The Dutch are cutting down on prostitution, pot, and hash. Moral reformers from many parties, from the orthodox Christian Union to the liberal and secular Labor Party, are trying to roll back the "anything goes" policies of the last few decades. The Dutch are particularly disturbed that they are becoming a regular tourist destination for foreigners seeking sex, drugs, and abortions that are illegal in their own countries. Foreign mobs have been entering the sex and drugs markets, too.
While the small Dutch Reformed remnant has very active in pushing the moral reforms, the movement is by no means restricted to religious people. James C. Kennedy, a history professor at the Free University in Amsterdam was quoted in the Washington Post as saying that there is a national "weariness with moral squalor."
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I suspected, and just confirmed, that Dutch preganancy and abortion rates are very low; apparently, they are the lowest in the world. It sometimes seems to me that the US has an ethical "binge and purge" mentality. I have heard we have among the highest rates in the world for abstaining from alcohol as well as among the highest rates for alcoholism. We emphasize abstenance but also have a high rate of teens using sex without protection. We moralize about drugs, and have a huge underground drug problem. Please give me a Reformed, sociological and ethical problem of how states should or should not regulate these matters.
Interesting post--looking forward to discussion.
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