I agree that we should not pass judgment on gays, lesbians or other "sexual minorities" but that is quite different from praising intensely pleasurable sexual activities between strangers, and calling them "close to the dhamma"...
How is an employee in a sexual trade going to have the wisdom to know that someone is not consenting to an act that is not in his or her best interest? This description by Higgins sounds quite self-deceptive, to me. On the basis of a website's statements we can conclude that this particular sex shop, that we really know nothing about beyond its advertising, comes closer to the dhamma?
The appropriate Buddhist attitude to other sexual minorities is just the same. I tested this by visiting the website of Salon Kitty, a very fastidious local establishment which describes itself as 'one of the world's leading BDSM houses.' BDSM stands for bondage, discipline and sado-masochism. On Salon Kitty's main menu is a statement of ethics, which the duty of care and overall responsibility ' the dominant' owes 'the submissive,' not least around the obviously crucial issue of consent. In part the statement of ethics says: Implied in consent is the responsibility of the dominant partner in any BDSM scene to monitor the wellbeing of the submissive to ensure that the submissive is stable and that the consent is still operative.
It is also the responsibility of the dominant to ensure that the submissive is not consenting to an act that is not in his or her best longterm interests. Neither party should indulge in heavy drinking or drug taking as this can impair judgement… A description follows of the mechanism for instantly withdrawing consent - the uttering of a pre-agreed 'safe word' - which immediately brings the procedure in question to an end.
Then the statement of ethics resumes: In order to enjoy the possibilities that the world of BDSM offers, one must first discover respect and trust both of oneself and of others. Elements of all five precepts are there, including the last. On the basis of this statement we can conclude that Salon Kitty comes closer to Dhamma than fundamentalist, social engineering killjoys of various religious persuasions!
Deceptive logic of this sort is very human. As Jechbi noted about taking things out of context, its something we all do. This is how the samsaric mind works. We hide the truth from ourselves by constructing false beliefs and then forming attachments to those beliefs. I do it, you do it, most of us do it, in my opinion. That's why we have to be so so so very mindful, to unknot these deceptions, and observe how our minds work with these things...
That's my view, anyway.
Please check out this short Wikipedia article on Self Deception, it provides a pretty good summary.
I would expect that there are corresponding descriptions of this made by the Buddha. I'm reading an excellent book right now by Dzigar Kongtrul, called "It's Up to You: The Practice of Self-Reflection on the Buddhist Path" which talks about this extensively...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-deception" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
It has been theorized that humans are susceptible to self-deception because most people have emotional attachments to beliefs, which in some cases may be irrational. Some evolutionary biologists, such as Robert Trivers, have suggested that deception plays a significant part in human behaviour, and in animal behavior, more generally speaking. It has been theorized that an instinct for self-deception can give a person a selective advantage, based on the rationale that if a person can believe their own "lie" (i.e., their presentation that is biased toward their own self-interest), the theory goes, they will consequently be better able to persuade others of its "truth."
This notion is based on the following logic. In humans, awareness of the fact that one is acting deceptively often leads to tell-tale signs of deception. Therefore, if self-deception enables someone to believe their distortions, they will not present such signs of deception and will therefore appear to be telling the truth. It may also be argued that the ability to deceive, or self-deceive, is not the selected trait but a by-product of a more primary trait called abstract thinking. Abstract thinking allows many evolutionary advantages such as more flexible, adaptive behaviors and innovation. Since a lie is an abstraction, the mental process of creating a lie can only occur in animals with enough brain complexity to permit abstract thinking...