Our current attitudes towards prostitution are due to social pressures going back millennia regarding sexuality. Few people acknowledge the role that social control plays in determining our attitudes towards prostitution.
Prostitution only became an unsavory profession because of the lies about them made up by religious zealots as a means of social control. However, prostitution used to be a religious function of temple priestesses for the cult of Astarte. Thus, religion used to be the mother of prostitution.
Indeed, the religious zealots' defamation of prostitution was done to control female sexuality. Once religion and prostitution were in bed together, now monotheistic pressure has separated them.
Today's religious zealots also borrowed the idea of marriage and virginity from pagan Roman practice. Prior to marriage, the ancient Roman bachelor party sometimes consisted of deflowering the wife to be by the husband's male friends, which may be related to the Astarte cult.
Hence, the decadent orgies of today's hedonism are merely revivals of old-time religion popular before the "heresies" called Christianity, Islam and Orthodox Judaism arose.
That which is secular is subtly pagan. That which is pagan has been adapted to monotheism.
Today, few prostitutes know of the religious origins of prostitution due to centuries of historical repression.
Perhaps sacred prostitution was all a metaphor for hedonism made holy.
In any case, prostitution is a complex issue which is viewed by civil authorities as a social problem with medical risks such as sexually transmitted diseases in these post-modern times.
This is why most countries will keep prostitution illegal, and thus control sexuality as a commodity.
Originally posted: June 4, 2007 10/00 PM
Prostitution: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_prostitution
Sacred prostitution: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sacred_prostitution
Astarte: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astarte
Canadian justice minister rules out legalization:
http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/2014/01/20/peter_mackay_rules_out_legalization_municipal_regulation_of_prostitution.html
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