Speech presented by Russell Watkins on the 3rd of June 2004 to Tauranga City Council in support of submission opposing the draft prostitution bylaw.

Council, your conventional role is to keep the water on, the streets swept, the sewage disposed of. But that isn't enough for some of you. Some of you believe that you are here to be our guardians, our moral advisers, our nanny; trying to keep us safe from all the things you fear and you hate.

I don't need you to take care of me, nor does my family and nor do the other people who live in this city - people that are prepared to take responsibility for their own moral choices. It is not your business what people do in the bedrooms of their houses, with whom they do it and for what reward.

I am here to persuade only a few of you, you few who have voted for the prostituion bylaw but are not wholey convinced that the regulation of peaceful people is justified or...... indeed just! I believe that the proponents of the prostitution bylaw are sincere in their convictions, unfortunately sincerity is a much over-rated virtue; in fact, overrated at the best of times & down right evil when that sincerity could cost peaceful people their liberty.

But the prostitution bylaw is not the primary issue here, it is simply a result of state worship, state worship practised by people like some of the people here, practised by people with the political power to exert their will, exert their phobias, exert their prejudices, and exert their religious & political dogma. Those with the power to force their ideas on the rest of us.

To those of you who are opposed to the bylaw and state force in general. Thank you!

Those of you who champion the power of the state, and wallow in it your-self, you are the enemy of Liberty and Peace; persuation is an anethema to you and therefore reason.

To you few who are uncertain in your vote, you have a number of choices to make:

Are you for voluntary association or political force?

Are you for private property rights or property by public permission only?

Are you for the ownership of ones body or do you believe the use of our bodies should be dictated by the vote?

These are the choices you'll need to make, are you for Freedom or Force?

In the name of Liberty and decency. Veto the bylaw!

Russell Watkins

Judea

Tauranga

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