To the delight of civil libertarians and libertarians alike, the Canadian courts have been leading the world in dealing with conflicts between privacy principles and morality legislation. I am serving as an expert in the review of Canadian polygamy laws in British Columbia. In the meantime, the Ontario Superior Court may allow three prostitution laws to die this Saturday.
In September, the Court struck down the laws. The federal government is charging that this is nothing short of a “social experiment unprecedented in this country.” However, it is also a frank acknowledgment that consenting adults came engage in sex for money as a consensual choice. Currently, an individual can have sex with any number of partners but can be arrested if they accept anything of value in exchange for sex. They can receive gifts as part of a “relationship” no matter how fleeting but not as payment.
The Court previously noted that criminal laws force prostitutes in the shadows where they are easy prey for abuse and even homicides. Once legal, protections and regulations can apply to the world’s oldest profession. With the demise of the laws, street walking will be legal.
Source: Star
Jonathan Turley
Annie,
Maybe Tomorrow….Tony can get his Big Gun out and show Kay a thing or two…both seem to possess great knowledge on the subject of Hookers/Call Girls/ Ladies of the evening/ Prostitutes/ Crack Heads/ Whores/Pro/ Escorts, yes you can drive them too. Whatever the name of the day may be….
Tony has apparently ODed on an ED drug, kay.
Tony C.,
I think I took exception to your diatribe on the Hooker. I am proud of you for trying to educate yourself. Aloofness is never becoming and once you can no longer communicate with the people that you are speaking with, you have lost all value of any education that you have….think….I went to some fairly well recognized colleges…..One in No. One in Business, I picked up an accounting and Marketing degrees plus the post gadget stuff…yes that too….then I we to a No 10 law school at the time….so, puff and blow all you want…You were rather demonic in your response and well, Kay…a half baked flake….I only say that because she still posts some flaky stuff….
Bdaman…a troll or not still has alliance to Rush and the Neocon Gop crap…..I take it for what its worth and need not say not much more….You on the other hand have a familiarity with Hookers or street walkers and apparently its something you hold near and dear to your heart….so have fun…beating up others…the revenge will be visited upon you many times in return….
By the way, is your education lost?
@Buddha: I know those windmills look innocent, but the carnage they might wreak when they get going! Especially if they can pick up their skirts and walk, just imagine. We must destroy them and end their tyrannical rule of these good country folk! Are you with me?!? Prepare my steed! Harden my lance! Pray that it finds its mark!
Dear AYou
Well I am here so back up your accusation that I am a “1/2 witted flake”.
I think its exciting that Ontario did not legalize prostitution as the article suggested they would.
I’ve been thinking some more about using SPSS to study prostitution.
The governments of Canada and the United States could combine in a statistical study of prostitution. They could use NCIC numbers.
One goal for this research could be to find out if the same women are involved in prostitution in different geographical areas.
A.You you wrote “Neither of you support any claim with any real evidence or support it with one cite…..” Actually I linked to a bunch of sites earlier above. I used google search. I linked to articles in Europe and Africa and to announcements by USDOJ.gov. I wanted to prove that legalization of prostitution in Nevada did not prevent prostitution crime so I used the Google Advanced Search function on the USDOJ.gov website and included Nevada as a required word.
There are some more in deleted Wikipedia that I posted a few years ago.
It has already been more than a week since I mailed away to the State of Nevada and asked them for prostitution and brothel licensing information. I am hoping that will show trends too.
Did you ever see the GAO report about Drug Related Police Corruption?
Some congressional committee could simply request a report about prostitution and GAO would produce one. It doesn’t have to go through DOJ. The Interstate Commerce commission could request a study of prostitution. Go through the list of committees and you will find more than one that is applicable. Something related to children through HEW could also data mine. Or neighborhood studies through HUD. Or student thesis projects could simply approach local law enforcement and suggest a joint study.
Privacy Act restrictions don’t apply to statistical studies. If GAO had a mandate from Congress to study prostitution, I think it could do its own data mining of NCIC data.
With SPSS, you run correlations between various factors. You can run the numbers this way and that and even go out and get additional data as needed.
If you look at volume of prostitution, treating it like volume of noxious weeds, I wouldn’t be surprised if it doesn’t turn out that it really varies significantly in time and place. There might be several statistically significant factors.
A lot of these studies wouldn’t take very long to do because they can use historical data, i.e. law enforcement data.
There is a lot of talent out there that could be employed to establish facts about prostitution.
