Oppression, Omniscience, andJudgment
681
cost her dearly in terms of her career, but this is the free market’s
way: if you are not willing to pay the price demanded by the seller —
in this case, the seller of the job — you have no valid complaint. After
all, any attractive woman who decides not to become a prostitute
thereby gives up the economic income that she might have earned.
The only strictly economic difference between this woman and the
woman who has been solicited by her employer is that she may not
have been asked to become a prostitute by some man. But the eco-
nomics of the two examples are the same: forfeited income for lack of
consent. Each woman pays to retain her moral integrity, But the
civil government should have nothing to say in either case.” So might
run the arguments of an “anarcho-capitalist .“
The Bible prohibits prostitution. “Do not prostitute thy daughter,
to cause her to be a whore; lest the land fall to whoredom, and the
land become full of wickedness” (Lev. 19:29). To profane or pollute
the land morally was a sin in the Old Testament. Today, it is a direct
sin against Christ, who now spews out evil (Rev. 3:16), as the land
was said to do in the Old Testament (Lev. 18:25). To pressure a
woman to become a prostitute is itself an act of defilement. If either
the woman or the employer is married, then the demand that she
submit is also a call to commit the capital crime of adultery, for
which both parties could be executed if discovered and convicted in a
civil court, if the woman’s husband so insists (Lev. 20:10). While
there is no civil penalty attached to the command not to afflict the
weak, it is clear that the judges have the authority in this instance —
sexual harassment — to penalize the offender. Oppression as such is
not penalized, but this specific form of oppression is, since biblical
civil law deals with it.
Without the civil government’s authority to inflict a penalty, this
crime of demanding the performance of a capital crime could not
easily be exposed to the civil authorities by the victim. The employer
would suffer no civil penalty, and the woman would probably lose
her job for having complained publicly. Thus, the enforceability of
the law of God would be compromised. Sin would encounter less re-
straint. The enticermmt to commit a sin to which a civil penalty is attached
is therefore itself a civil crime, punishable by civil law, analogous to
the case of someone who secretly enticed a family member to wor-
ship a god other than the God of the Bible, a crime punished by the
authorities (Deut. 13:6-11). The judges might use public flogging as a
first-time penalty, and execution for the second infraction.