I've heard many reasons, and none of them seem legitimate. Forced (and child) prostitution should of course be illegal because its essentially slavery. But legal, voluntary prostitution would pull a lot of the 'consenting adult' activity out of the black market, reducing the black markets overall influence and power and ultimately reduce forced and child prostitution. The 'moral society' argument SHOULD fall flat on its face given that people will generally agree that laws should not be made on a moral foundation (even if those same people will still *vote* via their moral compass instead of their logic). Ive heard it posed that most people who engage prostitutes do so shamefully, and prefer for the industry to remain in the dark as it is easier to retain privacy that way. This seems the most likely (or most common) reason, but I figure it would have to be more private in a legalized setting if there wasn't the threat of a LE sting operation and resulting public court records. Or is it simply tradition, going back to our puritanical roots, that sex is a pivotal dynamic to the family unit, something that should remain officially sacred, not subject to the beauracracy and mechanical calculations of law and economics? Ive even heard that its mainly women, who fear losing their near 'monopolistic' power of sex in the dynamic of marriage who oppose legalization so strongly, fearful that few men will be willing to commit or marry if sex is as easy to find as a Walmart. This one seems less likely, given the overwhelming notion of women that their worth not be defined by their sexuality. I think the prospects for civilization (being so foundationally based on the family unit, such as it is) would be bleak indeed if the only thing holding marriages together were laws against prostitution... What do you think? Why is it illegal when virtually all other 'vices' and 'sins' of ancient times have been accepted into the realms of 'tolerance' in our society?
Here's one argument: Because if a woman has lots of sex for money she could end up getting an abortion—well probably many of them—and that's not fair to those little ones.
So if a woman has sex for free with many different men just because she loves to have sex with many different men, she could end up getting an abortion. So should she be arrested and thrown in jail for enjoying free sex with many men? Note the same thing could be said if she has sex daily with just one man she's in love with (or just likes to have sex with). An educated guess is that the source of the illegality of prostitution is strictly a religion/church driven puritanical issue and also potentially rooted in the fact that it's an undocumented cash business and the IRS just hates not being able to steal their "fair share" from prostitutes.
Seems like legalizing it would be a big tax revenue boost. I dont like buiness liscencing requirements or really taxation in general, but thats our system so whatevs... but instead of just banning it, it could be allowed with a business liscence and taxed as a business, like massage and escorts (the two most common prostitution fronts) and like marijuana legalization would increase revenues.
I believe that's how it's done in countries (and parts of Nevada) where prostitution is legal. There are also medical requirements for Prostitutes to maintain their license. That is the logical way to go but whoever said the US government operates logically?
What about your moral values? At what age should children be able to have sex? Should parents be allowed to have sex with children at that age, and/or have them work as prostitutes to earn them cash? Should siblings and their first cousins be allowed interbreed? Almost all prostitutes are controlled by male pimps who beat and rape them and hook them on dangerous narcotics. Is that all okay with you? Dr. Lois Lee, the government's expert witness, testified on the modus operandi of pimps and on the nature of the relationship between pimps and prostitutes. Specifically, Dr. Lee testified: 1) "Sophisticated pimps usually travel in an intercity circuit with a group of ten to forty girls working for them" 2) "Recruits are usually vulnerable young women, often runaways who have been abused or neglected by their families" 3) "[A] pimp will encourage his prostitutes to compete for his affection by earning money, and will beat his prostitutes if they fail to adhere to his rules" 4) "Prostitutes are often so financially and psychologically dependent on their pimps that they are unable to leave even when they are beaten" 5) "Pimps usually spend the money earned by their prostitutes on drugs, clothes, and jewelry, since the ability to support a "flashy" lifestyle is a source of status in their subculture" 6) "On several ways in which the pimp-prostitute relationship ends-the prostitute becomes pregnant, goes on welfare, turns to more serious kinds of crime, commits suicide, or dies at the hands of a customer" https://courses2.cit.cornell.edu/sociallaw/student_projects/PimpsandProstitutes.htm
Except for the "moral values" issue all you did was provide all the reasons why prostitution should be legalized and regulated (to prevent/prohibit the above). Morality however is in the eyes of the beholder. What's moral to some may be immoral to others and vice versa. We're not talking about murder and theft, we're talking about sex, a natural biological function that almost all human beings (and other species) participate in sometime during their lifetimes.
