Would you allow this paladin in your game? (new fiction added 11/11/08)

[fusangite]

So, Sigil,

Just to clarify, is it your position that killing twelve year old girls who have committed no crime whenever you feel like it, simply because they are mean all the time is perfectly consistent with the Chaotic Good alignment?

 

[Elder-Basilisk]

Originally Posted by Elder Basilisk
I would guess that those of us who do so believe the problems of prostitution to be inherent in the institution while the abuses of feudal aristocracies are either extrinsic to the institutions (and therefore, supporting the institution is not supporting the abuse as such) or intrinsic to power structures in general (and hence unavoidable without supporting anarchy).

This strikes be as absurdly subjective. A system that collapses if the individuals within it have equality with one another, or are enfranchised, is, by our limited cultural definitions, an inherently evil way of living. Fortunately, D&D accommodates a level of cultural relativism that allows us to still have good people within this system. How, then do you propose that D&D does not allow a sufficient level of relativism for prostitution to be non-evil in any situation whatsoever?

I can't say your position strikes me as any less subjective. However, let's see if we can salvage something from the impasse here:
1. You're confusing a standard for evaluating acts with a standard for evaluating people. Starting from the assumption that lying is an evil act, it does not necessarily follow that anyone who ever tells a lie is an evil person in non-theological terminology. So, it's quite possible for D&D to simultaneously have a system that makes both vassalage and prostitution evil all the time and yet to simultaneously allow us to have good people--even good prostitutes--living within the system.

The situation is somewhat different for paladins since paladins have to keep track, not only of their virtue-standing (personal alignment), but also have to avoid specifically evil acts. That's the crux of this discussion. Sir Cedric could conceivably be Lawful Good (though he doesn't sound like it in the initial story and the other parts of the story are simply "rude paladin acts like a badass"). Lawful good characters can commit evil acts from time to time and the effect of a particular act on the overall evaluation of their character is not always clear. Where I part company with Shilsen is in whether or not Sir Cedric can be a paladin.

2. I don't see anything inherently evil about a hierarchical social system. It would be uncomfortable for most north americans, but as long as the natural rights of people are respected, I don't see it as necessarily better or worse than any other system. Systems are evaluated on the protection of natural rights and their effect on the virtue of their citizens, rather than on how closely they correspond to modern egalitarianism. Egalitarian democracy is a tool for achieving that; not a fundamental plank of my moral system.

Prostitution is not inherently non-consensual. Feudalism is. Prostitution is not inherently unequal. Feudalism is. Prostitution is not inherently disenfranchising. Feudalism is.

Consent is a somewhat fuzzy concept itself it you get right down to it (as is demonstrated by the various sex codes and rules at universities which sometimes seem to suggest that consent can be withdrawn after the fact, the notion of tacit consent, the notions of an age of consent (which seems to imply that insent must be informed and competent and that, at certain times, some people are unable to meaningfully consent to acts or obligations whether sex or credit cards). More to the point, neither consent nor enfranchisement are the lodestones of my ethical system. On this point, it is sufficient to say that prostitution is wrong because it is contrary to the inherently intimate and non-commercial nature of sex.

That said, I would argue that prostitution is inherently--or at least inescapably--unequal. So, if you choose to make consent and equality the only guiding lights of your moral system, it's still inconsistent to support prostitution.

So please clarify for me. Which modern values are so transcultural and transhistorical that they make prostitution always bad and which modern values are ones you're prepared to see as an inessential cultural attribute?

Hmm. I don't think I necessarily said the values were modern unless simply being held by a contemporary individual makes them so. However, for a short list, I think:
truth, [retributive] justice, piety (sacred and familial), and sexual morality make the cut. Much as I like them, egalitarianism, free market capitalism, and democracy do not.

