They tried to regulate Alcohol (Prohibition), and it didn’t work.

A lot of this is what the Public will tolerate. Nobody likes the food police, and the psychological benefits of team sports, especially for men, far outweigh any drawbacks.

But, I think the public would go for increased smoking laws, as many cities have already banned smoking. The public has spoken on that. Majority rules.

A majority of the public does not want prostitution legalized.

The Government cannot be neutral. Either you are promoting something, or you’re not. Legalizing has the effect of promoting, and encouraging, a social wrong. —-A moral wrong.

I’m glad there are still some moral absolutes in society.

Well Dell, I believe we are almost paying for people to have sex now. Medicaid/Care provides Viagra, which came to my attention when some news broadcast discovered some pedophiles and sex offenders were getting it for free, compliments of you and I.

Don’t say it couldn’t happen. Who would have ever thought back when abortion was first made legal, that protecting women from dying due to botched backroom abortions would evolve into the right to kill a partially born baby ‘with the Doctors help’.

Slippery slope indeed.

Thanks so much for your thoughtful responses. I absolutely agree that prostitution is about as low as a person can go, and the image that you paint, mikem, is truly heartbreaking.

However, I think we’re stuck with the fact that prostitution exists and will continue to exist until the end of time, so we’ve got to make the best ‘deal with the devil’ that we can.

Dell, I believe we are paying for people to have sex now. Medicaid/Care provides Viagra, which came to my attention when some news broadcast discovered some pedophiles and sex offenders were ‘getting it’, compliments of you and I.

By the way, the Founding Fathers were of the opinion that only Christians should be running the government. However, they didn’t write that into the Constitution because it would lead to liberals claiming to be Christians running things unopposed. Instead, We the People can do our best to ensure that true Christians get elected. And that’s all I have to say.

But before we rush in the direction that they are pointing, it would behoove us to really examine the ups & down well — learn about the hidden costs 2nd hand as opposed to experiencing it 1st hand.

Unvarnished Euro stats are hard to come by (I doubt it even exists in one consolidated form), I can only base my opinion on long-term observation and putting disparate clues together.

However, legalizing it American style means it becomes a government sanctioned endeavor. And you know as well as I do, when that happens, lawyers rush in to stretch the boundries as far as they can and then some.

Criminalization or legalization, which is the greater evil?

In that case, perhaps better for the government to be totally neutral on the subject on the condition that force will not be tolerated with full weight of law.

I posit that of the previously discussed options, legalization is the worst and that societal shame is the best way to make it rare and safe. It would take a serious political discussion to find that ‘happy’ medium.

I think that the central issues with prostitution are disease and the enslavement / degradation of women.

I would argue that if prostitution was legalized and regulated, these problems could be kept more easily under control. If a woman (or man, for that matter) works in a bawdy house that is regularly visited by the local health inspector, then she automatically has a venue to complain if she’s being mistreated. Women working in such places would (presumably) also have protection against homocidal johns and pimps. It should go without saying that the courts should vigorously prosecute anybody who forces a woman into the sex trade.

Greg in # 35 has a good point. As has been pointed out, a lot of women sell their bodies because it’s their only alternative to starving in the gutter. I may be a heartless Republican, but surely we can provide better options than that.

At any rate, I pose the central question:

Is prostitution IN AND OF ITSELF bad? Not ‘wrong’, but ‘bad’?

I argue that it is not. What is ‘bad’ are the accompanying crimes and pathologies such as the use of drugs and violence against women to get / keep them in the racket, disease, etc. It is similar with drug use: there would be far less drug-related crime if users could get their fix at the local CVS.

By analogy, consider our societal attitude toward alcohol. Drinking is perfectly legal above a certain age. We know that some people become addicted to alcohol, and it can ruin their lives. But the only time we get really upset about drinking is when somebody gets hurt because of drunk driving or some drunken brute decides to beat on his wife. Our response is to prosecute the criminal, not ban the vice.

It ought to be the same with prostitution. Mind you, I wouldn’t want any female relative or friend of mine to engage in such activity, but I don’t see the good in locking people up over it.

DG, re #40, you said: “Andy, it is a European court case in a socialist country. It is virtually irrelevent to the conversation at hand and here is why.

1. America starts from a different premise on what is a right and what is not. In America there is no ‘right’ to have sex.”

In response, I’ll excerpt from Ken Kersch’s article Multilateralism Comes to the Courts in the Winter 2004 Public Interest magazine:
“In Grutter, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg (joined by Justice Stephen Breyer) cited both the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (which the United States has ratified) and the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (which it has not) as evidence of an “international understanding of the office of affirmative action.” In Justice Ginsburg’s view, these international conventions provide the grounds for “temporary special measures aimed at accelerating de facto equality.” In Lawrence, Justice Anthony Kennedy prominently recurred to a friend-of-the-Court brief on foreign law and court decisions filed by Mary Robinson, the former U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, and to a key decision of the European Court of Human Rights.”

http://www.thepublicinterest.com/archives/2004winter/article1.html

And you were saying???