Why is prostitution illegal in the US?

26 comments

• ATACdawg

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  11 years ago

  Tired, There is a difference! Liberals say, "We want restrictive laws for the good of the nation and we know best." Conservatives say, "We want restrictive laws for the good of the nation and we know best." Oh ..... There really isn't any difference.
• canny

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  11 years ago

  And they're both hypocrites. I'm Libertarian. We know that you know what's good for you better than we do and we're not arrogant enough to think that we can correctly choose anything for you.
• gawker

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  11 years ago

  Whether there is truly separation of religion and state is a separate argument. However there is a Judeo-Christian underpinning of the US. The state's rights to legislate our behavior is well founded in our history and varies greatly from state to state. Take motorcycle helmet requirements; why can I ride without a helmet in RI but need to wear one in MA? That's a victimless crime - unless I crash without a helmet and end up with a scrambled egg for a brain and need institutional care for the foreseeable future. Then society pays millions to keep my vegetative body alive. Now what if there's a moral decline in society due to prostitution? You suggest zoning laws to keep prostitutes where they won't interfere with schools, church's, etc. how does one draw the line? I've previously advocated for legal sex, legal drugs, etc. how's the government war on drugs going? How about the efforts to limit prostitution? Obviously the only ones profiting are the "criminals". What if both were legalized and taxed? Do you think we could cut the deficit overnight? During the last presidential election the only candidate with any recognition to agree with this position was the Libertarian candidate.
• jestrite50

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  11 years ago

  Great discussion....unfortunately I don't see any answers in the for seeable future. Everyone has their own moral compass what is moral to me may be immoral to you. And what is immoral to me may be moral to you. So laws are passed by flawed representatives who think they know what's best for all of us. (Or what's best for them and their pocket.) And they conveniently exempt themselves from the laws they pass. Don't get me started here !!!
• zipman68

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  11 years ago

  To be fair, the abortion/death penalty dichotomy is perfectly consistent if viewed through the lenses of different world views: 1. For an intellectually consistent liberal, the rights to life for a living person trumps the unborn -- "people" who aren't really people yet -- so abortion ok but executions aren't. 2. For an intellectually consistent conservative, the right to life can be forfeit if you do certain things (criminal acts). By definition, an unborn person cannot have committed a crime and so is innocent and cannot be executed by abortion. So abortion bad. The criminal, in contrast, has done something so they can be executed. The reality is that modern conservatism is strongly driven by religion. Many Christian groups are, let's face it, anti-sex (except vanilla sex with a spouse). Then the anti-birth control and anti-abortion positions become understandable. Anti-gay rights positions are consistent with this as well. They are manifestations of an anti-sex agenda. The liberal position is somewhat more complex and, arguably more hypocritical. Sice the sixties there has been a general pro-sexual freedom (at least between consenting adults where one doesn't pay the other). So birth control and abortion and gay rights are fine. Commercial sex is where the hypocrisy comes in. I suspect it is largely driven by a vestigial religious feeling. Even a died in the wool secularist grew up in a Christian society and absorbed the idea that sex is "icky" under certain circumstances. So commercial sex is bad. This position is then justified by public health and anti-human trafficking arguments, without realizing that both might be better dealt with if commercial sex were legal. Add to this the fact that it is human to want your side to win: [view link] The article is in the context of free speech, but the same impulses drive a variety of political positions.
• zipman68