@AM: The discussion is about a philosophy of government and whether or not prostitution should be legal or illegal, whether a citizen (that is not a public servant) has the right to be paid to do something they have the right to do unpaid.
Evidence in this discussion is useless or misleading. Citing somebody else is useless as long as I can make their logical argument on my own, and anybody that defers to authority in a discussion of human rights is a lost cause.
I have been in Alabama on business (and about 15 other states). I served as active duty military but I was never in the national guard and did not attend any college there, whatever Alabama has to do with anything. Or is that just some kind of bigotry against Alabamans you are trying to paint me with?
Yes, I have been to college. Three of them as a student, with multiple years at each.
Damn Tony C., apparently you need some smack down time….You went to college you say? What the same time and place W went? I bet you too were in the Alabama NG too, weren’t you now…..
Tony,
Then back up to so called claims with facts? Oh and by the way, if you ever make a typo expect many on this Blawg, well to come down on you and your superior position. I bet Kay will as well and I can see the love between you two….well we all can.
Neither of you support any claim with any real evidence or support it with one cite…..
A number of us on this Blawg and again, I may be speaking for myself only….think that Kay is a 1/2 witted flake….but that is what you get when you have had too much snow regardless of the source….
Cast no stones and break no windows….You have done both today and Kay is not here…So if you see Kay will you tell her you love her?
Ha! my own typo, I should have written “a woman.”
Tony,
Looks like your position is supported….
SWM,
That was too funny…
@Swarthmore: Don’t be so sure. Hookers has at least five spelling or grammatical errors in ‘her’ statement that I counted on first reading; I find that inconsistent with the claim of a ‘graduate degree from a rather well know [sic] College’. (and why capitalize ‘College’ ?)
My argument is logical and requires no support; also I detect a distinct whiff of fiction in this story. I’d discount this ‘evidence’ pretty heavily. Do you find it plausible a women would take up prostitution in response to mean coworkers?
I’m all for legal prostitution, but I don’t need fictional evidence to help me out and this story sounds more than a little invented to me.
Looks like Tony has some up close and personal evidence for his position.
Not much of a singer more of a cowgirl a la Annie Oakley.
Well Annie…..are you gonna break out in the show boat tune…..Tomorrow?
Sounds like the “Happy Hooker”. You arrived right on time.
@Buddha: I think libertarians start from the position that private property is absolute and sacrosanct; they are beyond reason on this point. Then they define people’s bodies as their private property, and I am philosophically opposed to defining people as property (even if they ‘belong’ to ‘themselves’). It doesn’t make sense to me; my car can’t own a house, or own itself. To me this is like defining the plus sign as a number.
People are minds, not property. My car doesn’t have any hopes, or dreams, or potential, or emotions, or thoughts, or fears or loved ones or pain.It doesn’t have any responsibilities either; it is like a plastic spoon that can be used and discarded and is never expected to act on its own or to remember to feed the cat. (And neither is a computerized system, it is expected to operate as a machine that might produce the result of feeding the cat, but we don’t consider the machine ‘irresponsible’ if it fails, we consider it broken and blame an engineer.)
Property has a price or replacement value; people do not. There is no dollar figure that makes it okay to murder an innocent person, or rape them, or imprison them. Property is never intentionally cruel, or selfless, or tickled to the point of incapacitating giggles.
I think it is a mistake to base the law on such a fundamentally flawed definition of people.
Property is something used by people. A gun is property: We can use that property for peaceful ends, or use that property to oppress other people. The same goes for a restaurant. The wrong being done in the Jim Crow South was oppression, and I have no problem preventing some people from using their property to oppress other people, whether that property is guns and ropes or restaurants and stores.
I am a Professional Hooker. I am Happy with the life that I have chosen. It has not always been easy. I set my own hours and work when I want. Last year, I made more than 250,000 US Dollars. I have three children. I love them very much. At one time in my life I worked in a factory, I was harassed and treated very shabbily by the women. Well, I knew what the men wanted. I started off with a mobile van. On Fridays, well lest just say, I had my pay and more to go. If you women would treat you men with kindness and not be so selfish in “Giving” it up, well, they would not seek the company of mine.
I have now moved to the DC area and while the money is better. I send my children to some rather nice prep schools. I want the best for them and I am here to help them. I know some get lured into the alcohol and drugs scene. I don’t drink, nor take drugs nor do I accept obviously drunk clients.
