U Not Gonna Like This

First this from an LA Times article originally printed in 1993:

(From the Los Angeles Times, August 11, 1993)
Prostitution: Forbidding sale of sex by consenting adults is paternalistic and condescending.
By EDWARD TABASH

The recent arrest and notoriety surrounding the alleged Hollywood Madam brings to light one of the travesties that still blemishes our criminal-justice system. Whatever one may think of prostitution, an argument can be made that the sale by consenting adults of sex for money, per se, should not be a punishable event in our legal system.

Religious-based arguments asserting the immorality of prostitution should be given no legal credence. In a society that separates church and state, no person should lose her or his freedom because of someone else's religious beliefs. Only those actions that can be demonstrated by empirical evidence, independently of religious dogma, to warrant criminal sanctions should be punished.

The paternalistic argument that women need to be protected from sexual exploitation fails to justify the continued criminalization of prostitution. This argument claims that in order to protect women against such exploitation, society should imprison all women who engage in prostitution. This argument is reducible to a claim that languishing behind bars is a preferable fate for a woman as opposed to allowing her to freely sell her body, if this is what she chooses to do.

A related argument is that prostitution should remain illegal, which means women should still go to jail for engaging in it, because selling sex for money demeans women. Thus, the advocates of this argument would prevent women from being degraded by demeaning them even more severely by locking them up in a prison cell. This has about as much logical force as imposing the death penalty on someone for attempting to commit suicide.

The worst form of exploitation suffered by women who exchange sex for money is from pimps. It is most often the pimp, and not the grateful, gratified and happy customer, who abuses the woman. If prostitution were an unpunished act in our legal system, women could generally conduct business on their own, without having to rely on parasitic and abusive pimps.
An appropriately zoned, taxed and health-regulated legal prostitution industry would free women from jail, free many of our precious few police officers to focus on real crime and bring in much needed revenue. It would also elevate society to a new and desirable plateau of live-and-let-live tolerance.

and this:

In many communities throughout the U.S., the police focus attention on arresting persons involved in prostitution. A careful examination of this practice shows that it reduces the quality of life in society.

By forcing prostitution out of places where it would more naturally be found, such as in brothels or near motels, the police drive that activity into the streets of neighborhoods where it otherwise would not exist. As a result, residents of the neighborhoods are exposed to the activity against their will.

Also because of prostitution being forced into the streets, the dangers to many prostitutes greatly increase. Prostitutes whose jobs involve working at night and getting into cars with complete strangers can be, and often have been, easy pickings for serial killers and other sociopaths. James Alan Fox, a criminal justice professor at Northeastern University, says prostitutes are the most frequent targets for serial killers.

A sensible solution to these problems would be to follow the example of some European cities, where prostitution is allowed in certain designated areas. People who are interested in the activity go to places where it's permitted, and they leave alone the neighborhoods that don't wish to be associated with it. And the prostitutes can work in environments where they are much safer.

Another problem with prostitution arrests is that they cause long-term increases in crime and drug abuse in society. Margo St. James, a former social worker and a leading advocate of legalizing prostitution, writes: "When a woman is charged for a sex crime, it's a stigma that lasts her lifetime, and it makes her unemployable."

St. James identifies this stigma as a major reason why a large percentage of women who are in jail were first arrested for prostitution. The arrest record forecloses normal employment possibilities, keeps the women working as prostitutes longer than they otherwise would, and sets them up for a lifetime of involvement with drugs and serious crime.

Keeping prostitution illegal also contributes to crime because many criminals view prostitutes and their customers as attractive targets for robbery, fraud, rape, or other criminal acts. The criminals realize that such people are unlikely to report the crimes to police, because the victims would have to admit they were involved in the illegal activity of prostitution when the attacks took place.

If prostitution were legal, these victims would be less reluctant to report to police any criminal acts that occurred while they were involved in it. This would significantly improve the probability of catching the criminals and preventing them from victimizing others. In many cases, it could deter them from committing the crimes in the first place.

