

My view is that Opidopo has redeemed himself.  Of course, he did not undo the wrong that he did.  But it is obvious that nothing can.  But that surely is the wrong concern.  The correct concern is whether or not his character has in fact changed in the right way.  And this question does not receive a negative answer merely because the wrong done cannot be undone. 

My view is that in the scenario that I have given, it is clear that Opidopo has redeemed himself and has earned forgiveness.  Thus, I hold that not forgiving him bespeaks something mean and vicious. 

As I have said, there are wrongs that cannot be undone and there are wrongs for which no compensation is possible.  But these truths does not change the fact that a person has become contrite beyond words and that he has gone on year after year after year to do everything in his power to live a life that addresses the wrong that he did.  In the face of this sort of behavior, merely focusing upon the fact that one has been wronged strikes me as woefully egotistical. 

Needless to say, time is a factor here.  On the one hand, I am not much moved by the person who merely shows contrition when caught or when being sentenced.  These behaviors are easily enough.  Nor am I much moved by the person who makes an effort to speak to the wrong that he did when he is being watched by another.  On the other hand, though, there is something rather majestic about the person who year after year after year tirelessly address the significant wrong that he committed and who continually acknowledges with great contrition the wrong that he did. 

I think that redemption for egregious wrongs has to be earned; and I think that in principle it is always possible to earn it.  What is clear, of course, is that many do not earn redemption.  Indeed, many willfully choose not to do so.  However, I never once suggested otherwise.  More importantly, the truth that many do not earn redemption for the egregious wrongs that they have committed should not blind us to the truth that a person can earn redemption if only she or he should so choose. 

Now, if this idea seems implausible I suggest that we think about the future in the terms of never forgiving for certain wrongs.  In so many ways, this attitude strikes me as a source of evil itself.  Indeed, it privileges the wrongs of the past above the goodness of the present and future.  And there is something woefully malicious about that. 

Part of the very problem with the world today is that someone somewhere is determined to settle an old “moral” debt, a consequence of which is that an innocent person is wronged for something that his ancestors did. 

The wrongs of the past are carried into the future by a very simple moral attitude: It is called holding a grudge.  But what else is holding a grudge but simply refusing to forgive no matter what the person does.  Holding a grudge is tantamount to making a commitment to not forgive a person, no matter what he does.  And I cannot, for the life of me, see how this a good moral lesson to teach the future. 

Forgiveness as I conceive of it is not a form of weakness.  Quite the contrary, it demands excellence on the part of the wrongdoer.  And I unequivocally held that it is right to demand excellence of a wrongdoer; accordingly, it is right to refrain from forgiving a wrongdoer who fails to exhibit that excellence. 

What strikes me as a weakness is a frailty that privileges ones harms over any and every good that a person might, out of deep, deep contrition, go on to do.  That is weakness—the failure to have the wherewithal to rise above one’s pain and see the good that wrongdoer is now doing.. 

By contrast, I see nothing but strength and enormous strength at that when one can find the will to see the excellence that another has now committed himself to doing out of contrition notwithstanding the pain that one still suffers.  That is strength.  That is moral fortitude.  That is morally admirable behavior—something that we can commend to the future. 

What makes for a better moral world?  Is it one in which we commit ourselves to holding a grudge for the wrongs committed against us?  Or, is it one in which we find the wherewithal to demand the excellence that a wrongdoer has forever pledged himself to doing?  Surely, the former alternative is none other than evil that claims to be justified—evil masquerading as pain. 

t is not enough to refrain from saying the word “chink” or “spic” or “nigger”.  And so on.  Needless to say, just about everything turns upon the reasons why one refrains from doing so.  It is this simple truth that the demigods of political correctness seem to ignore.  Political correctness is by and large a failure precisely because it amounts to nothing more than a form of coercion that is indifferent to the motivations with which people behave in the right way.

