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
@Kay:
No you cannot make that argument, because money laundering is ONLY necessary to cover up criminal activity and is NEVER engaged in for any legitimate purpose.
Second, I didn’t say all politicians are sociopaths, I said it is my opinion that sociopathy is an asset for a politician and the tendency toward sociopathic behavior is proven by science. That is not a 100% claim, it is a statistical prevalence claim.
I’ve got to prepare a contribution for Thanksgiving and then attend a gathering. But I believe you are too ideologically committed to your position to warrant any further debate from me anyway, you are starting to twist my words in order to refute my logic, probably because twisting my words is the only way you can refute my logic. You seem opposed to giving people the freedom to make choices with which you disagree. I am not opposed to letting people be free to do what I think is stupid or ill-advised or likely to be regretted, anything less is not freedom but totalitarianism.
kay,
“You claim to know about my lawsuits but you haven’t identified a fault in my claims.”
Because I’ve told you numerous times, I am not going to be your attorney. What I know about your suits is what you’ve told me and based on what you’ve told me, I’ve repeatedly advised you to seek out an attorney. Just like the other lawyers here who have addressed you have advised you to do.
@Kay:
>>> Women aren’t forced into street prostitution because prostitution is illegal. Most of them would choose other options if offered them.
Sigh. I’m giving up, you are just incapable of making a sensible argument.
If they would choose other options, then presumably street-walking is the only option. If prostitution were legal, there would BE other options, like working in a nice safe brothel.
Failed entrepreneurs suffer psychological effects years after their failure. Skiers can be disabled for life by their choice to ski (Sonny Bono died as a result of 100% voluntary skiing).
It is not your place or mine or ours collectively to protect people from the consequences of their decisions. It IS our place, collectively, to protect the weak from the strong, to prevent coercion either physically or psychologically. It IS our place, collectively, to prevent the smart and clever from defrauding the less smart and less clever, and to prevent the sociopaths from luring the innocent into harm’s way.
But it isn’t the job of society to keep gamblers (or entrepreneurs or day traders) from betting it all and losing it all. It isn’t our job to keep people from cheating on their spouses because they might regret it; it isn’t our job to keep people from doing *anything* because we think they might regret it later, or might catch some disease that hurts them. Sonny Bono caught a tree that killed him, and he was far from the first skier to do so, but we don’t outlaw skiing on the grounds that is can be fatally dangerous. (Or driving, or flying your own plane, or skydiving, or hunting, or trimming your own trees.)
I believe the call girl for whom I baby-sat as a teen made a financial decision that worked for her; she had a deadbeat former husband and her options were to work for minimum wage and struggle as a single mother with two kids, or to be a discrete call girl living in a nice middle class neighborhood with nice schools and enough money to provide her kids clothing, health care, nutrition, school trips, summer vacations, a college education and the other trappings of a middle class upbringing. I can’t speak for her feelings on her history, but from my point of view she was a heroic parent that sacrificed to save the kids she loved from a life of poverty. She gave them a better life and deserves credit for it.
@ Tony C You could certainly make an argument that money laundering should not be a crime because it is free enterprise just like you can make an argument that selling sex for money should not be a crime because some women give sex away. Selling sex for money is a crime and is not the same as giving it away.
Prostitution and strip clubs are associated with pathological behavior. Lap Dances at the Diamond Cabaret are advertised on line for only $20 yet Nottingham spent $3,000 at the Diamond Cabaret in one day.
Compulsive cleaning also diverts resources from productive activities. Prostitution has been illegal in most countries for centuries. Where prostitution is legal it is always associated with criminal behavior and suffering.
Personally I was excited that DOJ actually prosecuted Tom Delay. I hope DOJ prosecutes Edward Nottingham for felony criminal deprivation of my rights and felony witness intimidation.
Not all politicians are sociopaths just like not all lawyers are dishonest.
>>> Well by the same theory, Tony C, you could say that money laundering should be legal so that Tom DeLay would still be a politician.
