From the Daily Telegraph comes an interesting story from Germany. An out of work waitress who was on Germany’s version of unemployment has had her benefits threatened because she refuses to take a job. That’s a good thing, right? If someone can work, then it’s better for them to work and earn money than get a handout from the government. That makes sense.

But what if the job is to work as a prostitute?

“There is now nothing in the law to stop women from being sent into the sex industry,” said Merchthild Garweg, a lawyer from Hamburg who specialises in such cases. “The new regulations say that working in the sex industry is not immoral any more, and so jobs cannot be turned down without a risk to benefits.”

Miss Garweg said that women who had worked in call centres had been offered jobs on telephone sex lines. At one job centre in the city of Gotha, a 23-year-old woman was told that she had to attend an interview as a “nude model”, and should report back on the meeting. Employers in the sex industry can also advertise in job centres, a move that came into force this month. A job centre that refuses to accept the advertisement can be sued.

As Ann Althouse pointed out, that’s one of the problems when a society equates legality with morality.

On the one hand, the woman in question here isn’t just trying to avoid working. She’s worked as a waitress, and was actually willing for work in a bar (and, according to the German government, they can’t differentiate between a brothel and a bar). Her problem here comes from the fact that she’s morally opposed to becoming a prostitute. For that, the government is going to cut off her benefits? That’s stupid.

On the other hand, I think it’s a problem with the government’s “nanny state.” She lost her job, so those members of German society who haven’t lost their jobs are forced to pay for her to have money. If there’s a job available, even if it’s a morally reprehensible one, part of me thinks that, maybe, it’s not completely out of line for them to request that she take it.

I’m going to have to consider this one for a while.