To be sure, there is lots and lots to be said for having the desirable behavior in and of itself.  Yet, if the issue is one of respect, then desirable behavior alone is just not enough.  The desirable behavior has to flow from the right motivations; and if it is does not, then the desirable behavior does not, and cannot, exemplify respect. 

Political correctness without trust is morally bankrupt. 

What we want is not just the right sort of behavior.  Rather, we want the right sort of behavior for the right reason—at least far more often than not. 

All of us are motivated to behave untoward ways from time.  An aberration is one thing; a sustained pattern is quite another. 

Now, the demigods of political correctness are more than a little too content with merely the right behavior; and that tells me something quite significant, namely that they are more besotted with their power to coerce and to bully others than with bringing it about the others behave with the right motivation.

As a black professor of mostly non-black students, it is most unsatisfactory that increasingly non-black students afraid to say anything interesting for fear of offending me.  Or it is now supposed that the only interesting explanation in my eyes is one that pertains to race.  Thus, when I asked last semester “Why do you think I believe in free speech?,” a member of my 400 student class responded “Because your people have suffered!”  I had trouble believing my ears.  Something has gone terribly wrong when that response is deemed as a satisfactory answer to the question that I had asked. 

But this is what one should expect in a world driven by political correctness, which in turn is a world driven by fear. 

Political correctness is tantamount to none other than an exercise in appeasement—not respect.  If this is right, then there is a profoundly real sense in which everyone can be going around saying the right words although as a matter of fact it turns out that society is actually worse off. 

This brings me to another insight about political correctness, namely that it is not about courage.  There is nothing at all courageous about exercising enormous power over another.  Indeed, there is a straightforward sense that such an individual can be seen as a coward; for she or he does not in any way whatsoever put herself or himself at risk. 

Thus, far from underwriting and engaging our common humanity, the demigods of political correctness widens the gulf by its employment of fear.  This is because nothing generates more resentment and hostility towards another than being constantly bullied by another generates enormous hostility and resentment towards that person.  This is lesson from basic psychology.  This observation underscores the point made two paragraphs ago: Indeed, it can be plausibly held that political correctness is doing more harm than good. 

To be sure, I do not want to be the object of a racial epithet.  But I can honestly say that if this is only because someone fears that I am going to commit violence against her or him, then not hurling a racial epithet at me is woefully unsatisfying.  For fear is the only motivation for the moral reticence, then the refraining from using a racial epithet is not in any way anchored in respect for me.  Accordingly, it does not affirm me at all. 

Presumably, the aim of political correctness was to foster respect for all.  Alas, somewhere along the line it became the exercise of power became more important than the ideal of respect.  Consequently, political correctness as it is practiced nowadays is none other than a bankrupt moral ideology. 

regard marriage as one of the most extraordinary institutions that has been a product of human and social interaction.  As the institution has evolved in Western cultures, there is nothing that two people voluntarily do that so completely embodies the very ideals of self-knowledge, foresight, and self-command.  There is something truly extraordinary about choosing now to spend the rest of one’s life with a person. No other species on the face of the earth comes even close to making that decision. 

There are, to be sure, some species that mate for life—whooping cranes, for instance.  But this they do not choose to do in the profound sense that humans chose to do so. 

In the past, cultural and community norms buttressed served to underwrite the ideal of “until death do us part”.  But in a highly transient and anonymous society, those norms have faded by the wayside.  What is more, we now celebrate the idea of giving in to one’s desires as a sign of fulfilling the “real self”.  Consequently, nearly 50% of marriages among humans often last fewer than 8 years.  In a word, the institution of marriage is in big troubled.  

This statistic tells us many things.  But one thing for sure that it tells us is that love is not enough.  For love, no matter intense at one point in life, can fade.  Presumably, no one intends for this to happen.  And that fact tells us something us, namely that notwithstanding our best intentions at the outset, love can fade if we do not attend to it.  And in this regard, modernity is an abject failure.  The ideal of marriage is not given the support that it is needed.