That’s just crazy, my theory doesn’t say that. Money laundering is illegal because it is an act intended to conceal an illegal act, like bribery or theft or in general to disguise illicitly acquired funds. My theory says money laundering should be illegal.
>>> I think studies show that married people have more frequent sex than unmarried people. Sex within marriage is free while paying prostitutes diverts money from education and savings.
Don’t people have the right to do with their time and money as they see fit? Dating, which usually has sex as a goal, also diverts money from education and savings. Should dating also be illegal?
>>> My theory is that powerful men get involved with prostitution because …
My theory (backed up by scientific studies) is that the more powerful the person the more sociopathic tendencies they have; sociopathy is an asset in the political or business competition to rise to the top. Sociopaths are convincing liars and lack empathy for the pain of others.
So my theory is that some powerful men exploit prostitutes for personal gratification because:
(a) it is quick and easy and they are busy, and
(b) they exploit everybody for their own goals.
They are equal-opportunity exploiters. As for feeling they are above the law: They ARE above the law, or at least the law as it applies to us. If you haven’t been watching for the last 20 years the political elite and the wealthy get wrist-slap punishment (or none at all) for crimes that would send the rest of us to jail for years.
@ BIL I wouldn’t be my own attorney if I had a lawyer. I’d rather have Access to Courts without a lawyer than no Access to Court. You claim to know about my lawsuits but you haven’t identified a fault in my claims.
@Tony C Women aren’t forced into street prostitution because prostitution is illegal. Most of them would choose other options if offered them.
http://abcnews.go.com/Health/AIDS/wireStory?id=11864833
Women suffer problems from prostitution years after the acts. The strictest observation of all regulations will not help that. Even with monthly HIV monitoring the porn industry can’t keep HIV out. Women who model for porn suffer bad results years later.
Where prostitution is legal — Nevada — there is still forced prostitution, prostitution of children, and organized crime.
@Kay:
>>> I think they are based on the fact that prostitution brings organized crime, violence against women and children, and decline of neighborhoods.
??? Legal prostitution would bring organized **business**, subject the owners of that business to OSHA, taxes, and other employee regulations. I believe from personal experience with many businessmen that there would be no shortage of investors in legal brothels, there is a profit to be made in the sex industry even with taxes, regulations, and the overhead of ensuring the health and safety of prostitutes. Any business that can charge $100/hour for the services of low-skill manual laborers is likely to be profitable even with strict observance of all regulations.
Such businesses would *lower* the violence against women and children because that is a crime, and would *prevent* the decline of neighborhoods by allowing the prostitutes a designated legal place to work, instead of being forced into the shadows and alleys to avoid police and being forced to work in seedy motels or hotels manned by criminals willing to overlook the crime in return for a few bucks extra rent.
The problems you cite with prostitution are all effects of making illegal something that should BE legal, they are not inherent to prostitution.
Kay I agree with you wholeheartedly on what you said about the young woman and her plight as it is a tale that is told in every city, town & village in this country and played out daily. Yes also to the fact that all stripes of government, be it municipal, provincial or federal has to put more rescourse and money into this to make it workable and part of the healing process, and on both sides of the fence also. it has always struck me as odd that they can come up with money for thing that you shake your head and and go wtf?? yet for important things that are critical in many case to a decent life, the funds dry up.
Tis a sad commentary but a factual one and here’s hoping some day that will change, ,hopehully i say.
Well by the same theory, Tony C, you could say that money laundering should be legal so that Tom DeLay would still be a politician.
If Spitzer was an uncontrollable sexual obsessive we probably would have heard about it since he resigned from office since he is still a public figure.
I think studies show that married people have more frequent sex than unmarried people. Sex within marriage is free while paying prostitutes diverts money from education and savings.
