Sawzaw - It wouldn't worry me at all if my son smoked grass. Most of the finest friends (and best people) I've known in my life have smoked grass or do smoke grass, and it didn't make any of them into bad people.

I'd be quite disturbed if my daughter became a prostitute, but I'd also be quite disturbed if she did a variety of other things, like...

- join the Republican Party
- join the Conservative or Liberal parties of Canada
- enlist in the roller derby
- become a female boxer
- join the army
- dye her hair green and spike it
- get multiple body piercings
etc.....

So I'd be disturbed. Fine. It would still be her decision once she reached age 18, and it would be her business as a self-governing adult, and I would have to accept it even if I didn't like it. I am not here to avoid all possible disturbances, Sawzaw, I am here to allow other people, including my children, the freedom to be whom they honestly wish to be.

And what do I get in return? The freedom to be who I honestly wish to be. You betcha! I am here to govern myself, not to govern you or my daughter or my friends or the guy who lives across the street. If people don't steal, lie, assault others, commit fraud, murder, rape, bully or commit other obviously anti-social acts (most of which are listed in the 10 Commandments), then I have no bone to pick with them. They are free beings who must decide for themselves how to live. If they do not deliberately hurt someone else just to please themselves, then they are not breaking the basic laws of human morality...and civil law should not bother them.

There are various collective customs we follow (such as our conventional ideas about clothing and nakedness), and that gets complicated...but it's another discussion. It's not a moral question in that case. It's a question of what people are generally used to, that's all.

****

You're absolutely right about the credit cards. I have 4 of them. I get discounts on stuff through all of them, I don't overspend, and I always pay them off right on time, so they get no interest payments from me. All it takes is a little self-control. People need to realize that the power is in their own hands, and they can use these things in a way that benefits them.