Evolve.

This turning into a good thread (kiss of death!).   

I think Fred and I are amazingly on the same track.   Pornography is more pernicious and pervasive, mainly because it affects our relationships with a broad class of people i.e. the whole object class of our sexuality.  Prostitution affects our relationships with a narrow class - i.e. the supplier of services.   The effects are those of dehumanisation and objectification.  These are generally considered undesirable views to hold of our fellow humans.  And therefore society calls into action one of its correction mechanisms - shame.  Biker is right in saying that this relies on a feeling of similarity - if you don't think like us you are "outside" the group.  This is interesting because it has a very claose connection with attitudes to proz'n'porn. Outsidership is generally not a pleasant feeling - which is precisely what dehumanisation and objectification are all about.   If you exclude the subjects of pictures/tales or the worker satisfying (hopefully) your needs from your normal relations with people, the you too will be excluded from society in a similar way.   

And of course there is the counter mechanism of compassion, in two ways that I can immediately think of.... Firstly, one may feel sorry for someone whose normal sexual affairs are such that they need recourse to proz'n'porn, and given the circumstances may be inclined to moderate the condemnation.  Secondly, we may feel compassion towards the workers involved.  Despite the seductions of the porn industry, I get the impression that prostitution is not the sort of occupation that many people would engage in if some other were available.  And seeing for example the 'playmates' of Hugh Heffner doesn't exactly convince me that they have made the most of their human gifts and abilities.

This last point of course broadens the topic into what do we consider to be 'right' in peoples activities.  I have obviously suggested that human flourishing at an individual level is a primary criterion.  Some may propose that the values that we as a culture use to measure this are themselves to be set aside and that simply satisfying our own inward-looking desires should be the 'touchstone'.  This I think does not work in the case of p&p, since not even the most dyed in the wool libertarian would go for 'individualism' without something like the Harm Principle (Mill's 'do what you like EXCEPT cause harm to another').   The compassion mechanism prompts us to note that by making a market for sex-related activity we are preying on the survival needs of underclasses, and preventing them developping in other more self fulfilling ways.    Even if we go 'up market' to Playboy or high-class hookers, where the glossy propaganda is that 'they could be anything - this girl is a qualified cancer surgeon - but they CHOOSE to do this' or 'look how much MONEY they make', I suggest that the subjects are still wasting their abilities..... 

Well sure. And while you're about it so is incest, rape, paedophilia, etc.   No problem, just let it happen then.

Then why don't Nuerosurgeons, Judges, Mayors mayors and Senators do so?

What happens when they do?

As I don't have an issue with it, I don't grief them.  People that do, do.  'Nuerosurgeons, Judges, Mayors mayors and Senators' could all be looking at porn right now.  Since it's no illegal, they don't get arrested for it.  My stand is that imposing your morality on others is not right. 

Simply and straightforwardly, you are course entitled to hold ANY opinion.  You are entitled to utter some maybe all of your opinions.  And I am entitled to say that your unsupported opinions are worthless.

Our laws are imposed on us and they are obtained from our sense of moral decency.  If they were not we would be allowed to do whatever we pleased.

Quite right.  And when you catch me expressing unargued unsupported opinions, you can say nyah nyah.   However, I was actually supporting what I said, whereas you have yet to do so.