Do not think that it is poor me, it was the brash, bitchy women who treated me like filth that I made my decision to do what I do. I have had some regrets, but never in a moment would I trade what I do. I provide a service and all of my clients are happy. I have now been married for 15 years and he knows what I do. He loves me for being the mother of his children, his wife, lover and friend. I have obtained my graduate degree from a rather well know College. So please do not judge, unless you have walked in my shoes.
I am having it all. Don’t you wish you could too?
Lastly, my husband is a rather well respected governance employee of a top 100 corporation.
@Buddha: I’ve done a crapload of homework in my life. I agree on the value of homework, in my own experience there is a gulf of difference between thinking you understand an argument (or proof, or method, or technique) intellectually and actually implementing it in practice. It’s like, “Oh sure, we just find the, um, the, ….. Son of a bitch! What is that thing we are supposed to find here?!?”
The problem with homework is nobody wants to do it because it is hard and time consuming. I will read the links of people that have already shown some ability to reason in a thread. But I think when people cannot reason for themselves they also cannot *recognize* reason. The opposite of reason is emotion, and they end up pointing at arguments, links, and leaders that resonate with them emotionally. Then you have more stuff to debunk, and end up fighting an army of emotional nuts instead of just one.
If you are pretty certain that is what they are linking, are those kinds of links worth following?
*******
I like to think the point of reasoned argument is to sow doubt and undermine dogmatic certainty. So unless people are in doubt already, with an unformed or provisional position, my goal isn’t so much overt capitulation but planting the neural seeds that might grow to topple their dogmatism. Usually on infertile ground, but I’ve seen that approach work on some people in the past (including me).
Nice summation of what’s wrong with libertarians, Tony.
Although I don’t agree about the value of homework. The brain is like a muscle. Sometimes the workout of homework – even if you personally fully understand the argument – is better for the audience than direct presentation simply because, like a muscle, there is a value add to making the person limber up and get stronger in their own native reasoning abilities. A stronger and more flexible mind becomes a better native home for reason by gaining that very strength and flexibility gained through use. Unreasonable people are often simply so because they are too lazy to think something through for themselves. I will stipulate that some people are simply reason proof however and that’s a different game altogether.
To win an argument with pure reason is good, but is it not sometimes better to help create more reasonable people?
@Kay: It used to be mainstream to believe the world was a flat plate on the back of a turtle, that rivers and mountains and trees had souls and could act malevolently toward people, that disease was caused by angry spirits, and that impregnated nuns had been visited by demons (rather than horny priests).
95% of the mainstream believes whatever they are told to believe by authority figures, including parents, politicians, priests and others. They actually have no opinion of their own, so their opinion doesn’t really count. Glenn Beck’s opinion copied to 25 million idiots is still just one idiot’s opinion.
As far as I am concerned, I don’t care *how many* people believe something, I only care *why* they believe something, and the number of different “why’s” is usually very small indeed.
Plus I notice you didn’t care what the mainstream thought when you decided to represent yourself in court; then you thought it was a great idea when the mainstream would have told you to get an attorney. So your alliance with the mainstream is not a principle of yours, it is just a marriage of convenience because you have no other argument.
********
I am not a libertarian; I am a rationalist. I reason. Libertarians try to reduce all law to property law, I do not do that because it is idiotic. Although we do often get to shared ground, they get to places I don’t want to be. For example, their opposition to the civil rights act.
I don’t typically link to anybody because I do not rely on any authority of any kind to make my arguments for me. I think that is lazy, or shows uncertainty in one’s own thinking or understanding of an argument. If I cannot understand an argument well enough to make the argument myself I won’t use it; I think it is a form of dishonesty to pretend you understand something you do not.
I don’t mind borrowing a good bit of logic, or using a clever argument I have heard someone make, because to me that is the essence of science, if something makes sense you can use it and build on it, but you have to *understand* why it makes sense, not just parrot it without understanding. Parroting is what you are doing when you link somewhere.
I am a firm believer that arguments stand on their own and who is making them is immaterial. Persona means nothing to me and only fools and dogs trust people instead of reason.
I will link to illustrate a point (like to some statistics) or to something interesting (like a study that provides more detail). I won’t link to somebody else making an argument that convinced me in the hope that it will convince you. If it convinced me then I understand how to make the argument myself, and that is what I will do. I don’t try to give people homework assignments.
If you need to be convinced by something other than reason, I don’t want to discuss anything with you.