Well, evidence against you here. Almost every society in history has involved prostitution and none has collapsed because of it. Now war, on the other hand…

I know this isn't directed towards me, but it seems a particularly weak argument. It's very difficult to point out the single specific cause of most societal collapses. Losing a war is far more often how that happens than why it happened. There are, however, a good number of societies which were destroyed or badly damaged after becoming lazy, decadent, and hedonistic. Greece was conquered by Philip of Macedon and Alexander because the Greeks lacked the will to heed the warnings of precedent men. Similarly decadence was the undoing of the Roman and Ottoman empires. If one were to analyze the moral decay, prostitution would almost certainly play a part of it. (Plautus, at least, provides plenty of evidence of that for Rome).

Originally Posted by Elder Basilisk
The question is not "would the prostitutes be better off without Cedric?" but rather, "is prostitution inherently evil/wrong"

Well, that's fine and dandy if you can show that it is. But you can't just declare an absolute transcultural truth by fiat here. There are cultures that had sacred prostitutes. Is it your contention that the letter of the D&D rules prohibits these cultures from being non-evil?

It's no more declaring an absolute transcultural truth by fiat than saying that all inhibitions against prostitution are strictly cultural and have no truth value. The absence of transcultural moral significance is just as significant a declaration as its presence.

As for sacred prostitution, you're conflating several distinct things:
1. The letter of the D&D rules specifies that good and evil are transcultural. They do not, however, specify a very exhaustive content. So, while the letter of the D&D rules may not make prostitution evil, if prostitution is evil (which the D&D rules do not specify), they specify that it is transculturally evil and would influence participants alignments towards evil.

2. You're once again conflating the use of alignment as an evaluative tool for individuals or societies with its use as an evaluative tool for acts or practices. It's quite possible (indeed, it's even likely) that a neutral society (or even a good one) would have a number of evil cultural practices. The overall judgement of the culture is separate from the evaluation of each of its practices just like the evaluation of Hitler [evil, lest anyone be confused] is separate from the evaluation of his vegetarianism and anti-tobacco stance.

3. You seem to be under the impression that "sacred" prostitution is generally different from the normal kind. My understanding of the subject is that temple prostitutes were not necessarily free or respected. In fact, my impression of a lot of it is that the temples and shrines were just a religious veneer on top of the practice of prostitution--much like in Paradigm Concepts' Arcanis setting, most prostitutes have a shrine to Larissa in their place of business and call it "receiving Larissa's blessings."

Your argument does not get any stronger by bringing examples of cultural relativism. Different cultures have different thoughts about sex. Different cultures also have different thoughts about slavery, genocide, rape, torture, and pretty much anything else you can come up with.

Agreed. Well, I admire your consistency. So, you feel that the rules also prohibit setting games in Roman-style slave societies, Iroquous-style societies where torture is part of the male citizenship ritual and Viking-style or Mongol-style societies where female war captives become the conqueror's sexual property. It seems to me that you have adopted the view that D&D cannot and should not model the vast majority of societies based on the historical past, or even those that comprise a significant portion of those depicted in fantasy novels. I personally like Roman, Iroquous and Mongol inspired D&D societies and would be quite unhappy if I felt the rules prohibited them as settings.

I think you're mistaken to think that just because D&D can't model them as GOOD societies, it can't model them. For me, a part of the interest in playing in such a society would be to explore the difference between their cultural conception of what it means to be a good Roman or a good Mongol and what it actually means to be a good person. That need not be done in a didactic or even obvious way--it's fine to play a character who embodies the Roman ideals but has LN or LE written on his character sheet instead of LG. Similarly, a viking game is easily supported by the D&D rules, but if I were playing Grettir the Strong or Skarphedin, I wouldn't have a good alignment on my character sheet.

The idea that D&D good and evil are meant to model the worldview of the cultures one encounters in game is an absurd one anyway that should be shattered as soon as one realizes that the goblin cleric with the Evil domain and Unholy Blight actually embodies the ideals of goblin society. If one asked the goblin who he was smiting with the spell, he certainly wouldn't say "good people." He might say "adherents of the slave/human morality," "enemies," or "the [morally] weak." That it actually harms good characters and neutral characters is the transcultural effect that produces the goblin's cultural view. Similarly, Hextorites would not refer to themselves as evil, but would have a different word for the epitome of their ideals. The game system evaluates the goal as evil. The characters do not and should not.