In this regard, then, a community has a marvelous idea that in spirit, at least, needs to be universally endorsed.  While the idea of a “shotgun” marriage is great for theatre and fantasy, the truth of the matter is that shotgun marriages are often a disaster for reality, if only because the involved parties do not know one another well enough to know that they are compatible with one another and to have the trust in one another that survives fundamental difficulties. 

As wonderful as love is, the unvarnished truth is that love is not trust.  Nor is love the knowledge that two people need of one another’s temperament and personality that makes trust possible. 

So the community of Clackamas County (OR), which involves more than 170 churches, has implemented social programs that involve rigorous marriage counseling and that refuses to perform shotgun marriages. 

In Clackamas County (OR), it turns out that mostly churches are involved in the program.  The ideal, though, is one that can be embraced by society in general.  The ideal does not have to be religious as such, since the non-religious, too, typically take the vows of “until death do us part”. 

Society has an invested interest in stable marriages, especially when children are involved.  Sex is about the passion.  Marriage is about the future.  Of course, it should involve marriage and sex in the future.  But the challenge lies in two people having the wherewithal to do just that.  And the best evidence available to us is that modernity does not facilitate two individuals having precisely that wherewithal. 

People can and do live together without getting married.  Accordingly, there is something to be said for making marriage a special social institution precisely because of the significance that it has in society and the damage that divorce does, especially when children are involved.  Even where children are not involved, divorce typically occasions bitterness and rancor like nothing else does.

The idea should be not be to refuse marriage to anyone.  Rather, it would simply put in place in a set of procedures that must be followed before a marriage license is issued—something that would bring to the foreground the reality that a successful marriage requires considerable familiarity and self-command. 

Nowadays, the focus marriage seems to be the wedding day rather than the future of living together.  The idea, then, is that a marriage license should be more about sanctioning the reality of the future of living together than occasioning the wedding day. 

There is a certain irony in modernity in that it is undermining the wherewithal of individuals to take their future lives seriously.  Given how central the institution of marriage is to the stability of society, it would be a very good thing if society moved to solidify the value of marriage.  Next to nothing is lost in terms of freedom; and what is gained in terms of stability is immeasurably beneficial to society. 

Freedom ain't everything, a point that Jean-Jacques Rousseau saw ever so clearly. 

here is a line of argument that goes like this: “They are going to have sex any way; so we might as well give them condoms or the pill”.  Needless to say, this argument is woefully problematic.  For instance, no one would think to argue “Well, they are going to murder any way; so we might as well give them a gun; otherwise, they will steal guns”.  Of course, there is a fundamental difference here in that there is nothing in principal wrong with sex; whereas murder is morally wrong, period.  But there is a most important respect in which either case raises a significant issue, namely the issue of condoning behavior.

Legally, of course, the liberty to do something does not constitute condoning it.  After all, people should not drink if they have significant problems with alcohol consumption.  Yet, they nonetheless have the legal liberty to drink.  A legal liberty in no way constitutes a form of social condoning. 

In law, adults have lots of liberties and the idea is that they should bring to the exercise of each liberty the judgment that doing so is or is not a good thing.  Sometimes, we rightly conclude that we should never exercise a given liberty, as would be the case if we cannot at all handle alcohol consumption.  Sometimes, we rightly conclude that the exercise of a liberty is inappropriate only in this instance, as when we make the assessment it would better that we not make a given purchase at this point in time.

In the State of Maine, there are middle schools that have proposed giving the birth control pill to the female students who attend the school.  To be sure, the idea is to do this with the permission of the student’s parents.  But if that does not work, there are the so-called special circumstances that allow birth control to be administered to a child in the name of the child’s privacy.  I think that this is called undercutting parental authoritity, but let us set this matter aside. 

Now, bearing in mind that children in middle school are between the ages of 11 and 13 years of age, the first observation I want to make is that for children of this age permission to obtain the birth control pill is seen by them as none other than parental and school approval.  And there is the rub.  No parent should be approving of the pill for an 11 or a 13 year old.  No school should be doing so.