That view is consistent with the experience of the European countries where prostitution is legal. They have far lower crime rates than the U.S. And a similar situation applies in the Nevada counties where prostitution is legal. According to Barb Brents and Kate Hausbeck, two professors of sociology at the University of Nevada at Las Vegas who have extensively studied the Nevada brothel industry, those counties are quite peaceable and have very low crime rates.
No wonder that in November 2004 in Churchill County, Nevada, a ballot proposal to outlaw prostitution was rejected by a 2-to-1 margin. Although the county is mostly Republican and supported George W. Bush for president, the same voters saw no reason to stop brothels from operating there.

Additionally, laws against prostitution violate Americans' fundamental rights of individual liberty and personal privacy. Thomas Jefferson and other founders of the U.S. envisioned a society where people can live without interference from government, provided they don't harm others.
As Jefferson said in his First Inaugural Address: "A wise and frugal Government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement." Or as Arthur Hoppe wrote about consensual acts in the San Francisco Chronicle in 1992: "The function of government is to protect me from others. It's up to me, thank you, to protect me from me."

Similar to issues such as birth control, this issue involves people's fundamental rights to control their own bodies and decide the best way to conduct their lives. Alan Soble noted, "The freedom to choose one's reasons for engaging in sex is an important part of sexual freedom."

In a free society, it makes no sense for the government to be telling persons - particularly the poor - they cannot charge a fee for harmless services they otherwise are at liberty to give away.

To paraphrase George Carlin: Selling is legal, and sex is legal, so why isn't selling sex legal?
In fact, many people work in the sex industry because they see it as their only means of alleviating serious financial problems. Other sex workers aren't poor but simply enjoy that type of work and receive both income and personal satisfaction from it.

As one sex worker wrote in an article for a national newspaper: "All in all prostitution has been good to me and I have been good to it. . . . I don't really have to work anymore, but I love the business, so I still see my regular clients."

Likewise for the customers, there's no reason their freedom should not include the right to purchase the companionship and affection they may want but, for whatever reason, don't find in other aspects of their lives.

For example, one disabled man told researchers he was lonely and visited prostitutes because "I'm ugly, no women will go out with me. . . . It's because of my disability. So prostitutes are a sexual outlet for me." Another man reported that he did the same for a number of years due to being "anorexic and very reclusive. There was no chance of forming a relationship." A physically unattractive man added, "I pay for sex because that is the only way I can get sex."

Another person said his experiences with prostitutes and other sex workers helped him overcome an extreme aversion to physical intimacy, which had resulted from years of physical and emotional abuse while growing up. He explained: "I very likely would have died a virgin if I hadn't somehow gotten comfortable with physical intimacy, and sex workers enabled me to do that. At least for me, it's been a healing experience."

Dr. John Money, a leading sexologist and a professor at Johns Hopkins University, similarly notes that sex workers, with proper training, can assist clients in overcoming "erotic phobia" and various other sexual dysfunctions. He says that for the clients, "the relationship with a paid professional may be the equivalent of therapy."

Can anyone, other than the ignorant or cruel, argue that sex workers should not be permitted to help such persons?

Further, numerous legal commentators point out that using law enforcement resources against prostitution reduces substantially the resources available to fight serious crimes committed against persons or property. This nation desperately needs more efforts applied to solving those crimes, because arrests are being made in connection with only about 20% of them.

And according to the Multinational Monitor, massive amounts of white-collar crime are not being prosecuted. The magazine also says the damage inflicted on society by corporate crime and violence far exceeds the harm caused by all the street crime combined. The victims of the Enron and WorldCom scandals - many of whom lost their life savings - would probably support that claim.

and finally this from Heretical Sex:


Anti-prostitution campaigners typically cite a central corpus of issues as evidence that prostitution must be regarded as an absolute social evil, and eliminated by means of oppressive law enforcement.

These include:

Violence against sex-workers, including rape and murder.

Economic exploitation of sex-workers.

The involvement in the industry of professional criminal elements, including gangsters, pimps and people-traffickers.

Drug-use among sex-workers.

Unhealthy or dangerous working conditions for sex workers.