My theory is that powerful men get involved with prostitution because people who want illegal favors from them offer them bribes and drugs and pay for their prostitutes. Like Tom DeLay these men convince themselves that they are “above the law”.
kay,
“Former judge Nottingham (who I hate) purchased prostitution services right after he married his third wife, an attractive real estate agent.”
And therein lies why you shouldn’t be your own attorney. You let your emotion (hate) color your legal analysis (for which you also lack all the proper training) under the guise of morality. Ask yourself if you’d be as resistant to the valid counterarguments if prostitution wasn’t a stick you wanted to club Nottingham with. I suspect you wouldn’t.
@Kay: Re: Spitzer: As a married man, perhaps he could *not* get sex from his wife! I have sex with my wife when she consents; which is often enough but not automatically whenever I feel like it. Maybe his wife was mad at him.
I do not engage prostitutes, but there is also the Coolidge Effect (wik it) and perhaps Spitzer is a sexual obsessive that cannot control his desire for multiple partners.
So if prostitution were legal, perhaps Spitzer’s proclivities (or that of other Congressmen) would not have destroyed their political careers. I am no fan of hypocrisy or politicians, but destroying a political career for reasons that have nothing to do with political positions seems like a travesty to me.
I’d rather Gore were President over Bush, and it is entirely possible that the outrage of simple-minded religious moralists over Clinton’s blow job has cost over 3000 soldiers their lives, 15,000 soldiers a maiming for life, and trillions of dollars and a destroyed economy and ruined planet due to global warming.
Moralizing has consequences because it produces irrational decisions that lead to chaos, and chaos is expensive in blood and treasure.
Yes I think legalized gambling is bad. And not just because of moral outrage. A friend told me his neighborhood went downhill when OTB was opened there.
I don’t think that laws against prostitution are based solely on moral outrage. I think they are based on the fact that prostitution brings organized crime, violence against women and children, and decline of neighborhoods.
Not that many women have voluntary sex with strangers.
Since you are on this blog, you probably know that DOJ incarcerated me for 5 months for doing what was legal — filing a rule 60b(3) motion in a non rendering court. So by that standard, making prostitution legal shouldn’t stop incarceration of prostitutes and their bosses and customers.
@Kay: So is gambling also bad in your moral judgement? More gamblers is not an inherent evil. I have gambled in Vegas on six different occasions, with a net loss of about $50K if I include travel costs. It is fun, and I’d argue many hobbies have cost people of my income bracket well over twice that, so comparitively it is kind of a bargain.
As to the “fallout” from gambling, financial irresponsibility is not a crime. I have personally known a failed entrepreneur that blew $300K of his life’s savings on what I considered an idiotic bet based on an idiotic assumption. I once lost $72K similarly in my twenties, but I was the idiot and the idiotic assumption (slash obsession) was mine. Stupidity is not, and should not be, illegal. Sometimes the common wisdom is totally wrong, just ask Bill Gates how his idiotically naive assumptions turned out.
As for the U.N., believe whatever propaganda from openly moralist-religious leaders you want; I live in a country that is supposed to have a separation of church and state that many of them explicitly reject. I am talking about voluntary, uncoerced sex for pay. You (and they) are talking about subjugation, physical and economic coercion, sexual slavery, and similar tactics I find appalling and think violate human rights.
The pay is not the problem, the failure to reign in and severely punish criminal activity and human trafficking is the problem. The mental justification or motivation for engaging in a sexual act in the mind of a prostitute is immaterial. In my opinion we should not be thought police, the law should outlaw acts, including acts that lead to outlawed acts (like paying a hit man or arsonist or thief to engage in murder, arson or theft).
But the act of sex with a stranger is legal, and paying for somebody to perform a legal act should never be illegal. Laws against prostitution (or drugs) are based in moral outrage. But laws are enforced by threats or acts of violence or financial ruin, and I find these threats and acts of violence to compel others to obey an authoritarian moralist *more* subjugating, *more* humiliating, and *more* abhorrent than the acts they are trying to either coerce or prevent.