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  11 years ago

  Unlike you, Tiredtraveller, I'm way more scared by Republicans than Democrats. Here's why: Most of the fundamentally anti-freedom positions taken by Republicans are fundamentally driven by religion. Either sincerely held or pandering to religious constituents. You can't argue with religion. Those guys aren't going to change positions. Add to that the fact that the Republicans have been very disciplined and effective politically. That may change with the TEA party. But teabaggers ARE true believers and true believers scare me. If the Republicans are, on average, more religious than Dems, the teabaggers have religion in spades. The only hope is that the group will implode due to minor differences among TEA party members and a general inability to compromise. In contrast, Democrats have been very ineffective politically and many positions are more variable within the party. Contrary to Republican fantasies, it is not a monolithic leftist party. It is a bunch of folks that take a variety of positions ranging from genuinely leftist to centrist and sometimes even traditionally conservative. This incoherence is why they can't win political fights much of the time. There is no parlimentary discipline there. But there is a good side -- things that become cause célèbre can really take off. Like gay marriage. Broad acceptance of gay marriage was inconceivable 10-15 years ago and now it is all but inevitable. I suspect reform of marijuana laws is next. I predict legal (but regulated) recreational weed in at least half the states within a decade, especially if Democrats have enough power to moderate some of the worst impulses of the Republicans. Democrats don't have enough party discipline to actually take a bold stand and make it happen. It will just evolve. Who knows when rational commercial sex laws will appear. The "if government is the answer it must be a stupid question" position is, in my opinion, a really stupid position. You advocate regulation, presumably to prevent things like hookers giving BJs in front of elementary schools. I don't like the idea of folks routinely driving stoned out of their gourds. Who enforces that? Government. We need a return to the 50's when government built infrastructure but combined with a "we'll stay out of your life unless you start violating other people's freedom". That won't come for free -- it will require taxes. I'll add that some things -- like health care -- become slightly tricky under that model. The problem with health care is that we've ALWAYS given it away for free to some people, if they wanted and needed it. We just did it in a half-assed way (emergency treatment for the uninsured) and then hide the costs. The ACA won't work. But my hope is it will persist long enough that when it implodes it will be replaced by a system that does work. Contrary to the Republican position our current system is not the best in the world. In fact, it costs way more than "socialized" medicine in other developed countries. And if you don't think you were paying those prices before the ACA, in one way or another, all I can say is that you're wrong.
• Tiredtraveler

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  11 years ago

  In reality I am more Libertarian than any thing else. I hold the position that government = corruption and corruption = government. To minimize corruption you Must minimize government. We currently have a narcissist heading up a group of boobs and bores in the White House who is for sale to the highest bidder. Virtually any government official elected or otherwise does not give a shit about this country or its citizens, all they care about is their own personal agenda and how to get the most for them selves. This is an outgrowth of the sixties "ME" generation. They promote the view that the only way to get rich is to take it from someone else. Only government and its cronies operate that way. Real businesses want to expand into new markets, employ more people, and prosper making everyone that they work with wealthier. To be truly poor and hopeless you must have the government in charge. England learned this lesson in the 70's and 80's. The Soviet block is still learning it and our institutions of lower learning like Harvard are still teaching that in order to get rich you must take money from others which is a lie.
• gawker

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  11 years ago

  I recently read that the Puritans were opposed to sex because it frequently led to dancing.
• curvexpert

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  11 years ago

  Christianity is in rapid decline, not only in Europe, but right here in USA! Hopefully as it continues to die off the puritanical laws preventing prostitution will evaporate. Personally I'd love to see some of these big empty churches converted into strip clubs and brothels! Ha
• Tyres

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  11 years ago

  Zipman, while I agree with a lot of what you say, I hardly think the 1950's was a time when the government was staying out of our business, seeing as that was the time of McCarthyism.
• Tyres

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  11 years ago

  Tiredtraveler- then is Papa John a "libertarian" since he has built an empire off employing a bunch of people at minimum wage? Who exactly does that build wealth for? To believe that unregulated private business will act any more noble than government is pie in the sky.
• Tiredtraveler