However, as I read the PHB, D&D takes that bull by the horns and posits good and evil (and law and chaos) as universal, transhistorical, transcultural phenomena.

I'll agree with you there. I think the single biggest flaw is that the alignment system tries to force you to only tell stories about modern people with modern values stumbling around with swords and armour. But you're right. The rules tell me that this is what I should do. Fortunately, the actual practice of gaming doesn't result in that. In fact, people continue to publish settings for slave societies, societies that torture their war captives and societies that make female war captives the sexual property of the conquerors; so, evidently, I am not alone in deviating from your highly literal reading of the rules.

If you want to slap a [Good] alignment on them, you may be more alone than you think. I rather like the Arcanis setting which features nearly all of the things you list, but it doesn't generally insist that the slave traders are good aligned. In fact, I think the setting is at its most interesting where the various cultural practices and effects make it hard for a character to know what the right thing to do is and/or supports characters who don't care what the right thing to do is as much as they care what the Elori or Coryani thing to do is--or what the profitable thing to do is.

Myself, I think it took the easy way out by refusing to give aggregate alignments rather than labelling the whole world as lawful evil to true neutral (with the possible exceptions of Solanos Mor and Tir Betoq). The paradigm people evidently think that such aggregate labelling wouldn't be helpful and aren't happy with alignment in general. But that's beside the point.

The paladin class is explicitly tied to these transhistorical, transcultural concepts.

Here, I also agree with you to an extent. I agree that there is a sexual morality that attaches to the class. But in my view, the rules as written, do not associate the paladin with these transhistorical, transcultural values any more than they do any other class. My argument against Cedric is one grounded in archetypes not in the rules -- because to ground these things in the rules would make it impossible for there to be good Roman emperors or good khans.

And how would that would be different from reality?

Seriously though, I'm not sure why one needs to have good Roman emperors in order to be able to faithfully model Rome or good Khans to model the mongols. If we say that the great emperor is Lawful Neutral, how does that make him any less (or more) the embodiment of Roman ideals?

1. There are more options to playing D&D than simply A. Modern people with modern thoughts in modern cultures but with magical-medieval tech and B. Foreign people with foreign thoughts in different (usually ancient) cultures with magical-medieval tech. The concept of alignment offers a way to play the second while still evaluating the cultures and perspectives adopted. One can play culturally in Thay and still say "they're evil." Doing so is not necessarily a modern thought (I would argue that it is timeless) and, in fact, it seems particularly alien to the (post) modern point of view.

Your reading of alignment doesn't seem to do that. I agree that there exist readings of alignment that do so. But yours does not. If there are no conditions under which slavery can be non-evil, you have made the good emperor an impossibility.

No more than having no conditions for prostitution to be non-evil makes a good prostitute impossible. (And I'm not arguing that there's no such thing as a good aligned prostitute or John; I'm just arguing that prostitution is evil and therefore forbidden to paladins).

Returning yet again to the distinction between the evaluation of individuals or societies and acts or social practices, it's quite possible to have a good character who commits some evil acts--just not a paladin who does so.

And in your model, they are not playing culturall in Thay. They are outside Thay's culture looking in. Just as they would be if they found themselves in ancient Rome or ancient Egypt. That's not playing in a setting at all.

No they're not. They're proper Thayvians. It's just something that the players acknowledge to be an evil campaign. You seem to write as if all characters had to be good aligned or believe in the ideals of good. For all that I don't allow evil charactes in my campaigns, and generally don't find evil campaigns attractive, an evil campaign where the characters didn't pursue "evil," but rather pursue their own goals in a manner consistent with their [evil] culture could be interesting. And I certainly don't generally require that characters be dedicated to good as an abstract concept or specific moral order. (One of the interesting facets in my most recent campaign is how some characters whose goals are not primarily moral have been interacting with a moral universe).

