Telegraph | News | ‘If you don’t take a job as a prostitute, we can stop your benefits’ A 25-year-old waitress who turned down a job providing “sexual services” at a brothel in Berlin faces possible cuts to her unemployment benefit under laws introduced this year.

Prostitution was legalised in Germany just over two years ago and brothel owners – who must pay tax and employee health insurance – were granted access to official databases of jobseekers.

…Under Germany’s welfare reforms, any woman under 55 who has been out of work for more than a year can be forced to take an available job – including in the sex industry – or lose her unemployment benefit. Last month German unemployment rose for the 11th consecutive month to 4.5 million, taking the number out of work to its highest since reunification in 1990.

…Prostitution was legalised in Germany in 2002 because the government believed that this would help to combat trafficking in women and cut links to organised crime.

“Now that prostitution is no longer considered by the law to be immoral, there is really nothing but the goodwill of the job centres to stop them from pushing women into jobs they don’t want to do.”

OK, I’m all for legalized prostitution — sex is OK, selling is OK, so why isn’t selling sex OK? We have the silliest sex laws in our country. You can’t pay a woman to perform sex with you, but if you have a video camera, you can pay a man and woman to have sex in front of you (it’s called “acting”). In fact, as long as you’re filming yourself, you can pay the woman to have sex with you (it’s called “gonzo” porn).

But this case is just wrong. I understand Germany’s goal to get people off of the unemployment rolls. But I disagree with forcing people to take jobs they cannot take. I’m not just thinking about forcing women to take prostitute jobs. What’s to stop the job centres from forcing an Orthodox Jewish woman to slice up meat in a non-Kosher deli? What about forcing a Hindu to flip burgers at McDonald’s. There should be some sort of “conscientious objector” clause to this unemployment law.

Of course, it is Germany, so why should I care…