Legal prostitution

24 comments

• twentyfive

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  6 years ago

  If you got more people to vote you’d have a chance, real problem is so few vote, then eliminate all private money from the political process, shit would start to change if those two things happened.
• Longneck

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  6 years ago

  This government is founded/stolen by religious fanatics. What does anyone really expect.
• Jascoi

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  6 years ago

  I'm holding my breath rational thinking will prevail. no I'm not...
• Papi_Chulo

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  6 years ago

  IDK - it seems that it is getting worse instead of better- seems they are clamping down even more these days - there doesn't seem a large enough group of people that are gonna stand for the right to legal-prostitution - I don't think voting will help - seems most people are anti-prostitution and politicians have more to gain by also being/pretending-to-be anti-prostitution. Plus those now in the sex-biz probably benefit more ($$$) from it being illegal - so there doesn't seem to be a large-enough interest for anything to change and I don't know enough about the law to know if something like this could be challenged all the way up to the supreme-court and win.
• jackslash

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  6 years ago

  Not going to happen in our lifetimes.
• twentyfive

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  6 years ago

  ^true.
• flagooner

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  6 years ago

  It's because all sex workers are victims of human trafficking.
• Call.Me.Ishmael

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  6 years ago

  It is already legal in the U.S. It is illegal on a state-by-state basis. That said, no politician (even at the local level) wants to campaign in favor of "moral decrepitude".
• JAprufrock

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  6 years ago

  It'll never be legalized in the U.S., not with so many phony, pious, holier-than-thou cock-sucking pieces of shit pretending to be against it, when in private they're whacking to porn, sexually harassing practically anyone with a vagina, seeing hookers on the side and in some cases abusing alter boys. Our best bet is that Canada legalizes is. The Canadian prostitution laws are somewhat vague, with gray area as it is. There has been talk of legalizing pot and prostitution in Canada. I think that's a possibility. Canadians have more of a relaxed European attitude toward sex.
• boomer79

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  6 years ago

  The problem is that the liberals have decided they’re against it when in the past they were more inclined to support legalization. The social conservatives have always been against it. Really I think women who don’t participate don’t like prostitution but in the past in order to oppose legalization some of them thought they had to oppose the women who were doing it and their freedom which would be very unfemenist. Now they are basically saying it’s all the men’s fault and that because of power dynamics the woman doesn’t really consent even when she says she does. That’s why they basically call everything trafficking. So basically with the Democrats having to give in to feminism and the Republicans giving into religious nuts, the government is not going to mind its own business in this issue. No one is for freedom and we can expect to hear more grossly inflated statistics about sex trafficking used to justify crack downs.
• Papi_Chulo

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  6 years ago

  ^ nice breakdown
• chessmaster

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  6 years ago

  Boomer, well said.
• Call.Me.Ishmael

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  6 years ago

  Legalized prostitution used to be a platform with the rank-and-file libertarians. Now that the libertarians are trying to bleed votes from the Republicans, they're not quite as vocal on that issue anymore.
• londonguy

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  6 years ago

  One of the reasons they won't legalise it may be because they can't find a way of taxing the earners or the pimps in a way which would satisfy them that they weren't paying their dues like 'normal' employers and employees?
• londonguy

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  6 years ago

  I have to say it again, I love your country. But I wish the politicians and religious nut jobs would be more tolerant. It's much the same over here to a lesser degree thankfully.
• san_jose_guy

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  6 years ago

  Some have talked about legalizing a zone. They were talking about CA. They were saying pick a county and then introduce a state legislature bill allowing for a zone. Might pick a place where their state legislators would not be likely to support it anyway. Then of course there will be fees and taxation. Another way is just to sue via the 1st Amendment. This is after all the only reason we have strip clubs. And then another way is just that prostitution laws are extremely hard to enforce, unless you trash due process and the constitution. So for example, consider that in Mexico brothels are technically illegal, even in TJ's Zona. So this is why their massage places give no fixed address and seem to be rather stealthy. But the HK Bar is not a brothel as it has only a hotel which is external to it. So you can have hooker bars and hooker hotels, just not brothels. And having hooker hotels and hooker bars, how is the law going to be enforced? It all comes down to a communication between two people. If one of them is a cop, then very likely it is a case of entrapment. Imagine if our constitutional due process protections were seriously enforced? Bake in the 70's, most experts believed that enforcing laws against prostitution was pointless. Since, LE has found ways, but they always involve trashing the constitution. In San Jose, historically a very tough town, during the 80's there was this huge move to crackdown at all levels. They had this special task force to deal with prostitution and 'gangs'. Very racist, very much oriented to a real estate profiteer interest. Usually it is only at the bottom end of the market that there is serious enforcement, and this is because such people don't have lawyers and are afraid of public exposure. Sex, condoms, money, hooking up with strangers, all perfectly legal. Sounds like in Vegas Casino girls operate without too much trouble. SJG Repeal of Abortion Ban, Ireland [view link]
• BurlingtonHoFactory

