Polygamy I can see. But incest? Come on, is there really a large enough pro-incest community for that?
Yeah, that woman’s blog sucks. Come on.
And even if “trafficking” is defined as “women crossing the border to be willing prostitutes without a license,” that’s a problem that legalization is supposed to solve, not promote.
To “agitate for destigmatization”- probably.
Cite, please? Sounds good.
I’d assume prostitution would be decriminalized on a state by state basis but I don’t know if the motive is there. I think most adults consider prosecution of hired sex behind closed doors (as opposed to hooking in the street) to be a waste of law enforcement resources compared to more serious crimes. I’d imagine the legalization of escort services (but brothels and street walkers still being illegal) could happen in ten years in the more liberal states. As long as people hire and have consentual sex behind closed doors and away from the publics eye I don’t see the public wanting to use government money to finance a ban on it.
I don’t think the drinking age will be lowered.
Euthanasia will be decriminalized. Basically if you want to see the future of the US just look to Europe. They tend to be a few decades ahead of us on these issues.
Are you referring to euthanasia specifically, or all of the subjects brought up in the thread so far?
Because in most of Europe, marijuana - for one thing - is still super-duper-illegal.
IT’s still super-duper illegal in all of the United States, too. Anyway, he said “tend”.
I’m sure legalized prostitution has the potential to lead to more sex slavery, abuse of prostitutes etc., but the solution to that would seem to be to regulate it very heavily. Have a police presence in brothels, routine and stringent ID checks, strict enforcement of the laws, etc.
I think the drinking age is going to get lowered partly because we already have an unusually high one.
The “Honest Courtesan” is–or at least claims to be–a woman named Maggie McNeill. She argues in favor of legalized prostitution. A brief trip around her blog shows that it’s mostly just name-calling. She labels anyone who disagrees with her “retarded”, “psychotic”, and so forth; accuses her opponents of enjoying rape and child molesting; compares them to Nazis and communists, &c… &c… She also seems to enjoy posting obscene photos that don’t have any apparent relationship to the argument she’s making. Even in the absence of any other flaws, this ought to rule her out as a serious source, and you should be ashamed to link to such a source.
However, even if we ignore that, there are plenty of other reasons not to use her as a source. First, though the “Frequently Told Lies” post that you linked to does include a ton of links, almost all of them simply go to other posts on the same blog, rather than to outside sources which would allow anyone to verify her claims.
When she does quote outside sources, she blatantly lies about what they say. For example, you quoted her sentence “Norwegian studies demonstrate that their version of the law has increased sex trafficking and the number of prostitutes”; on her blog, the words “the number of prostitutes” is linked to this post, which in turn links to this article, which says: “Earlier, in 2009, when the new law targeting sex buyers was first introduced, half of the capital’s streetwalkers disappeared.” So the source article says the exact opposite of what The Honest Courtesan want us to believe it says. Seems like “The Dishonest Courtesan” would be a better title for her blog, wouldn’t you say?
If you want to brag like this, you should probably find a serious source first. I’ll continue believing that criminalizing the purchase of sex reduces the amount of prostitution and reduces human trafficking and pimping, as well as crime generally, because that’s what the data show.
Doesn’t this make it sound like we’d be putting more resources into regulating prostitution than we do into keeping it illegal?
Hardly. Even the most stringent regulation is cheaper than criminal law enforcement. We spend about $25 billion a year on illicit drug enforcement at the federal level alone, but the FDA’s entire budget is just $5 billion. That includes food regulation in addition to drugs.
Maintaining prisons is pretty damn expensive, from what I’m told.
Really Not I rather doubt that the Supreme Court will get involved with prostitution, polygamy or incest, though I’m not a lawyer.
Prostitution is commerce, which states have a right to regulate, and there are arguably legitimate state interests in forbidding incest and discouraging polygamy. (Polygamy is legal now, in a sense: you can live with multiple women as much as you choose, as long as you don’t call them wives).
States have a right to regulate everything. It’s part of their plenary power. That is not the same as the right to ban things.
Unless you think we’ll no longer have to maintain prisons if we legalize prostitution, this isn’t much of an argument. Maybe I was imagining a more involved regulatory system than you were or maybe I’m wrong about how much these kinds of regulations would cost. But one of the chief arguments in the marijuana debate, for instance, is that prosecuting and locking up marijuana users is a huge waste of money. That’s solved pretty easily if you allow people to have it and smoke it. So I’m asking if that’s also the case with legalized prostitution if prosecutions and arrests are replaced with “very heavy” regulations that are supposed to stop human trafficking.
He was talking about maintaining prisons to house drug offenders - and pretty much everyone agrees we’d have far fewer people in prison if marijuana was decriminalized.
RadioLab’s story Bliss covers new research on LSD being done and the completely stupid reasons why it was suspended in the first place.
Reported for… either plagiarizing a really weird country song or hate speech.
Banned for either or both.
First of all, congratulations on the sleazy ad hominem attack on Maggie McNeil (The Honest Courtesan blogger) by noting she’s a prostitute. Of course, being in a profession is generally considered to confer inside knowledge of the topic, but this scumbag tactic is used so often that she’s written a post about it.
What a shame your peer-reviewed study has some very poor reviews and some methodological issues. Particularly, they kinda made up their numbers about how many trafficking cases there were in Germany, ignoring the official figures, and they were very sloppy with their terminology. Here’s a debunking by Dr. Laura Augustin.