1. How does Sir Cedric reliably tell the difference between OK and not-ok prostitution?

By being observant. The same way he can tell who he should kill and who he shouldn't.

Sir Cedric's judgement seems a lot more likely to be impaired when the prospect of sexual pleasure is involved than otherwise--especially given his attitude that the world owes pleasure to him in return for his great services. (Also, at least in the story, there doesn't seem to be any great amount of discernment required for him to know who to kill--the bad guys he does kill might as well have t-shirts that say "Team Bad Guy.")

2. In exactly what cultures that could support paladins would this kind of behavior be seen as admirable?

I'm with you here. I think that the paladin archetype doesn't have enough room for Cedric. However, responding more generally to your point, not everything a paladin does has to be admirable. The paladin merely needs to be an admirable individual overall. If there is a requirement that every single a paladin does be admirable, then we are close to beating all the role playing out of the role.

I don't think we can boil the paladin down to simply needing to be an admirable individual all things considered. That's a lawful good character. A paladin is held to a much higher standard. He cannot commit any evil acts. That's not the same thing as saying his every deed must be admirable, but even if we adopt a culturally relative view of evil acts, the paladin cannot do anything that would be shameful.

Now, I don't think that beats all role-playing out of the class. Even if a paladin had to be perfect, actually trying to be morally perfect in a D&D world would be a role-playing challenge that, quite frankly, I don't think most gamers are up to. However, there's plenty of ground for conflict, decisions, and individual personality (ascetic or boisterous, grim or vivacious) in the class.

2. How does Sir Cedric keep his influence towards accepting stardust and gumdrops prostitution from extending to the nastier (and more realistic) varieties? It's not like the brothel has a "paladin approved" sticker on the sign to differentiate it from other brothels that look similar but differ in ethically significant ways.

Again, through observation and judgement.

Much easier said than done since its other peoples observation and judgement that are in question as much as Cedric's. Perhaps more to the point, not something that Cedric has given the remotest shred of an indication that he does. In fact, his outburst to Sir Magnus, has quite the opposite effect as it would seem to justify patronage of any house of prostitution. To go one step further, Sir Cedric seems almost explicit in his denial of any obligation to consider the effect of his example when "off duty."

Your examples of "extensions" of the argument are all flawed. First, they are flawed because they are all necessary from time to time. If you want to get to an island, you need a ship (or a teleport, blah blah, blah).

Why is going to the island necessary? What portion of the people in medieval society ever got in a boat?

It usually isn't, but it could easily be necessary because the plot mcguffin necessary to save the world (or whatever needs saving) is on the island. Maybe it's the lich's phylactery. Maybe it's the legendary sword of kingship that will reveal the true king and prevent the war. Whatever it is though, if the paladin wants to get to the island, odds are good that he wants to do something there that can't be accomplished somewhere else.

Similarly, if a paladin wanted to avoid cereals and subsist on food gathered and hunted in the forests, he could eat without supporting vassalage or slavery.

I'm not convinced that vassalage is necessarily a problem, but it still misses the point. Food is essential to survival. Sex--even sex with prostitutes isn't.

And the analogy has a further flaw: if there is something inherently wrong with prostitution, the wrongness would be directly involved in soliciting the prostitute but only indirectly involved in eating serf-grown grain.

Still, the idea of a paladin/ranger who hunts in the forests and gathers his own food so that he can eat without living on the backs of the oppressed peasants of his land seems interesting--something to do with the new Dedicated Tracker feat no doubt.

So, a person can distinguish between consensual and non-consensual models of propelling ships but he cannot distinguish between consensual and non-consensual models of prostitution? I would be more likely to take the reverse position; while a person might never meet an oarsman and be able to make an assessment of his relative oppression, the person would have to meet the prostitute whom he patronized, thereby allowing him to gain direct evidence about the person's state, evidence he could not obtain about the oarsman.

