It’s your typical wowser calculus of, “I don’t like it so it should be illegal for you to do it.”
Nevada has had legal prostitution far longer than New Zealand’s example of 2003 and somehow, despite Ultra Vires’ fears, society there has survived. The current law was carefully tailored to specifically make brothels illegal in Clark county (Las Vegas*) but leave it as a local option for the other counties. Of those, the three counties with an appreciable population – Washoe (Reno, Sparks), Douglas (no incorporated cities at all) and Carson City have opted out, as have a couple other counties with your typical Nevada population of under 10,000. I have not been in Eastern Nevada much so I can’t address them, but the counties adjacent to the three named above all have legal brothels just across the border from where people are living in those three counties.
And putting UV’s fears about women being coerced into the profession, the help-wanted ads for the Las Vegas Sun and Reno Gazette Journal have a section for ‘Ladies’ with the understood implication they would be using their lady-bits in their employment.
I had a girlfriend who spent her senior year at the Sorbonne circa 1972. She said that apartment rents were so high in Paris almost all undergrads were living at their parents’ home or had two roommates if not three or four. As a consequence most of them would get it on in as secluded a public place they could find, but would do some of the preliminaries in a brasserie or restaurant where at least it was warm. Once she was in a restaurant with her boyfriend and another couple there was carrying on a bit much even by Parisian standards. There was an American tourist couple there and their son, about twelve, who was watching what amounted to public foreplay “with eyes the size of saucers.” They sent him out to wait in the car.
She also remarked, “You can do the deed in the front seat of a Citroen 2CV.”
*Yet the city abounds with streetwalkers; imagine that.
At least in the United States and some other countries prostitution is seen as a vice: something pleasurable or addictive but not healthy either for the individuals participating in it or the society at large that tolerates it. Comparable to drugs, alcohol, gambling, and smoking, all of which have been subject to varying levels of opprobrium at different times and places.
It’s noteworthy that even when prostitution has been tolerated it has seldom been respectable (as some libertarian feminists say it should be). Prostitutes were often considered outcasts, beyond the pale of decent society. As were various “sin towns” or “dens of iniquity”; which provided they were across the tracks or outside some city or county line could be looked down on but considered someone else’s problem- while quietly attracting patrons from “respectable” society.
This is a long standing alternative to something being either expressly legal or illegal and seriously enforced: consider it an externality. Hypocritical perhaps but often the least problematic muddle that can be managed.
…I disagree. The least problematic way sex work can be managed is (in my most humblest opinions, which is backed up with objective data), what we’ve done down under. You wouldn’t believe how un-problematic its been since we stopped listening to the hypocrites and started listening to the people that are routinely ignored.
You really do not have to do all the Googling. I would prefer you not make stuff up. You have not provided a cite of a religion forbidding prostitution.
The URL on Judaism leads to an article titled “Issues in Jewish Ethics: Prostitution”
If you bother to read the article, you will come across
The book referenced in the second URL is a little less obvious, but
SInce the book was so much on topic of the discussion, I thought you would appreciate it, but oh well…
Zina is essentialy any form of sex crime (from adultery to necrophilia). If you look it up in say…Wikipedia, you will find
There! I think I fulfilled my service to society.
You seem rather determined to make a point that prostitution is not condemned in religion. I can’t imagine why this would be of any relevance (unless you live in the Middle-East and contemplate a career as sex worker), but I hope we can agree that at least two of the major religions say it’s a no-no.
Sorry for the belated response, and thank you for correcting me. While I was really talking about a lack of demand-side push for legal sex work, you’re right that I was sadly unaware of this kind of remarkable supply-side reform.
You’ve also demonstrated yet another way New Zealand is more advanced than the U.S. Please work with Canada to take us over.
I think we can imagine that personal attacks are the sign of a weak argument. Certainly we agree that you cannot cite a holy scripture of any name-brand religion condemning prostitution?
Some authors have used religion as an excuse to condemn prostitution, just as some have probably condemned vegetarians.
I find it astounding that you believe that sex within a marriage is no more “noble” than sex with a prostitute. If we did a poll asking the public that question and it had the option of sex within marriage as being “more noble,” “less noble,” or “equal” which choice do you think would win?
And does that majority not have the option to enact their beliefs into law? Unless you are arguing that prostitution is a fundamental liberty interest, which no serious legal scholar suggests, then your bald declaration does not make it the correct thing.
