edinflames said:
Therumancer said:
I say "No" and feel those who support it do not see the big picture....[rest chopped for sake of my post length]
I agree with a great many of your points. But with strict enough rules you can avoid a lot of the problems of 'putting prostitution in the public eye' (so to speak).
I think that you fail to see the bigger picture though, my friend.
Fact is, prostitution always has and always will exist, legal or not. Do you think that because it is illegal it doesn't exist outside of Nevada? Of course you don't, because the truth is that some people are prepared to pay for sex whilst other people are either willing or desperate enough to sell sex.
Morally I dislike the idea of prostitution, I would never pay for sex and I'd be distraught if a relative or friend of mine decided to sell their body. But consider this: if someone I knew decided to 'go on the game' I would rather they worked for a legal brothel than some back-street pimp or become the property of an organised crime syndicate.
If a trade is legal then it is open to government regulation and investigation. Nevada might have its share of problems but I expect it doesn't have to deal with the abhorrent 'human traffic' trade that pervades the cities of Europe, where girls from poor countries are smuggled into places like London to work in underground brothels as sex-slaves with no hope of escape, no basic human rights and no hope of protection from the law.
For me legal prostitution is simply a case of choosing the lesser of two evils.
It does exist, BUT the way it's handled now it's kept from entering most of society overtly. Being able to hammer the both the prostitutes (and increasingly the Johns) means that they are fairly careful about it, and efforts are taken to at least try and prevent most people from finding out about it.
I hate to be this way, because I myself have my fair share of issues with the idea of "Morality By The Numbers", but when you get down to it, I think the current victims of illegal prostitution ARE the lesser of two evils compared to the doors opened by legalizing prostitution overall and what it will do to society as a whole.
Besides which I am talking about the US, Europe is set up a lot differantly. In Europe for example you have a lot of really poor "euro-trash" countries extremely close to much larger and wealthier nations. This is what allows a lot of what your describing to exist. In the US we have the advantage of not having to worry about this quite to the same extent. To the North we have Canada, "Little America" as I call it (unpopularly with Canadians). It's a pretty prosperous country and nearly identical to the US in most respects that matter largely because of us. Not quite the place your going to enslave girls and send them to the US to fill out undergrund sex clubs. You might as well just do it there if your going to bother, and Canadian Law Enforcement is just as likely to ream you for the abduction as anyone else.
On the South Side we have our "buffer" nation, that is Mexico. In general we use Mexico as a shield against all of the extremely poor South and Central American countries south of them. This is why we have allowed Mexico to remain independant, and have not annexed them or anything like that. If we were to say annex Mexico their borders become OUR borders and then we have to deal with them directly.
Rather our rather cold hearted strategy is to try and keep Mexico a head above their neighbors so they aren't quite as bad, and are interested in protecting THEIR borders in sovreignty from the guys wanting to get in. Not being America they can also use some very draconian measures that US citizens would frown upon. Then all we've got to do is basically hold our border with Mexico. The problems of course being a matter of public record, but a lot less than what they would be if Mexico was not acting as a buffer. This is also why we talk about walling off Mexico rather than taking military action or doing anything like that to deal with their citizens crossing over. We need our meat shield, and we need them to be in shape to hold their other borders.
That's a simplistic and ruthless description.
The thing is though, that you don't see much in the way of that kind of euro "slave trade" here, or at least comparitively, because it's much easier to run your whore house in Mexico where things are a lot looser (though I believe still illegal) than it is to try and smuggle what amount to slaves into the US and run it underground here.
The really desperate guys having to get through Mexico (who doesn't want them either) before they ever get here.
Things don't quite work that way in Europe. Getting from a Eurotrash nation (especially nowadays) to London, with sex slaves in tow, is a lot easier than getting from a South or Central Ameri-trash nation to say New York City, DC, or even LA.
Sure you wind up with mexican girls who come over the border and prostitute themselves, but that's handled with the regular prostitutin and border issues. It's not quite the situation your talking about.
As I see things, speaking purely from the US and our policies, I think keeping Prostitution like it is now (illegal except for a Red Light state) is the way to go.
I guess we'll have to agree to disagree.
>>>----Therumancer--->
