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
According to reliable surveys of sexual behavior, every day at least 450,000 Thai men visit prostitutes.
In 1989, the Thai Ministry of Public Health estimated that 4.2 million men visited commercial sex workers.
http://www.sexwork.com/Thailand/traditiions.html
kay You have made some very good arguments why prostitution should not be made legal and now you are getting attacked for it. A group of women got attacked on another thread for not being convinced of the benefits of poly marriages.
“To understand the mid-Victorian perception of prostitution we must appreciate the scale of the concern. Mayhew tells us that in 1857 there were 8,600 prostitutes in London known to the police but that the true number may have been nearer to 80,000 (Mayhew p. 476). Prostitution was seen as a social nuisance”
http://www.victorianweb.org/authors/dickens/rogers/3.html
In recent years we have taken for granted a right that two people involved in a sexual relationship might live together outside of marriage. These relationships are extremely common today. It is understood that their household and financial arrangements are private. Usually one partner pays more for household expenses because just like in a marriage usually one partner has more income.
If prostitution is legal, then sales of sex will be taxed. The government might then tax household contributions if the parties are sexually involved but not married.
How’s that for invasion of privacy?
How’s that for “Access to Sex”?
Man oh man, talk about being morally bankrupt………I think your in receivership……………..
Mentally competent adults should not be able to have sex for money because doing so damages society in general just like driving under the influence.
Fathers whose women have engaged in prostitution or who they think might engage in prostitution are less responsive or nurturing to their children. The children of prostitutes have no fathers at all. Prostitutes themselves are less likely to be nurturing to their children.
Right now less than 1% of women are prostitutes so we think they don’t really impact our society. But in some times and places up to 90% of women are at least occasional prostitutes.
@Kay:
Tracy Lords is an actress in movies. As for the distinction between non-simulated porn for pay and prostitution, there is none, and I will take Lords at her word when she says her early career was her own decision, and she admitted to faking the Driver’s License ID demanded by the producer.
What difference
As I recall that suicide was over persecution and the threat of financial ruin and jail by the government. Had prostitution been legal that madam might still be alive; moralizing has consequences.
As for violence against Lords and others, far more violence is caused by alcohol than prostitution. Violence should be prosecuted. It CAN be prosecuted without making either alcohol or prostitution illegal.
But of course you skipped the entire POINT of the argument, which is that we don’t legislate for life outcomes and life happiness. The government is not our master, it is not their job to manage our lives to ensure any particular outcome. We are not infants or children in need of parents because we have not yet developed the neural equipment to make our own decisions.
The government is there to pass laws that protect our rights and enforce those laws, PERIOD. They have overstepped their bounds with morality laws, those do not protect rights they violate them.
The government is supposed to be self-consistent. Permitting unrestricted sex with strangers (which it does) while prohibiting sex for pay is inconsistent. Allowing real pornographic sex for pay while prohibiting unfilmed sex for pay is inconsistent. In general permitting all of the acts of the sex trade while prohibiting monetary exchange for those acts is inconsistent, and is legislating morality by legislating what shall be a legal **motivation** of the participants, and inconsistently even within that domain: Does anybody doubt that porn stars are having sex for the money? Does anybody doubt that the Playboy and Penthouse and Hustler centerfolds are in it for the cash? (or fame they hope leads to cash). Does anybody doubt that strippers and pole dancers and lap dancers do their job for the money?
Laws against prostitution (or drugs) are ill-concieved morality laws that restrict rights instead of protecting them, that criminalize prostitutes and others in the sex trade instead of protecting them from violence and robbery and breach of contract, and that protection should be their right as citizens.
I don’t much care if you find it repulsive or think it is a mistake, all of your arguments are emotional, ideological, and you provide no reasoned basis why any mentally-competent adult should not be able to have sex for money.
Yes Blousie, go figure eh, this is also the Provence that allows females to go topless but you never see any except at a gay pride parade……go figure eh…….lol……had to really admire Ms Jacobs who took that challenege to court and fought it an won, the girls got guts as she stood up for her rights to do so, weird eh, but that’s Canada for yeah eh??????