Besides, giving the pill to a 13 year old presupposes something that seems implausible at the outset, namely adequate maturity on the child’s part to administer the pill in the way that it is supposed to be administered.  Arguably, if a 13 year old had that kind of maturity, then the issue of using birth control would not be there in the first place. 

Then there is this matter.  One of the most important things that a parent can instill in their children, and schools should underwrite, is a measure of self-control.  By definition, to have self-control is to have the ability to resist strong desires the satisfaction of which would be harmful. 

If this is right, precisely what parental permission for an 11-13 year old to use the pill amounts to is telling the child to give in to her sexual desires.  This is not only the wrong lesson to teach a child a young girl, this is to prepare her ever so poorly for the future. 

No one has ever lived well who has not been able to exercise considerable self-control over giving into her or his desires.  And it is safe to say that no one ever shall. 

The issue is not whether sex is a wonderful thing.  Surely it is.  But there is a time and a place for it.  There is no respect in which 11-13 years old is the right time to be having sex. 

And if this consideration were not enough, what about the issue of failed birth control measures?  Do we just treat giving an 11-13 an old abortion rather like giving her a haircut?  It goes without saying that no one that age should be forced to have a child.  Absolutely not.  Assume, then, that abortion is the right option.  Alas, this assumption does not in any way trivialize the impact of performing the procedure of an abortion on girls between the ages of 11 and 13.. 

Measured fear and shame can be a good thing.  And modernity has lost sight of this truth.  The young have to contend with raging hormones and a multitude of desires the satisfaction of which seem ever so appealing.  Measured fear and shame can be a formidable dam in helping the young to resist a wealth of desires.  Measured fear and shame can work where reason alone does not. 

It is often the case that reason does not work for full-fledged adults.  So it is just plain silly to suppose that reason will readily work for 11-13 year olds. 

If at the age of 11 years old a child is a moral fortress-in-the-making, then parents and the school should be the moral moorings that buttress that fortress.  The very idea of distributing birth control pills to girls in middle school is tantamount to abandoning that role, be it the parents or the school who does so.

And if these considerations were not enough, there is this.  We are supposed to be teaching young girls that the value of their bodies is not simply a function of their ability to be pleasing boys.  I think that this idea goes by the name of feminism.  Accordingly, I would have thought that teaching young girls to feel good about themselves when they say “No” to the sexual advances of boys would have first priority. 

If this is right, then there is a fundamental respect in which parents reveal themselves to be unfit in signing the permission for their daughter in middle school to receive birth control pills.  This is rather like giving one’s child permission to walk across a field replete with landmines.  It is impossible for parents to do that and really be concerned with the well-being of their child.  For the 11-13 old girl, having to be concerned with taking the pill is none other one fundamental concern too many. 

There will always be under-aged children who have sex.  But this is hardly a reason for either parents or schools or society in general to condone such behavior, or even to give the impression that they condone it.  After all, there will always be children who drop out of school or who take drugs, from which it most surely does not follow that we should merely be accepting of it. 

There is a difference between excoriating condemnation and strong disapproval.  There can little doubt that in the past some parents went overboard and that social scorn overshot the mark.  The corrective here lies not in withdrawing disapproval entirely when children do wrong.  Quite the contrary, even in adulthood it turns out that shame and disapproval play a significant role in buttressing our moral fortress. 

Over the years, I have been blessed to forge some wonderful ties.  And while I take myself to be an extremely strong person, it does not bother me at all to acknowledge that my will to do what is right has been mightily strengthened by my wish not to disappoint those who have believed in me.  From a public radio figure such as Dr. Laura Schlessinger, with whom I once communicated on a regular basis, to my Ph. D. and undergraduate students: I am not worse off given that I would not want to be the object of their disapproval.  Quite the contrary, I have found succor and strength in precisely the fact that they have all had very high expectations of me. 

Nothing is more corrosive of the life of those in their formative years than low expectations on the part of parents and schools.  How on earth will children ever have high moral and intellectual expectations of themselves, if those raise and train children (that is, parents and teachers) do not have high expectations of children?  The simple truth is that distributing the pill in schools, with or without the permission of parents, is rather like taking a bull-horn and announcing in the school yard that one expects the females to become sluts.