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  6 years ago

  @Countryman5434, We've addressed this several times. Basically, what has to happen is the oldest generation of voters has to die of old age. And then the second oldest generation has to die of old age, too. And probably the third oldest as well. And then my generation has to die off, too, while we're at it. This is because, sadly, individual people don't usually change their minds... progress happens by attrition, when new generations are born and realize that the old way of doing things was stupid. Then the new generation overwhelms the prior ones in number. As it stands right now, a large swath of the country believes that prostitution should be illegal and another large swath of the country believes that it should be legal. But it's not much of a priority for the people who think it should be legal. They have other priorities. By contrast, it's a big fucking deal for the folks who believe it should remain illegal. And so it remains illegal.
• BurlingtonHoFactory

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  6 years ago

  twentyfive said "... then eliminate all private money from the political process, shit would start to change..." I have to ask, how exactly would campaign finance reform and publicly financed elections lead to legalized prostitution? I've gotta hear this one...
• BurlingtonHoFactory

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  6 years ago

  @[view link].Ishmael, It's still part of the Libertarian Party Platform, they just don't use the actual word prostitution anymore. It changes from year to year. And they've always tried to siphon votes from both major parties, nothing new there. The difference is that now they're consistently trying to get more than 1% of the popular vote (which I think is a total waste of time for them, but what do I know?) Anyway, look at the guys who voted against FOSTA, and its related bills. They're not members of the LP, of course, but they are philosophically libertarians: Rand Paul, Justin Amash, Thomas Massie, Mark Sanford, Tom McClintock, Dana Rohrabacher, etc. It's still a key part of the movement.
• BurlingtonHoFactory

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  6 years ago

  @londonguy, They seem to have found a decent compromise in your country, and in many others. Sure, it's not what I would do (I would simply legalize it across the board, with absolutely no regulations), but it's better than the American status quo.
• chessmaster

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  6 years ago

  "But it's not much of a priority for the people who think it should be legal. They have other priorities. By contrast, it's a big fucking deal for the folks who believe it should remain illegal. " Thats pretty much the gist of it. I think most people are indifferent or pro sex work but its not the end of the world for them. But the feminists and religious freaks have to have their way on sex work.
• san_jose_guy

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  6 years ago

  Until the last two decades, moralists crusaded against porn. That seems to have gone away, and it seems to be because the Internet made it mainstream. So now they crusade against Trafficking, and most of the time when they make a prostitution bust now they are talking about Trafficking. It is just a way of criminalizing the conduct of consenting adults, by saying that somehow it is not really consensual. Because of this they claim that it all should be illegal. Amnesty International, recognizing that abuse of sex workers can be real, says better to decriminalize in order to give sex workers legal protection. Many people's world view still revolves around marriage, and this is where they see prostitution as a threat. And are prostitution and marriage really that much different? Figure out how to open the members only FS Strip Clubs I have spoken of, where enforcement will be extremely difficult and FS standard, and so that retail strip clubs have to go further to compete, and so then so much of the population has experience with prostitution that support for continued criminalization has to evaporate. Let there be high class forms of it, religious versions. Much of the drive to crack down on it is just a hatred of the underclass anyway. In San Francisco there have been initiatives to create a decriminalized zone. There was an initiative to make LE regularly account for how much money they spend enforcing against prostitution. Most of the time when LE enforces against AMPs, they end up getting severely tarnished for their own conduct. And didn't they deserve to get tarnished over Greenville South Carolina? It depends on having a liberal news media, people who will mock the police of this. Police cannot stand that. A man who is fighting the system: [view link] SJG Led Zeppelin 1, 1969 [view link]
• Countryman5434

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  6 years ago

  Imo their is no difference between prostitution and porn! Porn stars get paid to fuck 2 no difference!
• san_jose_guy

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  6 years ago

  Some have tried to prosecute porn as prostitution. We don't want to go down that road. How much difference is there between prostitution and marriage? SJG