Sir, – Senator Mary White is to be commended on her commonsense and principled stand in the Seanad against a motion calling for the criminalising of the purchase of sex (Home News, October 14th). Senator White is correct when she asserts that hasty decisions are often bad decisions.
This motion was doubtlessly inspired by the Turn Off The Red Light campaign. This campaign has little to do with its purported aim of protecting women, and everything to do with imposing a mix of feminism and Catholic moral dogma on Ireland criminal corpus. Many sex workers oppose this campaign and have their own Turn Off the Blue Light campaign of opposition.
Rather than censoring Senator White, the Fianna Fáil party should embrace the idea that its members should be allowed a free vote on complex moral issues as it would enable members to have an honest debate rather than forcing them to hitch their consciences to moral bandwagons. – Yours, etc,