None of this requires having a puritanical regarding sex.  Rather, it requires that adults, be they parents or teachers, accept the responsibility of inculcating in children those values that will underwrite the reality of children becoming wholesome adults.  If, as many would suppose, society is going to hell in a hand-basket, the explanation might very well be that we have paved that very road with the lives of children by failing to be morally and intellectually responsible in raising them.  The motto of the day, then, might be this: To fail the children of a society is to destroy that society.   

he University of Connecticut Law School has asked Professor Robert L. Birmingham to take a leave of absence for his provocative teaching style.  The fundamental issue is this: What aspects of reality can we actually discuss in the name of inclusiveness?  That is, if whites or Arabs or Chinese are pimping in the streets, can we talk about this?  Or, must we remain silent about these matters because doing so bothers those in the class who are members of the ethnic groups in question?

o imagine that your soon-to-be 18-year old child is hot, hot, hot.  The child is blazingly hot.  This amazingly attractive child declares to you that she or he wants to be a prostitute.   Your child is very business savvy and knows that if done right, prostitution can pay very well.  And, of course, your child intends to do it right.  I mean a good prostitute can earn from $300 to $400 a night.  That is between $2100 and $2800 a week, which amounts to over $100,000 a year.  Most people will never make that kind of money—certainly not at the beginning of their careers and certainly not for so little time.  So what on earth does one say to one’s amazing intelligent and strikingly attractive child?

Significantly, most people who seem to think that there is nothing wrong with being a prostitute are exceedingly reluctant to recommend prostitution as a career choice for their own children.  There appears to be no sentiment among parents that there should be a school for educating people who want to be prostitutes.  Is the attitude here merely a moral relic?  Or, is there something right in the idea that no decent parents should want their child to be a prostitute?

Of course, this raises questions about the nature of prostitution itself.  Why isn’t it merely one activity among others that a person might choose to do?  People engage in all sorts of activities for a multitude of reasons; and foremost among these are pleasure and making money.  Not only that, some of these activities are risky enough.  Football players, for instance, may endure a concussion or become crippled for life.  Prostitution has its risks, but these risks can surely be kept at a minimum if one exercises the right precautions; and a high-end prostitute can do just that.

So why should prostitution be considered a career choice just like any other any of the prevailing activities that people choose?  To be sure, a given individual might not choose prostitution for all sorts of reasons, including profoundly personal ones.  But the same is true of all other activities.  There is no one job or activity that everyone wants to pursue and there are lots of jobs and activities that lots of people do not in any way whatsoever want to pursue.  I, for instance, cannot even imagine wanting to be a boxer or wanting to raise cattle. 

Armed with these considerations, your child rightly points out that some people are good with using their body for sports, taking on various risks, whereas others, as it turns out, are good with using their bodies for sex and then your child forcefully asks: What is the difference, given that a person accrues money and happiness (and, of course, no one is harmed)? 

Your child’s question becomes particularly poignant in a world that places increasingly greater emphasis upon obtaining pleasure, on the one hand, and that has become increasingly skeptical of the idea of right and wrong, on the other.  If there is no right and wrong and, moreover, sex occasions lots of pleasure, then as they say nowadays: Who is to sex that the choice of being a prostitute is wrong or objectionable in any way? 

In what follows, I shall attempt to provide an answer to “Who is to say that the choice of being a prostitute is objectionable?”  A good answer can be given that does not simply rely upon unsupportable sentiments. 

To begin with, there is the issue of what counts as happiness.  If happiness amounts to no more than moments of euphoria, then surely nothing can be said against pursuing prostitution in order to become happy.  But then not much can be said against being a crack-head either.  A wealthy crack-head could be in a constant state of euphoria, harming no one.  So, we know that happiness understood as moments of euphoria can be open to substantial moral criticism.  The same point can be made about the happy slave: the person who cannot imagine life without being subordinate to another and who harms absolutely no one.