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  11 years ago

  Curve I do believe I would rather have Judeo-Christian value rather than muslim. The towel headed piles of dog shit murder any one who dares not to agree and butt fuck little boys or pigs and dogs if boys are able to hide from them rather than looking at women. All to get 75 virgins in heaven-- Did you ever notice they never say what species the virgins are??? I do not know anyone paying minimum wage.I was talking to a high school kid the other day that was bitching that no one would hire him. When I asked him why he could not find a job it was because he would not go to work before 8 AM and had to be off not later than 4 PM (also felt that he should be paid during lunch break) plus he would not work second shift or nights. He also felt he was worth at least $15 per hour to start but want guaranteed increase to $17 after one month and $20 after 3 months. I just laughed at him. He is an 18 year old high school punk with low grades no work ethic. Last year someone I know hired him to mow his small yard while he was gone on business so his wife would not have to because they have young children. He knew how long it should take to mow and agreed on a price to pay him $30. It took the home owner 1 1/2 to 1 3/4 hours to mow with his self propelled mower and trim so he figured the punk would take 2 to 2 1/2 hours ( note he demonstrated his new this season mower and trimmer and made sure they were full of fuel with extra in the can). He return the yard had not been mowed. When he asked his wife what happen ... did the mower break or what? She replied that the punk showed up once for about 30 minutes, fiddled around drinking soda looking at the mower, then finally started the mower and mowed for about 15 minutes, stopped went up to the door and told the wife that it was to hard and "ya need to get me a fuckin ridin mower and I need at least twice as much fuckin money to be your mother fuckin husbands slave. If you want me to mow with that fuckin piece o shit it was gonna cast least a hundred. She politely told him that he had agreed to mow the yard for the price a and if he did want to do it for the price then please put the mower back in the shed and speak to her husband later. He told her "fuck you bitch" and left. She put the mower away after she was sure he had left. After her husband returned the punk showed up wanting to be paid for "all the work I did" He was told you did not complete the agreement and the husband gave him $5 to keep the peace for gas and told him to leave. After a go deal of name calling he left. It is a historical and scientific fact that without entry level low paying jobs young people do not learn value of work and working your way up. Since the minimum wage law went into effect poverty has steadily increased. No one can afford to hire you people anymore at the rate of 2 or 3 to do one person's job. I used to hire high school and college kids for summer help just like other places but I do not anymore we now get by with the help I keep year round. It is to expensive to hire kids anymore and the liability is to great. When I retire I plan to just walk away from the business and most all my key employees will be at or close to retirement age. Fat food places do not hire kids anymore because they cannot afford to. If the minimum wage jumps again the McD's is set to further automate. They just put in an automated soda dispenser that loads the cup and fills the soda directly from the order screen and they plan to add a lidding operation. They already have 2 or 3 less servers for lunch and plan to automate more in order to hold the line on prices. So the net result will be the payroll wall remain the same: way less people making slightly more money and the machine always show up to work on time.
• skibum609

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  11 years ago

  Whenever you see a post with the word teabagger in it you know the person is an uneducated imbecile who listens to liberal news. Hate to clue you in liberal morons, but its liberals ruining the club scene in Providence not tea partiers, not the religious, not conservatives. Kind of funny to see people bashing Christians when the people against the clubs are usually left wingers, feminists and politicians.
• joker44

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  11 years ago

  Surfing the TUSCL board I came across this article/diatribe. gawker's mention of Puritans rang a bell and feeling puckish [look it up at [view link] ] I'll throw this F-bomb: Part of a Reuters' OPINION piece by Neil Gabler that tackles why Republicans want to cut food stamps and other assistance to the needy. This part on our Puritan roots applies to sexual expression/repression as well. Remember Canada's High Court recently undercut most their remaining anti-prostitution laws. "The answer goes back to those Puritan roots. We are a nation of scolds and scourges. We hate the idea that someone can get something he or she didn’t earn. So what’s the matter with Kansas may just be that many Americans believe in something more important than self-interest, more important than compassion. Punishment. Many Americans, certainly many Republicans, are more interested in making sure that the “undeserving” are not being rewarded than making sure the deserving are rewarded. Sure it is punitive. Meting out punishment, however, is something we love to do. Which is why one of our major political parties can subsist on it. The Republican Party is the punishment party. All this is worth remembering at this time of year. We may say we like giving. But a whole lot of us resent the taking. Or put another way, it is better to give so long as no one needs to receive." Our puritanical beliefs transcend simple-minded conservative/liberal dichotomies [again, don't complain just look it up]. Even if so-called 'non-religious liberals' don't buy into sexual repression they know it's important to appeal to the Puritanical voters they need to attract to win. End of transmission. Now back to the our TUSCL panel of 'experts'. LMAO.
• SketchinGuy

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  11 years ago

  Zipman's post is a good one overall, but as for the thread, the same old partisanship gets stale after a while. I am not a Libertarian; in fact I'm not even on the conventional spectrum. My political stance is moderately authoritarian & very elitist. Yes, you actually read that. I have no use for push-button conservatives or liberals. You do not have to be a Libertarian to find anti-prostitution laws absurd--which I do. When a trade is illegal it cannot be regulated for any consumer's benefit; thus ripoffs are a common occurrence for johns who are inexperienced in dealing with escorts, while human trafficking is run by criminal syndicates & the women who are involved often have no options to find help. (Rescue orgs exist, sure, but they are only effective when they are known. Those who are held captive are unlikely to find out who to call to get bailed out of the trade.) You're not about to go to the police when you are involved in an illegal activity to begin with. If prostitution were legalized, if marijuana were legalized, then they could be regulated for sound business practices (as opposed to cutting corners for profits), & they would also become revenue sources. We can complain about taxes all we like, but at the end of the day, services that government provides don't come for free. (One could object that the fedgov is doing a lousy job of managing its money, & I would agree...but that's a subject for a different thread.)
• skibum609

