I am always surprised when people discuss prostitution as a problem. Two adults have sex. As George Carlin commented, "If sex is legal, and selling is legal, why isn't selling sex legal?" Where is the problem? But I kept hearing about the problem of prostitution. I thought about it and decided that if is a problem we need a solution.
I searched for a solution and I found one - it has been around since the fourth century. When the city fathers of the Christian city of Hippo came to St. Augustine and asked if the Christian life required the closing of the brothels, the Saint remarked, "Banish prostitutes ... and you reduce society to chaos through unsatisfied lust.” (De Ord. 2.12) In a 1969 Queensland study, rape increased 149% after the legal brothels were closed. Nevada's crime rates showed a decrease in rape after the legalization of prostitution. Isn't it interesting that the United States has the highest rate of sex crimes in the world? If I were trying to describe our current society St. Augustine's would do - we made prostitution illegal and are destroying society with unsatisfied lust. Most people don't realize that prostitution wasn't illegal in any of the states until after 1913. It was the same 'progressive' folks who pushed for prohibition, and we know how successful that turned out to be, who pushed for outlawing sex. Even the Puritans weren't stupid enough to outlaw prostitution. It takes an incredible level of stupidity, the kind of naive stupidity only judges, politicians, and moral busybodies seem capable of, to believe that people can be forced to be 'good,' good as defined by the moral busybodies.
Prostitution is legal in most countries in the world. The UN General Assembly adopted the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women, CEDAW, on December 18, 1979. Article 11, section 1(c) of the treaty upholds the right to free choice of profession and employment and names voluntary, stress on the voluntary, prostitution as a woman's choice. President Jimmy Carter signed the convention in 1980. The Senate Foreign Relations Committee passed it on September 29, 1994, but the full Senate, because of the opposition from the religious right, has not ratified it. So far, 177 countries have ratified the treaty, legally binding them to implement its provisions. The United States remains, virtually alone, opposed to the elimination of discrimination against women. Big surprise. It is embarrassing to go to the UN website and scan down the long list of countries and see one blank in the column of countries ratifying the treaty, next to the United States.
As well as bringing the United States in compliance with international law, legalizing, licensing, and taxing sex workers would quickly solve the problems cited in connection with prostitution. An owner of such a license would be careful to hire only eligible workers to insure he/she doesn't lose a lucrative license. Market forces would adjust the prices down, prohibition always forces prices up, and the reward for the illegal provider would disappear. The problems of underage employment, loitering, blight, drugs, and violence would be no different than any other profession.
When you look at the operations of legal prostitution the problems cited by detractors simply don't exist. For example, there has never been a documented case of HIV transmission in any of the Nevada brothels. The rate of infection of sexually transmitted disease (STD) in legal prostitutes is lower than the general population. These women are knowledgeable professionals and operate in a safe and clean manner. You are more likely to catch an STD from the Sunday school teacher than a licensed sex worker. If you want to cut the STD rates, legalize prostitution. In Amsterdam the sex workers have unionized and work with the police to combat violence against women. If you want to reduce sex crimes against women, legalize prostitution. If you want to eliminate trafficking in women for the sex trade, legalize it. You don't see women being kidnapped to be waitresses for the simply reason it is a legal trade. In all these locations the authorities check identification documents to insure the women are not underage. If you want to eliminate under-age prostitution, legalize it.
It is difficult to know exactly what the economic benefit of legalization would be. Currently, the average city spends 7.5 million dollars a year on prostitution control; New York City alone spent 23 million. All of that money would be saved. In 2006 the city of Köln made $1.1M from a pleasure tax. That's on top of the income tax the prostitutes paid to the national government. The Netherlands made $120 billion, yes billion, from legal prostitution in a year. I saw an estimate in the papers that prostitution in the US was a $14.25 billion dollar industry. Seems low to me compared to the Netherlands, even so, imagine the providers paying taxes on that instead of getting it in cash and avoiding taxes.
Some will argue that illegal prostitution will continue to thrive. The police have tried, their argument goes, to close down prostitution and they haven't been able to. No, the police haven't really tried. The police are quite aware that it is harmful to society to actually abolish prostitution. When police speak of enforcement operations they refer to the nuisance of prostitution. They don't try to close it down, they want it controlled and no longer a nuisance, a nuisance being defined as out in public instead of hidden out of sight. Run an Internet search on escorts in any major metropolitan area and you'll see the truth of this. Oh yes, once a year the vice squad will stage a bust of a massage parlor to get it in the papers right before budgets are approved. But they don't try to close down the twenty other parlors that are operating. Terence Hallinan, the District Attorney in San Francisco, has admitted as much and called for the legalization of prostitution.
Sacramento has an Interagency Task Force to fight prostitution. In the two years they have been operating, spending God knows how many dollars, they have raided a few massage parlors and made life miserable for several women. It is always the women who suffer which is why the UN passed the CEDAW in the first place. I imagine it was some fight in that massage parlor. No wonder they needed an interagency task force of hundreds. Those three massage girls were undoubtedly dangerous. I have to wonder how many donuts are consumed at their task force meetings.
