>No, I said
I was referring to the immediate parent post of the one I was replying to (the post in which the misunderstanding occurred), not your post. Sorry for any confusion on this front.
> That's similar, in my mind, to making a rule that gay people shouldn't be gay at your place of work.
Incorrect. We're talking about behaviors, not thoughts or impulses. It is completely within a person's control to refrain from engaging in romantic activity with another person. The policy makes no comment about attraction or thought because no one cares and it's totally irrelevant. Feel whatever you choose to feel, but keep it internal at work. This is aka "professionalism".
>You'll likely make someone choose work over their social life but ultimately it's just going to make people sneak around
I strongly disagree. I believe most employees would adhere to the prohibition. Not 100%, but probably 90%.
>The problem is falling for someone isn't something within your control.
Absolutely false. This is the lie that Hollywood wants you to believe because it makes it easier to sell movies (it also makes it easier to destroy a society's moral fabric). You do not have to be a victim of your impulses.
> It's part of our biology and it's natural to want to be with someone that you're drawn to.
I'm all about biology but we aren't apes -- we can control our impulses. That's part of the expectation in a professional environment.
>The prohibition of alcohol, the "war" on drugs and countless other times in history disagrees with your assessment.
First, no they don't. Use goes down during prohibition. There will always be people that break the rules, but prohibition does have a high-quality prohibitive effect.
Consider gun laws that prohibit ownership or carriage of certain types of firearms. They don't stop everyone, but they stop most people. That is in fact part of the 2nd Amendment argument; if you make gun ownership illegal, only criminals will have firearms. Most citizens follow the law and do not consider the risk involved in violating prohibition reasonable.
>When you are dealing with a natural biological process banning it just ends up causing more problems.
You're conflating behaviors with biology. In society we manage our impulses so that they don't destroy us. Hedonism is incompatible with productivity. Discipline IS possible and must be re-enshrined as a critical value if we're going to make it as a culture.
>So if you have sources which state that banning something that is part of a natural, biological process actually causes the majority to no longer do it I would absolutely love to read them. I haven't seen anything like that.
There's really no reason to humor you on things you could easily Google yourself, but I'll throw one your way: "We find that alcohol consumption fell sharply at the beginning of Prohibition, to approximately 30 percent of its pre-Prohibition level. During the next several years, however, alcohol consumption increased sharply, to about 60–70 percent of its pre-Prohibition level." [0]
Prohibition initially caused a sharp decrease in consumption. As it became obvious that few people respected the law, a lot of people picked the habit back up, but there was still a very significant suppressing effect, keeping consumption down 30-40% from pre-Prohibition levels. That lasted until the 18th Amendment was repealed.
That means that initially, 7 in 10 drinkers stopped when it became illegal. Even as it became apparent that the law would be widely disregarded, 4 in 10 pre-Prohibition drinkers still declined to drink because it was illegal.
Now, I'm not saying there weren't negative effects associated with prohibition, but the truth is that if you make something illegal or against the rules, many people will comply because the risk of rule-breaking isn't worthwhile to them. There's some "evidence" for you, which you really shouldn't need -- you must be young if you haven't figured this out yet.
[0] http://www.nber.org/papers/w3675.pdf