However, the oarsman has less reason to lie about it (unless, if a slave, his owner knows what's behind the paladin's question), directly and by appearance. (Galley slaves aren't known for covering up their whip-scars with make-up. A prostitute who was beaten will wear make-up so that she still looks attractive to potential clients. A prostitute who wants to attract the paladin is, of course, going to say what she thinks he wants to hear. That's part of the business: appearing willing and eager.

More to the point, however, the only question in the ship is consent. Prostitution has the inherent issues as well.

If I read the comparison correctly, you're starting from the assumption that eating and having sex for money are ethically identical activities and the only ethically significant factors are how the sex object or food is produced. I think that's a faulty assumption.

I wasn't making any such assumption. All I was doing was comparing how a paladin moored to cultural-based values would be ethical to how a paladin moored to transcultural values would be ethical.

Next time, however, I'll choose optional rather than essential activities for my illustrations.

It will be a better illustration for it.

So, how does that work if the prostitute is independent or part of an all-female priesthood or guild?

I wasn't aware that all-female priesthoods or prostitute "guilds" were necessarily less exploitive than those run by men. The madame has almost as dark a reputation as the pimp if her whores get out of line. Nor is mistreatment only on the supply side of the equation. Plenty of prostitutes are mistreated by their Johns--and there are those who would argue that the situation is inherently mistreatment even if everything looks stardust and gumdropsy.

You're right about the Roman paladin. But unless there is a concept of a good brothel in Cedric's game world like there was a concept of a fair and good master, it makes no difference to the impression he leaves. And unless there actually IS a good brothel (not just a concept of one), it makes no difference to whether or not Cedric is a paladin.

So, you can acknowledge that there can be non-evil ways of owning people but not that any of the female-run temple prostitution going on in the same society could be non-evil.

Actually, I'm not necessarily admitting that there are non-evil ways of owning people. As your characterization of the Roman paladin went, he associated with those who were fair, treated their slaves well, and granted manumission--the last part meaning that they no longer owned the slaves since they had been freed. More specifically, however, all that matters for this purpose is that there be an acknowledged model of a good master that is less evil. By associating with that model in the absence of an abolition movement, the paladin may at least reduce evil with his influence.

The point of the argument, however, went further. For the sake of this particular argument, I hypothesized a prostitution that wasn't inherently evil. However, in order to exercise influence in that instance, the "good prostitution/bad prostitution" divide would need to be socially acknowledged like that between the good and the bad master. Otherwise, nobody would notice the difference in what place was patronized and what wasn't. Furthermore, pointing back to the real argument, unless the social construct of the "good whorehouse" actually were non-evil (instead of just being thought to be non-evil), patronizing it would be a violation of the paladin's code.

On further examination, you'll note that there is an important distinction between associating with the "good" slave-owners and patronizing the "good" brothels. The one has the paladin associating with people who are involved in the practice in question; the other has the paladin actively involved himself. If one wanted to make the parallel precise, it would not be associating with slave owners vs. patronizing the brothel; it would be owning slaves vs. patronizing the brothel--quite a significant difference if you ask me.

Ordinarily I wouldn't break up your thoughts like this, but this example is so eggregiously wrong that I have to. Aragorn's army didn't win the day at the Morannon. The victory was won at Mount Doom. For that matter, Aragorn didn't travel to the Morannon in order to win; he travelled there to give Frodo a better chance of winning. Certainly, most of Aragorn's men (and Aragorn himself) probably expected to die. That they didn't was due to Gollum's timing.

That's part of my point. They drew the eye away so that the day could be won at Mount Doom. So, yes, he did travel to the gate to win. But at the time he did so, he believed that the strategy he was part of would almost certainly fail. And his men knew it would fail.

He only traveled to the Morannon to win in a strategic sense. In terms of the battle, he travelled there to lose.

Whoa there Sigil! Are you seriously telling me that if your table manners are bad enough you lose your lawful alignment!?