They're a guide for me to live my life. Not a justification to make others live my life. Children shouldn't be having sex. Or drinking, or voting, or employed, or any of the other things children already arent supposed (allowed) to be doing. Legalized prostitution would of course be consenting ADULTS. What does that have to do with legalizing prostitution between consenting ADULTS? No. But they should be allowed to have sex if they are adults and they mutually consent. Inbreeding is just as cruel as child abuse, as it creates people with horrible, life altering, torturous dissorders, and its a threat to society as a whole due to the medical costs associated with the dissorders and the mental illness that increases crime. But as with all other laws, it should be enforced with consequences at the point of actually committing the crime (the crime of creating an inbred human). Merely having sex, be it homosexual, incestuous, beastial, or for profit, does not have any dissorderly effects on society, and there is no justification to try and restrict it authoritatively. Creating a child who is inbred should be a crime. Having consentual sex with adult family members is no ones business but theres. There are many ways to have sex that are not 'breeding,' I presume I dont need to explain them to you... Of course not. Thats a result of the industry being forced into the shadows by legal restriction, not an innevitable dynamic of the industry itself. If prostitution was legal, prostitutes would be legitimate business-people with employment rights, protections and rdress of greivance the same as snyone else. Currently, a prostitute cannot report the abuse of her pimp without admitting to her own crime of prostitution. Legalize prostitution, and watch the abusive pimps be rolled into prison where they belong. Because there is no regulation in the industry, because it is illegal. I wonder why none of my bosses have ever done this when I screw up at work... oh, right, because I could call the police on him without being arrested for collusion. Because they have no rights, because the industry is forced to operate in the dark. The prostitute is an abused slave that has no control over the means of her 'production' in the industry because there is no oversight, no regulation, no accountability, and no means of redress of greivance. This is because the industry is banned instead of regulated. Also because there is no competition. How lucrative would prostitution be for the shady, ill-mannered pimp trying to peddle filthy, broken prostitutes in a dark alley if there were legitimate, regulated, healthy, clean, self-operated prostitutes in a clean, well-lit professional establishment competing for his business in the area as well? Its a rhetorical question, the pimp business would be ruined.
Prostitution laws are broken every single day in Las Vegas by whores going off the reservation. Criminals don't obey the laws. Making it legal isn't going to stop pimps from abusing young girls, and they are no more going to register their child prostitution rings with the government and pay taxes, than urban drug gangs are going to do selling dope.
Of course. There will always be criminals. But there will be a lot LESS if we reduce the demand for the crime that they supply. Every prostitute we legitimize, protect, and allow to be fairly compensated as a voluntary worker or employee is one less prostitute that is an abused slave to a pimp.
Yeah it's called crime. Laws are broken 24/7 by criminals everywhere on the planet. In fact, the more there are laws that make things illegal the more laws are broken. If there was a law that makes singing illegal, there would be plenty of singers in jail. Thanks for that non sequitur, it has nothing to do with the question raised by the OP.
We allow adults called professional boxers pound on each other for entertainment for money so as long as the adult doing so is of legal age I see prostitution as far less of a moral issue than boxing, one is violent and the other not, and just decriminalize it but limit it to off the streets and discrete. Tax it. And use the money to fight illegal prostitution. If people want to run a brothel make sure its not overly exploitive the men and women paying for the room, security and marketing and a modest profit for the owner per say the week and nothing else and you can ban illegal drug use and require a medical examination say each month for a license for the prostitute.
As the US becomes more and more like a 3rd World stinkhole, so will its morals. Multicultural urban areas are where prostitution thrives. Also where the narcotics trade and crime is typically highest. It is in this moral vacuum is where cities and counties will allow prostitution to take place. One won't see this in areas ran by Southern Baptists, or Amish or other sensible, moral populations. If you wish to force the sex trade on an unwilling population, then you are a socialist, and have no morals to boast about. A whore isn't going to be a model citizen making sure every "i" is dotted and "t" is crossed in legal and business matters. The prostitution business isn't going to be any better than it is in Thailand, Liberia, Mexico, Turkey or so many other bad places. Fantasy is not anything like reality.
You would have to demand prostitution be legalized everywhere in the US, and that would make you even less moral than you claim.
Who said anything about force? Since when is openning a market up for people to more freely trade 'socialism'? What about being a good bureaucrat (crossing t's dotting i's) makes one a 'model citizen'? If Baptists and Amish arent going to engage in prostitution, then there will be no market for it in their areas, and the prostitutes will look for work elsewhere. What are you even talking about man? What worries you so much about legalized prostitution?
Does that mean you think morals should be a basis for laws? In a democratic society, that just means everyone has to abide by the moral code of the ever shifting majority. Is that how you think it should work?
In extreme Muslim societies it is immoral and illegal for a woman to show any skin. If she does, she can be imprisoned, beaten, stoned to death, gang raped or a combination depending on where she lives. And the punishment is acceptable. A recent case in Saudi Arabia was that a woman was gang raped. She was subsequently sentenced to 100 lashes and 2 years in prison for leaving her home without a male escort. If I remember the article correctly, a higher court had increased her sentence. So much for morality based laws. "Everything Hitler did was legal." - Martin Luther King Jr.
Right now the business in most states and areas is 100% under the table for cash unless your a call girl or very honest of your source of income to the tax man and prostitutes have little protection from criminal elements, if you decriminalize it and put in simple regulations and make it legal then it will bring it out of the shadows save the illegal elements left underage prostitutes. And you could have government added taxes to cover the added police enforcement. Do you think keeping it illegal is going to eliminate it?
morality is the principles concerning the distinction between right and wrong; good and bad behavior. now justify to me how basing laws on morality will not just make the majority opinion the definer of morality according to its fickle whims. ...or worse, a society so easily directed by the media, such as ours, will not simply adopt whatever 'morality' is presented to them by the corporate controllers of the media.
something you clearly don't understand... ...which is why you're offering such a preposterous challenge.
i provided the definition of morality. maybe *you* dont understand perhaps you would like to explain instead of just attacking my position without explanation?