At the Cannes Film Festival the air is filled with money and sex, a popular combination. Women installed on yachts in Cannes during the film festival are called "yacht girls," and the line between professional prostitutes and B- or C-list Hollywood actresses and models who accept payment for sex with rich older men is very blurred, explains one film industry veteran. "You'd definitely recognize more than a few names from Hollywood," he says. "These are actresses who made bad career choices and fell off the radar. They tell themselves what they're doing at Cannes is OK, that they're just on dates with rich men, when the reality is they're doing what prostitutes do. But they like the money."
One thing that continues to appall me is how many women, especially feminists, oppose legalization. It isn't men who get branded with a scarlet A and have trouble for the rest of their lives obtaining meaningful jobs. It is women. Only 10% of the prostitution related arrests are clients. It is the women who suffer. Why are women willing, seemingly eager, to sentence other women to a life of scrubbing toilets at minimum wage? The CEDAW was passed by the UN to eliminate discrimination against women. It is women who suffer from violent sex crimes. Remember that number, rapes up 149% Why are women fighting legalization?
I'm reminded of the time Miami decided to publish in the newspapers the names of men who solicited streetwalkers. The first week they had to publish the names of the head of the local FBI office, a Fire Chief, and the Catholic bishop. The next week they dropped the program. But they continue to arrest the women.
What is amazing is the dishonesty of the anti-legalization crowd. In its 2010 "national action plan," for example, the activist group Demand Abolition writes, "Framing the Campaign's key target as sexual slavery might garner more support and less resistance, while framing the Campaign as combating prostitution may be less likely to mobilize similar levels of support and to stimulate stronger opposition." In other words, lie, lie, lie.
The truth about sex trafficking is worker rights organizations have repeatedly pointed out (as have organizations like UNAIDS, Human Rights Watch, and Amnesty International), those who are truly interested in decreasing exploitation in the sex industry would be better off supporting decriminalization of prostitution. New South Wales, Australia, decriminalized sex work in 1995, and a subsequent government-sponsored 2012 study found " . . . no evidence of recent trafficking of female sex workers . . . in marked contrast to the 1990s when contacted women from Thailand were common in Sydney . . . "
New Zealand legalized prostitution in 2003. A study by the New Zealand Ministry of Justice five years later found "no incidence of trafficking," and sex worker advocates say the law has made it easier for sex workers to report abuse, and for law enforcement to make arrests for crimes against sex workers. Some anti-prostitution activists have tried to claim that Germany's liberal form of legalization has encouraged sex trafficking. But they actually cite coercion among illegal sex workers (for example, those who are too young to legally work at a German brothel) and claim that their exploitation had somehow been caused by the legal framework from which those women had been excluded.
Why all the hysteria about keeping prostitution illegal when there is plenty of evidence of the harm caused by criminalization? There's still a tremendous amount of money in representing criminalization as the "cure" for a situation it actually exacerbates. In an interview last May, Michael Horowitz, a fellow at the conservative Hudson Institute who led efforts to pass the federal Trafficking Victims Protection Act of 2000, told the Las Vegas Review Journal that the anti-trafficking movement has become more about securing grants for research than protecting victims. "Now it's just one big federal entitlement program," he said, "and everybody is more worried about where they're going to get their next grant."
This greed for Government handouts has fueled the 'let's just make up facts' that inspire the anti-legalization movement today. Examples: One claim is that there are 100,000 to 300,000 children locked in sex slavery in the U.S. That number is a distortion of a figure from a 2001 study by Richard Estes and Neil Weiner of the University of Pennsylvania, which estimated that number of "children, adolescents and youth (up to 21) at risk of sexual exploitation ." "Sex trafficking" was the least prevalent form of "exploitation" in their definition. Other forms included stripping, consensual homosexual relations, and merely viewing porn. Moreover, two of the so-called "risk factors" were access to a car and proximity to the Canadian or Mexican border. That makes every kid in San Diego a sex trafficked child. In a 2011 interview, Estes himself estimated the number of legal minors actually abducted into "sex slavery" was " very small ... we're talking about a few hundred people." Yet the myth persists. Another example, The Dallas Morning News recently took the figure to new levels of preposterousness, claiming in an editorial last November that, "In Houston alone, about 300,000 sex trafficking cases are prosecuted each year." The real figure was two. Not 200,000. Not 200. Just 2. Another example claimed to have "proven" an increase of "sex trafficking" in northern New Jersey near the time of the Super Bowl, and was apparently conducted to disprove the evidence that this story we hear every year — that Super Bowls bring sex slaves" — is largely hype. The researchers claim to have subjected sex worker ads from Backpage.com to a trafficking matrix. And what is this scientific matrix? The report says that among its dubious premises are the claims that tattoos are a sign of trafficking, and the even more ridiculous claim that the term kitty (a euphemism for female genitalia) is code for "underage." Despite the absence of scientific methods or controls, these idiots boldly assert that 83.7% of the ads "showed signs of trafficking." Yep, a tattoo means you are an underage hooker.