The involvement of under-age sex-workers.

The intrusion of street prostitution into the lives of those who do not wish to be involved, such as local residents.

Prostitution encourages the spread of sexually-transmitted diseases.

Prostitution constitutes a significant sector in the shadow economy, in which:

No taxes are paid

Commercial contracts are enforced by violence, due to the absence of recourse to legal process.

Causes secondary economic crime such as corruption and money-laundering.

All of these problems exist, and they are indeed a heady cocktail of issues.

However, they are all easily solved. All of them. At a stroke. All you have to do is legalise prostitution, and all of these problems will substantially go away.

The fact that prostitution is illegal is in fact the cause of these problems, not the solution to them.

However, anti-prostitution campaigners are not motivated by logic, but by moral dogma, ignorance and narrow self-interest.

Feminists have got it absolutely right when they talk about abortion. Making abortion illegal does not stop it from happening. It just makes it more dangerous. Therefore, it is in the public interest to keep it legal, and therefore regulated and safe.

However, they do not apply the same logic to things they disapprove of, such as pornography and prostitution, or in the last century, alcohol. A charming character called Carry A Nation used to go into saloons with a group of her friends, and smash the place up with axes. She and her fellow feminists were a key force in the Temperance movement, which eventually led to alcohol prohibition under the Volstead Act of 1919.

Prohibition was a national disaster for the US. It led to the creation of a massive shadow economy, organised crime, the criminalisation of many otherwise law-abiding citizens, police corruption, violence and a disregard for the rule of law.

A bit like the 'War on Drugs' today. Making drugs illegal actually makes them more dangerous, because gangsters are not concerned about quality control. Bootleg whiskey was often poisonous and contained methanol. That's why there were so many blind Blues musicians like Blind Lemon Jefferson. But the temperance fanatics would take this as evidence that they were right all along:

"Look. You drink whiskey, you go blind. We were right!". They seemed to be willfully ignorant of the fact that they were the ones actually causing the problems.

This is exactly the situation today with regard to both illegal drugs and prostitution. People are going to do these things whether you like it or not, so you just have to make the best of it.

Many moralists were against setting up needle exchanges for drug addicts, on the grounds that we shouldn't be encouraging people to inject drugs. However, responsible policy-makers accept that you have to deal with what's in front of you; you can't just wish you had something different. In fact, needle exchanges have been very successful in reducing the spread of infections.

Feminists like to cherry-pick their issues. One policy for abortion, another for prostitution. It's time they started being honest.

My view is that anything which takes place between consenting adults in private is no-one else's business.

If we legalise prostitution, we can set up licensed brothels. These could be subject to police inspections and health and safety checks. The staff and the owners will pay taxes. There will be professional recruitment procedures. No more people-traffickers, pimps and gangsters. No more violence. No more disease. No more under-age workers. No more coercion. Let's see if anyone wants to work there. Of course they will. This is exactly what the Australians have done.
I offer the Australian model of legal prostitution as a model for the Western world. I challenge anyone, even Julie Bindle, to find anything wrong with it, beyond the same mundane operational problems which affect any business.

In the licensed brothels in Australia, there has never been a single murder of a prostitute, or a single case of HIV infection. In Britain, in the past 10 years, over 60 street prostitutes have been violently murdered. A third remained unsolved. They make up the biggest group of unsolved murders in Britain. Reference.

I offer the American model of alcohol prohibition as an explanation of why the current situation in Britain is so completely fucked-up, and far from being the solution, is actually the source of most of the problems. It is interesting to note the high degree of feminist involvement in both problem situations. Feminism simply causes far more problems than it solves.

As well as licensed brothels, there should be a zero-tolerance policy towards both street-walkers and kerb-crawlers. Never mind 'zones of tolerance'. The street is no place for prostitution. The appropriate venue is the private house or licensed brothel. The same thing applies to the gay community. The public toilet is not your personal brothel. Summary arrest for everybody. No exceptions. We need to get casual sex off the street and into a safe private environment. If we do that, the problems associated with prostitution will all largely disappear overnight.