Accordingly, from the fact that a person is happy doing what she or he is doing, and is harming no one, what does not thereby follow is that the person cannot be open to criticism for what she or he is doing.

Now, there is another very important issue.  Our bodies are a fundamental aspect of who we are.  And what we let people do with our bodies is of no small importance.  It is easy enough to miss this in the case of prostitution because, after all, sex can be a truly marvelous activity.  Suppose that a person loves to let people urinate upon her or him.  This by itself causes no harm; and a good shower afterwards washes away all traces of urine.  Everybody is made happier: the human-urine target and the urinating person.  I suspect that few would go: if prostitution is just fine, then so is being a human-urine target.  But why not?

The very nature of prostitution is not just about the sex act itself, but a host of attitudes that the “clients” bring to the sex act.  And even with sex, there is all the difference in the world between (a) having someone use one’s body for her or his own fantasies and (b) having someone respect one’s body; and the transfer of money does not turn the former [(i.e., (a)] into the latter [i.e., (b)]. 

I should think it extremely important not to trivialize the host of unwholesome attitudes to which a prostitute subjects herself.  It is no doubt possible for a prostitute to establish a personal rapport with a client.  But that already transforms the nature of the sexual relationship between the two.  I trust that I need not remind you that there is a world of difference between (i) having sex with someone whom one wants to please because one cares about that person in some way and (ii) having sex with someone whom one must “please” simply because one needs to be known for being good at sex.  Anyone who does not see the extraordinary difference between (i) and (ii) is either lying or has not yet been sexually active.  Needless to say, prostitution is about (ii) rather than (i). 

It is because there is a profound difference between (i) and (ii) that we can very quickly ask whether a prostitute can have self-respect.  Sex is about letting someone have access to one’s body in a most intimate way.  Whatever, lecturing to a class might be about, it most assuredly is not about that.  I have supposed that lecturing to a class is about cultivating the intellectual excellence of those in the audience.  Of course, this involves the use of the body.  Just so, it is unequivocally not about letting others having access to one’s body in a most intimate way. 

We can easily bring this out by simply looking at mere touch between human beings.  It is no accident at all that the ways in which we touch one another is indicative of the degree of closeness that we have between one another.  Except among close friends, the bodily touching that we do is very limited—typically involving only a hand-shake.  And this is not just a cultural thing.  Even in a country such as France, where men with close bonds greet one another with a kiss on each cheek, it is still true that the ways in which people touch one another is quite significant.  The kiss on each cheek presupposes a rather rich bond of friendship.  And how that kiss gets done is extremely well-defined.  The kiss on each cheek will never ever, under any circumstances, be mistaken for or turn into a kiss of passion. 

The relevance of all of this to prostitution is that no psychologically healthy person can be indifferent to what is done with her or his body by another (even with the issue of harm aside).  The regular exchange of money for intimate access to one’s body, where there is no familiarity at all between oneself and the other, does not minimize the enormous significance of having one’s body be used in this way by another.  It is for this reason that the issue of having respect for oneself becomes a very live issue in the case of prostitution. 

For the record, I have not claimed that it is impossible for a prostitute to have self-respect.  There is always an exceedingly unusual story that can be told.  Rather, I hold the following: Just as the vast majority of black slaves did not go on to become like Frederic Douglass or the vast majority of survivors of the concentration camps did not go on to become like Elie Wiesel, it is most unlikely that most prostitutes would have self-respect. 

We should abstain from any activity that is highly likely to render us numb to what people do with and to our bodies.  It is very difficult to be a prostitute and not become numb to precisely that. 

Even in a world in which is all about satisfying one’s personal preferences, there are some preferences that we should not satisfy though doing so gives rise to a state of euphoria if as it happens satisfying that preference is highly likely to render us numb to what others do to and with our bodies.  I have argued that prostitution is precisely that sort of activity. 

At the very least, then, you can now give your child something quite substantive to think about.