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  11 years ago

  I love it when people suggest that somehow supporting the idea that a rapist/murderer should be executed means you should also support the murder of the unborn. Morons get a clue: one person did nothing other than exist while the other took another's life.
• Rainman1970

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  11 years ago

  My political views are somewhere to the left of the late Ted Kennedy and I am for legalized prostitution.
• SlickSpic

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  11 years ago

  In the wise of words of one Peter Tosh, "Legalize It, Don't Criticize It."
• dimelo1000

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  11 years ago

  Because it is.
• inno123

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  10 years ago

  We have a congress where one party is trying as hard as possible to deny access to contraception and abortion and you wonder why prostitution is still illegal. There are real social costs to prostitution...disease, pimping, human trafficking, child prostitution, impact on property values etc. Most places try to have a legal form that they can watch out for those things so the underground prostitution will be smaller and easier to focus on. Most US cities unofficially do the same thing. Depending on the jurisdiction they will put little to no effort at stopping massage parlors, strip clubs, or call girls in order to focus on streetwalkers. If we ever have a radical change in prostitution laws it will come, as it did in Canada, from the Supreme Court, our most libertarian institution. Decades ago the Canadian Supreme Court said that the government had no right to regulate private sexual acts between consenting adults, including the simple act of paying for sex. The government responded with a range of well-intended acts against living off of the proceeds of another's prostitution, operating a bawdy-house, and communicating an offer offer of prostitution. Most of those were recently struck down as too broad and de-facto preventing someone from making a living from a legal activity. Now the US Supreme Court has also ruled that there is a fundamental right for adults to have privacy in their personal lives (Griswold v. Conneticut) and that the states cannot make sexual practices between adults illegal (Lawrence v. Texas). Could they take the next step that the Canadian Supreme Court did? I wouldn't hold my breath, but it is more likely than any other US legislature beyond Nevada doing it.
• plee0956

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  10 years ago

  Tired Traveller, I want to say that for the most part I agree with your point that Prostitution should be legalized but it does (for public safety sake at least!) need to be controlled. The reason that congressmen and women do not vote it into law is because voting any other way would lose their next election for sure. Allowing Escort services allows the management that run the service say that whatever occurs between the escort and the customer is up to them which is why escort services survive even the Puritanical state of MA. So the control part of the equation would be, if a town votes to not allow prostitution in the town, then then it should be illegal in the town. I was at a town meeting in my town where a company wanted to open an adult store with books magazines and videos ... etc. The townfolk wanted to outright vote no but I stood up and recommended that we allow a zone for adult stores but zone it in an industrial zone thus allowing us to deny licensing anywhere else in the town. I argued that if we just denied the licensing we could end up in court if the company petitioning was so inclined (other towns have lost those appeals). The zone was passed but the company decided not to open in our town at that point. My point is I think we should approach prostitution the same way (make it legal, require prostitutes to license and get tested every 6 months (or more), pay the town local taxes, report income, the whole nine yards (oh and let them make a decent wage and no pimps as a bonus). P.S. the part about Nancy Pelosi and insider trading is just wrong ... Insider trading is when an officer of the company who has insider information about the company that the public does not know cannot use that information to buy and sell publicly traded shares in the company based on that information. A politician does not have insider information unless they sit on the board of that company. Martha Stewart received insider information from her friend Peter Bacanovic (a Merrill Lynch broker) who heard from Sam Waksal that his company ImClone’s cancer drug had been rejected by the Food and Drug Administration before this information was made public. She sold her shares based on that information which saved her ~ 45K. Nancy Pelosi had no insider knowledge but she had reasonable knowledge that a particular piece of legislation regarding credit card companies was being considered by Congress (by the way the public can also have this information if they wish risking death by boredom from watching C-SPAN). She bought 5000 shares of VISA stock at it's IPO of $44/share (She, like other rich investors had access to those shares via their broker). Within days the stock was over $60. She did not sell and take profits she bought more shares at 64, then even more at $84 like a savvy investor. Many other rich investors who were not in Congress did the same thing and you are not calling them insider traders. Nancy by the way is quite wealthy as she is married to a venture capitalist worth more than $21M.
• skibum609