And, stepping into someone else's argument, why not? Certainly respect for tradition and convention falls under lawful alignment in most interpretations of it. Concern for appearances falls under lawful alignment. If you had a Victorian man who swore like a sailor in the drawing room with the ladies and ate using his fingers rather than a fork, and, furthermore, insisted on being "himself" regardless of the social expectations on him, would you describe him as lawful or chaotic? That kind of "authenticity" seems like the essence of Rosseau and Goethe tinted chaos to me. So, why not apply that standard to Sir Cedric?

Certainly, table manners, by themselves, are not likely to drop anyone to a neutral or chaotic alignment. However, ignoring table manners completely is rarely an isolated trait of someone's personality. Certainly for any individual leading a considered life (or, as many paladins do, accepting the consideration of others on authority), one would only consciously ignore table manners if one didn't care what impression one makes upon others, but just "has to be me." And that characteristic, which Sir Cedric has in spades, is generally considered to be chaotic if anything is.

 

[Darmanicus]

whoa!!!!

 

[InzeladunMaster]

Sure I would allow it! If any has seen "Rustler's Rhapsody" with Tom Berringer, a good-guy must be confident in his sexuality.

 

[Elminster]

I agree

I'd allow this PC, but only so long as he belongs to a faith that doesn't preach against any of these behaviors.
None of his actions are "evil" or "unlawful". They aren't appropriate for what we think of as a "normal medieval paladin" but with the proper background on his faith, I'd allow it.

So long as it didn't go against the tenets of his chosen faith, I would let him play.

 

[fusangite]

EB,

I was not stating that I personally believe modern liberal democracy is inherently good or inequality is inherently evil. I was simply trying to get to which values you see as transcultural and transhistorical. You kindly provided me with a list:

truth, [retributive] justice, piety (sacred and familial), and sexual morality make the cut.

You have to admit that this list appears, for people who do not share your values, to be pretty arbitrary. What I'm trying to draw attention to here is that even though you may esteem these things as transcultural, transhistorical absolute values, this is just your personal moral system. They are not natural laws received from the universe itself. And even if they were, if we can suspend so many scientific laws that really are mandated by the universe itself when we play D&D, why should your personal moral code not be subject to a similar suspension?

Also, part of the reason I was drawing towards the issue of slavery was this: you seem to be arguing that non-consensual ownership of people is not inherently evil but consensual renting of people is.

I'll deal with your post at greater length when I have done my conference presentation on Saturday.

 

[Aristotle]

I only read the fiction in the first post and the first page of replies. Mine won't likely be seen if others do the same, but I did vote "Yes" to allowing such a paladin but with the huge caveat that nothing the paladin is doing can be directly opposed to the deities portfolio.

I think to many people try to place 'modern' ethics on what is right or wrong for a paladin. The ethics, and the paladin's code, should fit the deity the paladin worships. IMHO of course.

 

[Shieldhaven]

I voted Yes when this thread first appeared. I'm now getting around to commenting.

Basically, I like this character not for whether or not he is a paladin - his god says yes, so yes it is - but because he deals with the most horrifying parts of his world, and has to find a way to live with that. I am interested in observing the psychological landscape and journey of characters. My characters' personalities don't tend to be wildly different from me when first created. My favorite thing in any game is watching to see how they change - to see how Balthasar, a scholarly cleric who has been on the front lines of battle for way, way too long and seen far too many loved ones die a final death, pulls himself together long enough to keep going, and to see how Balthasar becomes less like Shieldhaven, a bookseller for Barnes & Noble who has recently graduated from college. (Balthasar did, incidentally, reach a point of acting a whole lot like Cedric. Shieldhaven, fortunately, has not reached that point. The Management does not intend for him to do so. )

Shieldhaven

 

[Runesong42]

I would allow him IMC, but with the caveat that he would lose his powers for such behavior (perhaps to be replaced by a demon in order to lead him further into debauchery) and would be hunted by the Church if it were cognizant of his actions.

