Prostitution: Why Is It Illegal?

Legalized Prostitution (liberator.net)

Should prostitution be legal? (prostitutionprocon.org)

W.H.O.R.E (Women Helping Ourselves to Rights and Equality!)


Back again for your blogging convenience, dear readers.

This Eliot Spitzer scandal has made me want to write about prostitution. Now I'm not going to defend him, because he clearly can't be trusted and he cheated on his wife, not to mention his hypocrisy. But as far as the actual thing that brought him down, I just don't understand why it's illegal. I certainly wish we lived in a world where such things weren't necessary. It doesn't make me happy that human beings feel that selling their bodies for sex is something they need to do.

But we do live in a world where some people are willing to pay for sex for various reasons. And we do live in a world were some people feel it's a good way to make money. Who am I to tell them it's wrong? If two consenting adults want to make a transaction of money for sex, why shouldn't they be allowed to do so? I certainly would want it to be regulated, and I'm not in favor of prostitutes standing on the street corner or having sex in cars on the streets.

I would like to eliminate the pimps from the equation and make it as safe as possible for all. Regulation would provide a way of ensuring the health and safety of these people while they provided a service that is obviously required by human beings. it would also let them save money for their future career, whatever that might be, as obviously no one would be doing this as a lifelong career. Locking people up for this is simply ridiculous.

And the argument that this would lead to the breakup of families is demonstrably false. Legalized prostitution wouldn't suddenly mean that it is okay or acceptable to cheat on your spouse. But if they are bound to cheat, wouldn't it be better that they didn't bring home a deadly disease and pass it along to their unsuspecting spouse? And if your spouse is going to cheat, wouldn't you prefer that they go to a prostitute that they would have no emotional attachment to, as opposed to having an affair with someone and becoming emotional involved with them just because they were too scared to visit a hooker because of the fear of jail? It doesn't take a genius to recognize that someone that is bound to cheat will find a way to do it one way or another.

I think we simply need to look at the rest of the world where prostitution is legal and regulated to see the difference. That's not to say that vigilance wouldn't be required to keep legal prostitution from sinking into a cesspool. You would always have to guard against people trying to skirt the rules, or guard against the industry being co-opted by the Mafia and such things. But right now, all you have is a mess where drug-riddled and diseased prostitutes are walking the streets, when they aren't being abused by their pimps. They take all the risks, along with the spouses that unknowingly engage in risky behavior because they don't know that their spouse is bringing home a disease with them.

Whether or not we will ever become enlightened about this is hard to say. I think it will be a matter of how much influence the religious will have in this country, because they can't see past their own insufferable self-righteousness. And unfortunately I don't see much hope for this because America is lamentably a very religious country. The religious will have to explain one day why they choose a pedantic, misogynistic worldview in this case. They are the ones that have made a purely natural act seem dirty and unseemly, which has lead to the present situation. And lets face it, prostitution is just barely this side of fucking someone that you met in a bar, or took out on a date. Only our sophistical sense of propriety allows us to make a distinction.

The religious have infected this world with a malediction for the crime of not agreeing with them on everthing. This malediction of hate and intolerance may one day plunge us into darkness that may be inescapable. They simply can't be bothered with facing reality and helping their fellow human beings live decent lives, because they've got a world to conquer. But thankfully there are many people on this planet that get it.