It Spitzer hadn’t been able to buy a hooker, wouldn’t he have got sex from his wife?
Former judge Nottingham (who I hate) purchased prostitution services right after he married his third wife, an attractive real estate agent.
“So no amount of criminal penalty”
Computing and cooking can be incompatible mistresses.
kay,
When something once criminalized is decriminalized, as a matter of operation of both human psychology and statistical analysis of large populations, there is almost always a spike before levels of use/participation finds its natural equilibrium.
The bottom line is simply this: You want to keep criminal a behavior that is as old or older than recorded human history. You might as well try to outlaw breathing as, like breathing, sex is an activity we as living organisms are wired to do. So amount of criminal penalty will discourage it, but ever increasing penalties will increase profits for criminals. If you cannot eliminate the problem (which you can’t), the best thing to do is to mitigate the damages cause by the problem. Almost every single negative (with the exception of child abuse which will continue whether prostitution is legal or not) can be effectively mitigated by regulation. Would it be perfect? No. But mitigation would be better than the current situation where once in “the life” it becomes almost impossible to get out.
Legitimization and normalization of the sex industry have a profound, negative long-term impact on the human rights, integrity and dignity of all women and girls.
United Nations Commission on the Status of Women, Fifty-second Session, 2008 February 28, 2008
http://action.web.ca/home/catw/readingroom.shtml?x=114598&AA_EX_Session=508cbe556938928c248a547bf6a37b62
legalization of gambling and greater accessibility have led to rising numbers of gamblers. http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/430627
kay,
“1.) There probably is more use of marijuana where it is legal than where it is not.”
Not so.
“The figures for cannabis use among the general population reveal the same pictures. The Netherlands does not differ greatly from other European countries. In contrast, a comparison with the US shows a striking difference in this area: 32.9% of Americans aged 12 and above have experience with cannabis and 5.1% have used in the past month. These figures are twice as high as those in the Netherlands.” –
Source: Netherlands Ministry of Health, Welfare and Sport, Drug Policy in the Netherlands: Progress Report September 1997-September 1999, (The Hague: Ministry of Health, Welfare and Sport, November 1999), pp. 7-8.
As to the rest, what Tony C. said.
@Kay S:
>>> 1.) More prostitution
So what, as long as the prostitutes are legal and adults. Raising the national speed limit from 55 mph resulted in far more people driving 65 and 75, we know because the statistics of road death correlate very well with speed limits and they rose; so these people were *not* driving this fast until the speed limit was raised.
The only reason to use this argument is if you think prostitution is *inherently* bad. But that is a moral judgment that in a free secular country (which we are supposed to be by design) is not yours to make.
>>> 2.) An assumption of legality even when the prostitutes are underage
The assumption is *yours* and not based in any fact. Underage sex is a crime already; and if prostitution was legal I can argue there’d be LESS underage prostitutes than there are right now. Let the state require a prostitution license similar to a driver’s license, a picture-id they issue only with proof of age. Then a customer can avoid jail by asking young-looking prostitutes for a look at their card, to make sure they are not going to jail for banging a 15-year old.
In my professional life I have met at least two women in their twenties that I thought could pass for 15, one Asian and one Irish. A license would be a good idea to prevent error.
>>> 3.) A requirement to work as a prostitute as a condition of government benefits or probation
Again, just not true. Prostitution is arguably a dangerous profession, like a nurse or miner or soldier. Classify it as such. You cannot be ordered to put your life at risk to qualify for benefits or probation. A judge cannot *require* a person to enlist as an infantryman; you cannot be “sentenced” to serve in the army. By the same token you cannot be sentenced to prostitution.
I have taken unemployment benefits and I was required to apply for jobs of my choosing. I was never required to apply for a job in some profession I knew nothing about or did not want to be in. I am not religious but I doubt they could force somebody to do a job against that person’s religion or morals.
If prostitution is a choice and a woman (or man) chooses to apply for the job, they weren’t forced into it by the government.