I was taking a quick run through the posts to catch up on what I’d missed and came across this:
“Believe it or not, consumption of pot is actually legal in Ontario….but pocession is not….go figure!” (Canadian Eh!)
It brought a smile to my face …. sometimes laws are simply absurd
” My comparison is perfectly valid, an adult should be able to voluntarily choose whatever they want to do with their own body, including ruining it or killing it “…..Tony C.
….I completely agree, an ADULT should be able to VOLUNTARILY CHOOSE whatever they want to do with their own body. My point however is that most prostitutes don’t actually make an informed decision or voluntarily go into the business. How many kids have you heard say ” when I grow up I want to be a hooker “? If a person is prostituting him/or herself simply because they enjoy random submissive sex with strangers and decide to make money doing something they like then that is a choice. Unfortunately, that is not typically the reason that someone ends up in the business. Typically these people find themsevlves doing whatever they need to do to survive or feed their addictions. Try finding and maintaining gainful employment if you’re homeless and/or addicted to Meth/crack/X/heroine etc etc.
As for the moral aspect, I think that personal conviction is exactly that….personal. With regard to the decision that I have no doubt our great leaders here in Ontario will pass this week, I do hope that they put intelligent consideration into how to implement the legalization of prostitution to best protect vulnerable people. I hope that a ” Psychiatric screening process ” will be developed to ensure those who apply for these positions are doing so because of their love of sex with random strangers and not because they are driven to the job out of desparation, drug addiction and / or severe emotional disturbance. I also hope that there would be the offer of professional help to the people who wouldn’t pass such a screening.
” P.S. I should have said “just legalizing possession”, obviously possession should be legal along with consumption.”.
….Tony C.
Believe it or not, consumption of pot is actually legal in Ontario….but pocession is not….go figure!
” One way is to use tax revenues from legal prostitution to bolster social services that deal with child abuse from education to enforcement to victim treatment and care. I know in your particular job, you’ve mentioned before both shortages in money and manpower – although if I recall, you had/have some “interesting” managerial challenges that also make your job more difficult than it need be too.
And I think you meant “white collar” criminals, didn’t you? It’s an easy mistake to make when your brain is a little foggy. ”
….Buddha
Ooops….yes I did mean white collar and yes I was, and still am, working through a bit of a fog. Unfortunately not due to an overconsumption of turkey, although I wish it was!! As I mentioned above, if implemented in a way to screen out vulnerable people, revenues from prostitution applied to increase social services would definately be a bonus. I think you and I both know that any revenues will not be put towards our failing front line Health Care services though.
” too bad you all don’t celebrate Thanksgiving when we do….lol ”
…..AY
You’re not kidding….I would certainly embrace a 4 day weekend, a belly full of turkey & stuffing, and discounted ” Black Friday ” shopping. Instead I am sitting here watching sit-coms dipicting all of the above with a belly full of salad, exhausted from a full day of work, and agonizing over sore muscles following an early eveing date with my trainer at the gym!!!
As far as DUI’s go, there is a direct correlation between the number of drunk driving miles driven and the number of accidents. Fewer drunk drivers = fewer deaths and accidents. Same with prostitution. Fewer acts of paid sex = less damage to the participants, their families and their communities.
LOL……dead right there mom, it is a male fantasy 100% as is 99.99999% of the porn industry…………its not based on anything remotely to do with fantasy but mostly crudeness and ridicilous ideas of what is and should be erotic.
Where as having read and seen some stuff produced by females that actually make sense and are erotic and stimulating. What can I say………..fact is fact…………..nuff said…..
