"Hate speech" used to signify things that incited people to take up physical violence and/or other abusive behaviour against groups or individuals. Over the past 4-5 years the term has been subjected to devaluation, as people with an agenda or axe to grind invoke hate speech as a cure-all antidote against all "things I do not approve of".
But as I noted above, there is nothing new about the phenomenon. During the cold war, it was the red scare. Someone came up with things you didn't like and you could invoke pandering to communism. Since the naughties, it has been terrorism. A literal cash cow of funding, it was (and in a way still is) used to oppress anything you want - just label the activity as some kind of terrorism and shut up most opposition. Now, it's hate speech.
There is a clear trend towards more abstract labels.
The real problem with all of this is that the term loses its meaning. When anything can be labeled hate speech, the real rhetoric of hatred gets lost in all the noise.
I don't want to hijack the thread, so back to prostitution. A historian could probably tell me how things were before the Victorian times, but as mentioned downthread by chaostheory, opposition to prostitution was likely neutered by the sexual revolution. Working and discreet contraception made it possible to enjoy sex fully, without suffering from the adverse effects. (Pregnancy, unplanned parenthood, and the eventual financial repercussions.) All of a sudden a casual attitude towards sex was no longer a damaging trait.
As it has become more accepted to have sex where one wants, the stigma of using prostitution probably is also being diluted. After all, this is the age of service economy and there is nothing wrong with paying professionals for their services.
So I think we're pretty close to the general acceptance that it just might be okay to pay a professional for sex too.
Not very strange at all. It is viewed by many as sexual immorality. The rest of the world is not Western Europe and they are not HN. Religion and traditional morality whether we like it or not is plays an important part.
Note, it doesn't play a direct part the way we might think. People probably would visit brothels there just as often if not more often than someone in liberal Wester Europe. What is important is the _appearance_ of morality.
Religion and beliefs like that are tied to cultural identity as well. For that to survive, it is very important that most believe that others believe in it. They personally might be sneaking it at night to a brothel, but as long as "other" people believe in doing the right thing -- then the norm will persist. It is never allowed to publically proclaim and create laws that might say "now Quran or the Bible doesn't apply anymore and brothels are ok to be opened legally".
And I assume you agree with most of the rest of the world, that organ donation should be legal, and that selling things should be legal.
It follows that arguments of the form: "A is legal, and B is legal, so the combination should be legal", are not very convincing to you. So you don't get to use that argument in favour of prostitution.
I'm not arguing pro-organ selling, here. I'm arguing anti-bad arguments.