Edward Tabash is the Center For Inquiry’s (think: freethinkers) Board Chair, and he thinks sex robots should be totally OK, as he states in a LoC to the Los Angeles Times:
To the editor: As both a constitutional and criminal defense lawyer for people charged with prostitution-related offenses, I applaud Professor Rob Brooks’ support for future purchasers of artificially intelligent sex robots. He properly criticizes the religious right and the anti-porn left for their opposition to these soon-to-be mechanized intimate companions.
Brooks refers to society’s “typical censoriousness about sex.” All ideological extremes want to prohibit people from living differently from that belief system’s dictates. If our neighbors are not objectively harming us, we have no right to forcibly restrict their personal choices in order to compel obedience to what is ultimately our own subjective code of conduct.
If someone chooses to privately interact with a robot that provides sexual gratification, any ideology underlying an attempt to deprive anyone of the legal right to seek such pleasure is a totalitarian threat to our freedoms.
I think the unspoken assumption is that freedom, to the extent that it doesn’t physically or financially damage anyone else, is a good thing, and, yes, it’s hard to argue against it.
But the first thing that came to mind was to wonder what the Amish would have to say if sex robots were to be proposed for introduction into Amish society. I don’t means this jocularly; it’s a serious question. The Amish, from what I’ve read, will debate the introduction of new technology into their society, and often reject it. What concerns would they raise as they wrestled with this proposal?
Would they see this as detrimental to the cohesiveness of society? Or a comfort to men and women lacking partners?