I don’t believe I’ve mentioned “happy” anywhere. What I have mentioned is “mitigation” – to cause to become less harsh, hostile, severe or painful. The behavior won’t go away simply from disapproval of root causes, but we as a society can do things to make it safer and easier for women (and men) to get away from it when or if they want to.
kay I think the “happy hooker” thing is a male fantasy.
re Tracy Lords — according to Wikipedia, she was raped at the age of ten, her mother’s new boyfriend, Roger, was a cocaine dealer who molested her. Lords received a salary for her appearances in X-rated movies, but did not own any rights or share in any of the profits of her films. According to her autobiography, she received $35,000 as total salary for all of those movies, including the $5,000 for her appearance in Penthouse.
Deborah Jeane Palfrey, known as the “D.C. Madam,” hanged herself in a storage shed on her mother’s property
http://articles.cnn.com/2008-05-01/politics/dc.madam_1_deborah-jeane-palfrey-montgomery-blair-sibley-prostitution?_s=PM:POLITICS
Heidi Lynne Fleiss “Hollywood Madam” according to Wikipedia accused her ex-boyfriend, actor Tom Sizemore, of domestic violence. Sizemore was convicted by a California jury of domestic violence, making criminal threats, and making obscene phone calls…. came to live in solitude in Death Valley …
treated Fleiss for substance abuse, performed brain scans on her that showed significant frontal lobe dysfunction, which Pinsky surmised was behind her inability to empathize with people
So where are the happy hookers and happy ex hookers?
@Kay:
#1: Tracy Lords.
#2: Hollywood Madam, D.C. madam, etc.
#3: So you are saying a life choice that doesn’t lead to fame and financial success should be illegal? Since when is that the criterion? Under that microscope, 99.999% of both women and men would be leading illegal lives.
As for Nevada: They should enforce their laws, like having severe penalties and prison time for running an illegal brothel!
Legal prostitution is a law. Failure to enforce the law is corruption or negligence or laziness or a lack of tax revenue to fund enforcement, which is an incompetence of governance. it says NOTHING about whether the law is good or bad.
And finally, to “use” women? How precisely did they measure whether young men “use” women? That sounds like a phony claim to me.
Gotta run.
I searched google for life after prostitution. I didn’t see any articles about former escorts with big portfolios who went on to other businesses or became stock brokers, real estate agents or lawyers. Do you see those articles or any verifiable tales of success?
Here are some links to life after prostitution
http://faithandfamily.com/article/hope-after-prostitution-addiction/
http://www.mylot.com/w/discussions/2303833.aspx
http://www.orovillemr.com/news/ci_9011973
http://brokentelegraph.com/2009/06/09/inside-cambodia-part-i-prostitution/
http://books.google.com/books?id=5f8mQx7ULs4C&pg=PA533&lpg=PA533&dq=life+after+prostitution&source=bl&ots=9EXEEcVZFv&sig=5LkMy0-vIrxvEHf5UUW4MUzLBNQ&hl=en&ei=K7TuTMzDC4iznge3leWNCw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=10&ved=0CFIQ6AEwCQ#v=onepage&q=life%20after%20prostitution&f=false
Funny I didn’t see any about former escorts with big portfolios who went on to other businesses or became stock brokers, real estate agents or lawyers. Do you see those articles or any verifiable tales of success?
Here is an article about prostitution in Nevada
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2007/sep/07/usa.gender
“More than 80% of those interviewed told Farley they wanted to leave prostitution…llegal brothels are on the increase in Nevada, as they are in other parts of the world where brothels are legalised. Nevada’s illegal prostitution industry is already nine times greater than the state’s legal brothels. “Legalising this industry does not result in the closing down of illegal sex establishments,” says Farley, “it merely gives them further permission to exist.”… Her survey of 131 young men at the University of Nevada found the majority viewed prostitution as normal, assumed that it was not possible to rape a prostitute, and were more likely than young men in other states to use women in both legal and illegal prostitution.
Kay,
“Where prostitution is legal it is always associated with criminal behavior and suffering.”
Isn’t it also true that “where prostitution is illegal, it is always associated with criminal behavior and suffering?”
(Now, I, too, am off to celebrate, eat, drink, be merry…)