There is inherent hypocrisy in the current laws. I once read an article by a newspaper columnist who, while attending college, agreed to write a term paper for an attractive young woman in exchange for sex. This was legal. But had he offered her money it would have been illegal. His point was the hypocrisy of this situation. Offering diamonds, candy, or term papers in exchange for sex are all legal but a straight cash transaction is illegal. The Supreme Court has ruled that paying someone to have sex and filming it is protected by the First Amendment. One company in Southern California sets up a film dates with an actress. They film the sexual encounter and hand the john the completed film. That is legal. But pay the same woman for sex without filming and it is illegal. Only a lawyer or Supreme Court Justice can imagine that sort of hypocrisy makes sense.
Speaking of hypocrisy, Gov. Eliot Spitzer of New York apologized to his family and the public. And what did he need to apologize for? For being a client of a high price hooker ring. Spitzer made his political name as a two term attorney general where he was part of an investigation of an escort service in New York City that resulted in the arrest of 18 people on charges of promoting prostitution and related charges. I bet he now wishes he'd worked with Hallinan in San Francisco and gotten prostitution legalized! I was on a Jury where the Judge was arrested for a hooker giving him a blowjob in his car. That's the hypocrisy of the system; the judges, prosecutors, and police use escort services, then send the women to jail.
Here's the real reason for all of these anti-prostitution efforts. In a Seattle Times article on a prostitution sting that led to 104 arrests the vice officer in charge was justifying why all these resources were used. (The sting lasted months and used many officers and lots of money) Lt. Eric Sano said, "...these women are being exploited and it's degrading," he said. "You should hear what some of these guys have asked our detectives to do - it's disgusting."
As Dr. Kinsey said, "The only unnatural sex act is that which you cannot perform." Sex between consenting adults is not disgusting or degrading. The justification for arresting "...bank presidents, state employees, business owners, construction workers, physicians and surgeons," for having consensual sex with another person is because the Seattle police think sex is disgusting. Yeah, you get cooties, too. When is Lt. Sano going to bring back the Scarlet A and the stocks? That's about right for this out-dated Victorian ethic. And that is exactly what all of these anti-prostitution efforts are, out-dated, hypocritical, and counter-productive.
Finally, there is the philosophic issue - Is it really anybody's business other that the two people involved? Does the Seattle police department have any business in an adult's bedroom? So what if two adults decide to exchange cash, or candy, or liquor for sex. It isn't my business and it certainly isn't Lt. Sano's business and frankly, it isn't any of your business either. It is the concern of the two people involved. When are we Americans going to get those moral busybodies out of our laws? My God, but we like to stick our noses in other people's business. As Surgeon General Dr. Joycelyn Elders said, "We say that [hookers] are selling their bodies, but how is that different from athletes? They're selling their bodies. Models? They're selling their bodies. Actors? They're selling their bodies." Selling your body for anything besides sex is fine. If it wasn't for the irrational attitudes towards sex in this country prostitution would be legal.
Are American attitudes, especially those of women who are the ones who suffer most from this prohibition, completely irrational? How is commercial sex different from free sex? Expense? That isn’t really different in the US. Women expect to be ‘wined and dined’ and shown appreciation before putting out. As Brenden Behan said, “The big difference between sex for money and sex for free is that sex for money usually costs a lot less.” So it isn’t money. The big difference is that the commercial nature of prostitution puts the man in charge of sex. And boy oh boy, is that completely different for us Americans. Here, women have been completely in charge of sex. Their monopoly is jealously guarded. The crime of rape has at times carried a death sentence and it is nothing more that the man taking charge of sex, a hideous perversion. I never could make sense of the Feminist assertion that prostitution is rape. After all, it is a completely voluntary exchange by contract of two adults. Why would anyone care what two adults do in private? But if it is true that these women see men in charge of sex as a danger to their social control, then their vehement opposition makes sense. I admit I find the position absurd but it does explain a lot of the nutty assertions by feminists like marriage is rape. Any control by the man over sex is rape, but it is rape of the woman's prerogative and control, not rape of the body. This explains sexual harassment laws which seek to emasculate men in the workplace – to take away all of their power, through sex.
The practical, economic, social, legal, and philosophic arguments all support the legalization of prostitution. On the other side is the Victorian bigotry of Lt. Sano and his ilk. I started out to find the solution to the 'problem' of prostitution? What I found to be the problem is that we are allowing out-dated bigotry to keep prostitution illegal flouting International law, common sense, and the best interests of the state and people all to satisfy the tyranny of the moral busybodies.
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A reader states his concern for my soul in seeming to endorse the sin of prostitution. Read my answer Here.
Copyright Rod O'Steele © 2005, 2006, 2007, 2014