Does anyone actually think prostitution should be criminalized? Chances are if you’re prostituting yourself you have other issues such as drug abuse or financial issues. I believe it was Sweden or maybe Switzerland that had an heroin epidemic, and prostitution was skyrocketing, then after they introduced measures to weed people off herion, prostitution plummeted. They didn’t start targeting prostitutes, they fixed the core reason why there was so many prostitutes.
So why in America, do we criminalize prostitution? I believe it should be a human right to do whatever you want with your body, including self harm, prostitution, excessive drug use, whatever it is thats your right and nobody especially a government should be sending armed people to come kill you because you sucked some cops dick behind a dumpster and you resist arrest. Theres plenty of right wingers in America so why haven’t we legalized prostitution yet? I can go pay a women to fuck me if I video tape it and post it on the internet, but I can’t pay a women to suck my dick in a dirty motel at 3am.
Glad to hear that. Prostitution is one of those issues that isn’t really going to win you a ton of voters so nobody is really running on it. So it’s never going to be legalized unless we talk about it more often.
It’s illegal because there are laws against it. See? Simple answer.
Why are there laws against it? Because some people are really bothered by prostitution. So they push for prohibiting it. There are probably many people who would like prostitution to be legal but they’re not pushing as hard as the anti-prostitution people push. In a democracy, the legislature listens to the greatest numbers who speak the loudest.
Why are these laws allowed to stand? Because there are no grounds to overturn them. Prostitution is not protected by the Constitution. Our legal system allows the government to enact laws to enforce public morality.
On a side note, you can’t get around most prostitution laws by videotaping it. In most places, paying somebody to have sex with you is illegal, even if it’s being done for a movie. But having sex in order to make a movie is not considered to be prostitution in California and New Hampshire (due to court rulings in those states). And that’s why our country’s pornography business is centered in [del]New Hampshire[/del] California.
Guessing you don’t think selling your ability to have sex with someone is a human right lol. I’m sure if someone framed it this way on either side they would gain support. Right wingers and libertarians would love the framing of this as big government stepping into peoples hotel rooms. Leftists would support it because it hurts nobody, and whatever harm that could potentially come from it could be neglected if it’s legalized and businesses are regulated. IE your pimp/advertiser can’t force you to do something by threatening to stop advertising you.
I think you’re taking an indecisive stance on this issue by stating the obvious which I see you do a lot. Just wondering what your personal opinion is on whether prostitution should be legal, and the precedent it sets for gov to control other things we do in our personal lives.
I realize the question asked exactly what I wanted. You simply answer it poorly. Lol, “why is this illegal”, “because this law says it is”, “why is this law this way”, “because it was written that way”. You are trolling and have attempted to derail my thread.
Why did we make prostitution illegal and Why is prostitution illegal, if anyone asked me either or question I’m likely to give them the same answer. IF someone asks me Why can illegals seek asylum, then I cite the laws and not the reasoning. The context of the question and topic really matters, you intentionally misinterpretation it.
I think it’s illegal because sex with women is seen as highly valuable and a thing to protect for men with some kind of more legal and patriarchal right to get it. The same reason rape has always been such a big deal even though women’s other rights of autonomy have so often been ignored - it’s treated somewhat as a property crime rather than a violent crime.
I still believe that the same logic which is mustered to compel a woman’s right to abortion, i.e. basically that “it’s my body and you don’t control it”, or equivalently, ‘the right to privacy’, applies also to a woman’s right to sell her body if she so wishes.
FTR, I am absolutely in support of women’s right to choose (both to have an abortion and to charge a fee for sex).
FTR, I believe this logic also applies to drug use (which I have noted here before).
I seem to recall that a lot of the laws against prostitution were passed to control venereal disease, specifically the spread of venereal disease from the prostitute to the customers to the customers’ wives. This was in the late 19th-early 20th century, when VD wasn’t easily cured, and could render female victims infertile. This concern about VD also led to the laws in some states requiring a blood test before receiving a marriage license (I believe Ceil may have once written about this).
Now, the OP asked why prostitution is illegal, and I’ve tried to answer why it was initially made illegal. Legal prostitution is of course opposed by most people with conservative sexual morals. And there are other concerns about the exploitation of women, to include trafficking and the use of minors. One can argue that most or all of these concerns could be dealt with through regulating a legalized prostitution industry. But all these things together make it less likely that we’ll see prostitution legalized on a large scale anytime soon. That’s why it’s illegal.
One thing I’ve always found fascinating is that the early laws imposed more penalties on the prostitutes than the customers. And that the reasoning was that the male customers were just following their natural urges, while the women were choosing freely to take part. Wow.
There are multiple points of view from which the thread title’s question may be answered, such as
[ul]
[li]Historically, why has prostitution been made illegal?[/li][li]Psychologically, why do people want prostitution to be illegal?[/li][li]Practically, what are the reasons no one is currently successfully working to make prostitution legal?[/li][li]Ethically, should prostitution be illegal, and if so, why?[/li][/ul]etc.
And, as the OP shows some awareness of, answers to at least some of these questions go to deeper fundamental issues, like
What is (or should be) the purpose of laws (in general)?
Exploitation of women by pimps is a huge problem. The line between forced and “voluntary” prostitution becomes fuzzy, but the number of forced sex slaves worldwide is in the millions! Even in the U.S. the problem is much more severe than many realize.
It’s illegal I once heard because of wives. Wives certainly don’t want their husbands visiting a prostitute and I think most would fight tooth and nail to keep it from being legalized.
Please note that this is NOT my opinion, rather something I heard or read.
Your first sentence is not fascinating at all. You always go after the suppliers. If you want to stop cocaine, do you go after Pablo Escobar or the guy next door who buys it every now and again?
But if you state your second sentence differently, it is unremarkable as well. Presumably if we enacted harsh penalties for buying cocaine, we could stop new users and/or seriously cause current users to stop or switch drugs and maybe put a dent in the problem.
If we go after guys who are lonely and looking to get laid, we aren’t going to turn off their sex drives. But if we go after someone who deliberately profits from the illegal trade with harsh punishments, they may decide to switch to another line of work.