Yes it is already legal in some counties in Nevada.
Now that more and more states are starting to review antiquated victimless laws by legalizing marijuana in one form or another, when will some jurisdictions start exploring legalizing prostitution.
Need answer fast?
Prostitution is already legal in many jurisdictions, e.g., Canada, Mexico, Australia, New Zealand, and most countries in western Europe.
OK add in “in the US” where appropriate.
Do we know of ANY places in the US that are considering it? If so, then we’re pretty close.
Perhaps a ballot initiative. It’s going to be quite a risk to be an elected official who sticks his neck out to make prostitution legal. There seems to be many people who are strongly against it (even in countries like Canada and the UK where it’s legal although some ancillary elements are not) and not many people who would feel strongly enough about it to change their vote. Prostitutes might be strongly in favor of it but they’re just about the lowest status/wealth group. I don’t think that high status/wealth prostitutes are all that affected by anti-prostitution laws. You’re unlikely to see a John lobby.
In other words, the people who are against it tend to be quite strongly against it and to organize.
That and it seems to be pretty much de facto allowed by the police as long as you’re not a nuisance or a threat. How often are high class callgirls or their clients arrested? As an example, Elliot Spitzer got busted for using prostitutes but was never charged. He was investigated because financial transfers made it look like he might be getting bribes. When the prosecutors found out it was merely whores and not bribes, they didn’t bother.
Does anyone know how it came to be legal in some parts of Nevada? Or was it always legal simply because no one made it illegal?
I wasn’t entirely comfortable when we (NZ) legitimised prostitution in 2003 but I have to say the walls of society have not come crumbling down. I doubt the average person even thinks about it these days. The police can concentrate their efforts in more productive areas of crime.
The only side-effects are local arguments regarding the location of brothels eg. too close to a school, excessively restrictive zoning laws, positioned in suburbia etc. Brothels however tend to be discreet - those who visit know how to find them anyway.
All in all it now seems silly for prostitution to be illegal.
When you stop being religious.
Out of curiosity, how did it become legal in NZ? I tend to agree with MichaelEMouse about the situation here in the States. While most people are probably more or less indifferent to it becoming legal, the few people that feel strongly about it staying illegal are pretty wealthy and organized, while the people who would benefit are not particularly powerful (the Prostitutes) and/or don’t want to be publicly associated with prostitution (the Johns). Advocating for legalization is all downside for a politician.
So who pushed for legalization in NZ (or other countries where it went from being illegal to legal)?
Maybe it will happen in Colorado and Washington. With the legal pot/prostitution combo, not only could they bleed money away from the Mexican drug gang black market, they can also capture the European drug-and-sex tourism market. People would travel from all over the world to smoke pot and screw whores while skiing, hiking, camping, fishing and so on.
Not saying it is a good idea, but probably more bang for the buck in those places at this point.
Does Nevada make much money from sex-tourism? I have the impression that its not really a big draw (certainly not compared to legal gambling), but I could be wrong.
Indeed.
I don’t know. But Colorado and Washington strike me as more interesting tourist destinations than a desert. Just sayin’.
I don’t see much of a move for formally liberalizing this area in the USA in the near future. To the contrary, “sex work” in general is being caught up in a rising tide of “Trafficking” concern leading to measures such as California’s Prop. 35.
You don’t have to be religious to be against prostitution. Hell, Thomas Aquinas was a pretty religious man and he was tolerant of prostitution. So you can even be religious and not be against it.
I wasn’t aware of that at all. What was his rationale for being tolerant of it? Was it only that Jesus was close to Mary Magdalene?
Was he tolerant of it as long as they did not use contraceptives and, as I have some vague memory of Medieval religious scholars putting it, that it did not matter which receptacle was used for the act as long as the issue occurred within the proper receptacle?
…the general history of law reform can be found on the wiki page:
But basically the reforms were lobbied for by a variety of groups including the New Zealand Prostitutes Collective, the National Council of Women, and the YWCA amongst many others. Tim Barnett introduced the bill into parliament and it was subject to a conscience vote (MP’s are not forced to vote along party lines). One of the most important speeches was made by Georgina Beyer: I’ve posted this several times before here on the dope: gonnna post it again. 
(Hansard transcript reprinted under Section 27 of the NZ copyright act.)
Georgina was a transexual member of parliament and a former prostitute and her words and the efforts of Tim Barnett and many many others were what bought the reforms through parliament. The legislation was effectively drafted by prostitutes and womans groups: which is why the reforms worked so well and make so much sense. The bill only scraped through by one vote and it is generally thought that Georgina’s impassioned speech was what made the difference.
About various places
NV: they’re all in rural-ass places, never got the impression that it was a big statewide source of funds.
Canada: I get the impression that it’s legal because nobody bothered to make it illegal, not because someone passed a bill making it legal?
RI: Apparently it was not enforced, but that stopped in 2009.
Okay, make you a deal. I will stop worshiping Venus and you will give me $100 if I become more accepting of prostitution.
Good parts of Eastern WA are desert, don’t know about CO. But desert != just sand. Brown, though.
Nope, most of the Nevada legal brothels are pretty darn sleepy places. Considering that there is a thriving and mostly tolerated illegal sex trade in Vegas, apparently to most people legality isn’t worth driving the 50 miles or so out to where it is legal. The brothels near Reno are a little more substantial because the county lines are such that they’re closer to town, but they’re still not huge attractions.
The way Nevada administers legal prostitution is a pretty bad deal all around for everyone but the actual brothel owners. Everything has to be done on-site, so no “house calls” which is probably the big stumbling block. All of the health checks and licensing are required to be handled by the brothel, which means the brothel has virtually complete control over a worker’s ability to work. They also take a substantial cut, which is bad for the workers but also means they’re not really cost-competitive with the illegal trade. There’s not really much reason to go for legal prostitution, Nevada-style, over the various lower risk forms of illegal prostitution.
Prostitutes functioned as a sort of societal safety valve that would prevent men from turning to homosexuality and other lustful debaucheries. It’s a bit more complicated than that but it’s not an area of history I’m intimately familiar with.