Indeed, my position does not hamper a majority from legalizing prostitution, but it tests your ridiculous idea that sex with a prostitute is not different than sex with your spouse.
The distinction between using your hands to pick crops in the fields for hours for pay and using your hands to stimulate someone’s genitals for pay seems very arbitrary. Why is one legal and one not? Most of the good reasons our ancestors had, supporting children of prostitutes, STDs, etc. for banning the practice are handled better with other methods in the modern era. So my remaining objections were some form of “EWWW!” But I realize that my “EWWW!” is someone else’s “RAWR!” and that person is as much a part of society as I am. The “EWWW!” of the majority has long been a force for injustice, from the stigmatization and criminalization of homosexuality to the marginalization of racial minorities. Still, I wouldn’t want to be a prostitute, and most of the stories I’ve heard of people who lived that life are pretty negative, so I wouldn’t want my kids going into that line of work. I was still about 60-40 on the legalize/prohibit spectrum.
I’ve become more convinced that we need to legalize sexwork recently(~10 years ago) by legal decisions banning smoking in bars. I was of the opinion that a bar could choose to be a smoking area and the patrons, knowing that in advance, could choose to visit it or not. But what that does is force the employees of the bar, who are often nonsmokers, or may smoke less than the patrons, to become second-hand smokers as a condition of their employment. This is an undue burden to me and I agreed with the decisions to ban smoking entirely to protect the workplace from foreseeable hazards. Being exposed to carcinogens as a condition of employment is not ok with asbestos or tobacco. Similarly, the sexworkers of the world could have a safer, better work environment with legal protections for their work than they have now. The pimps and madams of the world, not to mention the traffickers and abusers, are there to fulfill a role that society has abdicated, and that’s not ok. I’d rather have cops be called when a client is abusing a sexworker than a pimp be called. I’d rather swallow my “EWWW!” than have them continue on like this.
Noble? That’s the problem right there. Sex in marriage is pleasurable, and it helps build closeness. So does having dinner together, taking road trips together, going shopping together, and going to shows together.
I assume you think that marriage is good. I do. Some married couples are sexually incompatible. Should a marriage break up only for that? If not, should one or both partners be frustrated by the other partner? If not, what is better - a mistress or male equivalent which risks an emotional involvement which could a marriage or risk or prostitution which does not. I’m assuming openness here, since keeping secrets is bad for a marriage.
If prostitution can be pro-marriage, let’s make it safe.
Then be astounded. Sex is just sex. It can be great or not that great. It can be greater with a loving partner. But it’s not noble, and more importantly it’s not vile. It’s not something dirty that needs to be washed in marriage vows. Enjoy your marital sex and let others enjoy their sex, whatever it is.
Ho! I do not doubt that your side would win by a very large margin. But I also have no doubt that a very large part of the population has completely fucked up views about sex. Our culture is very clearly sex-negative, and sex is considered a bad, dirty, dangerous thing by default, that can only become acceptable if very specific conditions (conditions vary depending on who you ask) are met at which point it magically becomes the greatest thing since (and before) the invention of sliced bread.
No, definitely not. And since I understand that you’re a lawyer, I’m in turn astounded that you would make such a statement.
Neither does yours. And yes, I believe that being able to have sex with whom I want, when I want, how I want, and for any reason I want is one of the most important freedom there is. And the whom, why, how and when is absolutely none of anybody business besides my partners.
People have always wanted to regulate other people’s sexuality, in ways they wouldn’t dare to try regulate any other activity. Generations after generations and still to this day, they want to prevent others from having any kind of sex that is different from their own. They feel entitled to control other people’s bedrooms. They spew their hatred and their despise on everybody who doesn’t fuck in a way they approve of with the people they approve of. As you did in this very thread. “Don’t you see how vile and repugnant your sperm pumping is? Don’t you want to partake instead in our noble, ethereal and pure act of divine adoration? And anyway if you don’t want to, we’re going to force you to, you perv!”
When you have sex with your wife, you’re using the same organs we all do and release the same bodily fluids we all do. Stop pretending that what happens when you move your loins with sweat dripping from your forehead or when you lick the area your partner use to pee is any nobler because you have a fancy piece of paper in your cupboard.
I know, but as your own quote says, “speculation that he had sex with [any of the aforementioned women] [are late inventions and nothing pointing to that is found in the actual Bible]”.
And if you asked Spaniards about the nobility of sex and allowed write-in answers, a lot of what you’d get would be along the lines of “can I make my cunt a duchess?”