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  10 years ago

  I would like to clear up the confusion about Providence laws and how it came to be that indoor prostitution, which has never been legal, came to be illegal. In a criminal case against prostitutes, there was a loophole in the prior law that ended up being exploited by an intelligent lawyer who got his client off. That success was used as the foundation to get a few hundred cases thrown out of court. The legislature, in a hurry and in hysterics drafted a law to close the loophole, which pertained to street walkers, in such a focused manner that only outdoor solicitation of sex became illegal. In door prostitution was never legal and clubs were risking their liquor license, but eventually full contact dancers became prostitutes. Cheaters got so bad that if I went to watch football (only club with nfl ticket) and turned down a dance I'd get called homo lol. The other clubs followed suit. Now its illegal, but far more commonplace than pretty much everywhere else.
• Bonealone

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  10 years ago

  First - I am for legalized prostitution 2nd - I have met and dealt with honorable politicians 3rd - Want to do a study on why or why not? Follow what happens in Colorado with it legalizing MJ. Not good or bad just different in terms of govenment stepping in to formerly criminal activity ( Growth,Distribution,Revenue flows, and "Oh Hallowed Things" now, Taxation. Actually, the state seems to be doing ok, but things do pop up and bite them in the butt.
• TeoTommy

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  7 years ago

  State of Nevada Legalized Prostitution? Check! Legalized medicinal and recreational Marijuana? Check! Lefalized gambling? Check! Own a fully functional russian T-72 tank?* Check! You guys just live in the wrong state. *Not me, but I know of at least one in the state. I also know that earplugs don't do shit, if you are standing next to it, when the main gun goes off!
• Jascoi

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  7 years ago

  tiredtraveler. yer dec 26 2013 comment. man. krazy. we seem to be a nation of entitied prudes.
• san_jose_guy

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  7 years ago

  TiredT, lots of people say the same sorts of things. But you and they are missing the larger picture. You guys are like frogs at the bottom of wells. You see so little. Usually liberals do want to abolish the death penalty. But how is this restricting what people do, unless you mean restricting people from using the criminal justice system as a way of enacting revenge. And of abortion, most of the time liberals feel that a woman has a right to do what she wants with her own body, and that her person-hood out ranks concerns over the potential life her body may contain. So again, liberals are not restricting people, but protecting individual freedom. And then of prostitution, this remains a contentious issue for the entire population. I recommend this to everyone who has any interest in strip clubs: [view link] It is difficult to justify laws against prostitution and actions to enforce, because there is no victim. So usually conservatives will try to portray the prostitute as a social menace. You can see this in the newspaper coverage of recent actions against strip clubs in Greenville SC. And then say in San Francisco, they try to portray the prostitute as the victim. So they want to bust johns, or the orchestrators. So they prosecuted Jim and Artie Mitchell, calling them the 'corporate pimps'. But these kinds of prosecutions are more difficult. And then I hear that in Scandinavia they are starting to prosecute johns only. And these laws are always hard to enforce. Sex is not illegal, and money is not illegal. Usually what is illegal is the making of a verbal contract. Very hard to enforce against this without entrapment and trashing the Constitution. So in some places, only soliciting is illegal. And it is the solicitation, not the private delivery, which gets people busted for prostitution. So conservative Republicans portray prostitutes as a threat to the moral order. So from your text I assume you are attracted to the thinking of so called Liberal Republicans, basically Libertarians. Well all Libertarianism does is protect property rights. Sure, they have nothing against high price escorts. But out on the street, or in dive bars? No, they will see that as a social class problem, and they will indeed want to act against it. Maybe not only via criminal enforcement, but by zoning and civil enforcement. Libertarianism enforces social conformity, and guarantees extreme government power in order to obtain this. And TommyT, owning a Russian Tank? Not on public roads thank you, and not with functioning ordinance either thank you. And as far as Nevada Prostitution, none of the decriminalization advocates suggest the Nevada model. They have extremely restrictive laws on anyone licensed as a prostitute, restricting where they can live, and making LE know their cars. All power goes to the brothel owners, and the women become second class citizens. Creating freedom is not a simple matter. One who is well worth reading is the feminist and anti-middle class theorist Simone de Beauvoir. She stood up for abortion rights, against the death penalty, and against the criminalization of prostitution, and also against all the social enforcements which force women into roles and categories. SJG