Work in the sex Industry or lose your benefit

Germany legalised prostitution a couple of years ago. The British Telegraph reported that a waitress who turned down a job providing "sexual services" at a brothel in Berlin faces possible cuts to her unemployment benefit

According to the BT, under Germany's welfare reforms, any woman under 55 who has been out of work for more than a year can be forced to take an available job – including in the sex industry – or lose her unemployment benefit. Can you imagine how a 54-year-old unemployed women would react if she was told to work in the sex industry?

The government had considered making brothels an exception on moral grounds, but decided that it would be too difficult to distinguish them from bars.

At least here in New Zealand, officials are able to distinguish brothels from bars.

The interesting thing about the BT article is that the news is more than 18 months old and apparently, the job wasn`t for sexual services, it was for bar work at a brothel.

The article seems to have been scratched together by a variety of sources, and although officials can legally make long term unemployed women work in brothels they are not currently pushing them to do so.

The interesting thing that the prostitution debate has again raised is that social morals and legal morals are seen as quite distinct. Some want legal morals to reflect social morals and oppose reform of prostitution and abortion laws, and laws relating to homosexuality, while others may consider that, for example, prostitution is "abhorrent" but should be legalised.