ROFL what a great idea for a tag-along NPC. Have "The Church" assign a bureaucrat to follow around the Paladin, record his activities and be his "moral compass". If you're going to compare Sir Cedric to Angel, let's compare this NPC to the old Wesley (the one assigned as Faith's, then Buffy's Watcher). I would highly enjoy such a situation.

- Dru

 

[Seeten]

The problem as I see it is that Good and Evil aren’t relative. They are just as true as up and down (on the Prime Material Plane) or as North and South. Prostitution MAY not hurt (be evil) to the 2 people involved, but it does hurt society. AND hurting society is an evil act. This is the CRUX of the victimless crime argument. IF prostitution is allowed to exist then society is hurt by it. If nothing else it encourages the objectification of women. Objectifying women is a BAD thing (even if it is the social norm it is still bad.) So prostitution encourages a bad thing. Prostitution = evil. If anyone can prove that prostitution doesn't encourage the objectification of women, or that said objectification of women is a bad thing then I have other points, but lets start with this one.

Just thought I'd let you know I object to this paragraph as in every possible way. Your contention that prostitution harms society is as baseless as my statement that prostitution is a valuable outlet for the "passions" of people and helps preserve the mores of society by giving an outlet where the "baser" needs are taken care of, so polite society need not deal with them.

Society is only hurt by prostitution in the cultural context where people find sex offensive, particularly easy/sleazy sex.

I don't find sex offensive. I don't find prostitution offensive. I can easily imagine worlds where it is not offensive, and I can find cultures in the real world, historically, where it was not offensive. For that matter, I can find cultures where sex with young boys, as a man, was considered beneficial to their betterment and education, and as a manly pursuit.

Thusly, I am of the opinion that your personal bias based on bible belt doctrine of intrinsic wrong in prostitution is A) Wrong and B) Certainly not something I want to explore.

In fact, everyone's personal bias has no bearing on the campaigns I want to play. As a Canadian, conservative moral values such as whether prostitutes or gays are inherently evil and decay the moral fabric of society are NOT universally accepted, even as close to America as Canada. I don't subscribe to this belief, nor do I consider it a prerequisite to entry into any conversation, and more, I find IT objectionable, possibly as objectionable as you find the objectification of women.

I do not believe women should be objectified, at least, not more than they want to be. This last part is relevant in my opinion. I have a friend who was a stripper in university. It is how she chose to pay her way through university. She went to law school. She only stripped for 2 years, as after the initial 2 years, she was on scholarship, but she still dropped in occasionally for a little money, or to see old friends. She told me between stripping for hundreds an hour and Subway for 60 a day, she'd take stripping any day. Plus, as something of an exhibitionist, she found it fun, and exciting. She wasnt abused, raped, or beaten, she made good money, and people saw her naked. If she was demeaned, it was no more demeaning than she chose it to be. She wasnt touched in ways she didnt want. She made good money. People like you, of course, insult her, and all she stands for, in the interest of "The betterment of society."

However, what you really mean, is, "Society the way I approve of it based on my wants/needs and what I think is best" and your better society is my "repressive, lawful evil, morally regressive pit".

I think a Paladin, who takes the view that all prostitutes are evil, and so is the institution, are as evil as any other Tyrant. Ie, they are lawful evil and treading on dangerous Blackguard ground. I guess my campaign and your campaign are drastically different.

So, I voted yes.

I think the concept is interesting, assuming the world supports it. Frex, he couldnt be in my current campaign, which had no Gods, no clerics and no Paladins, to start with, but now that Gods have appeared, this concept would work with one of the LG Gods that isnt concerned with Puritanism. (Which is all of them.) To me, the concept of purity and chastity is not an LG one. I will not be commenting on the Catholic practice of the concept, but suffice it to say, I dont see it as a good institution.(Chastity for clergy that is.)

Great debate, but I find much of the debate has been far to puritanical for my taste. I guess I am glad I live where I do.