• This is a political forum that is non-biased/non-partisan and treats every person's position on topics equally. This debate forum is not aligned to any political party. In today's politics, many ideas are split between and even within all the political parties. Often we find ourselves agreeing on one platform but some topics break our mold. We are here to discuss them in a civil political debate. If this is your first visit to our political forums, be sure to check out the RULES. Registering for debate politics is necessary before posting. Register today to participate - it's free!

Prostitution

Should prostitution be legalized?


  • Total voters
    117
Prostitution, like vandalism, tends to create a climate for other criminal offenses.
In contrast to what the proponents claim, there is

Most enforcement actions are directly due to citizens complaints, so evidently, those living around it have concluded that there are social impacts.
Citizen complaints lead to prostitution arrests : News : CarolinaLive.com
Citizen complaints lead to prostitution arrests - WFSB 3 Connecticut
Five arrested in undercover prostitution sting in Gainesville - The Independent Florida Alligator: Crime

My guess is that prostitution, like vandalism, creates an environment for furhter criminal activity.

Other social impacts include:

- AIDS CDC - Sex Workers - Other Risks - Risk - HIV/AIDS At the end of the day, a certain percentage of the hookers and the hooked dont alot of personal discipline and thus are not known to be interested in precautions.

- Exploitation of women http://www.europarl.europa.eu/RegData/etudes/etudes/join/2014/493040/IPOL-FEMM_ET(2014)493040_EN.pdf Evidently the Dutch policy on prostitution has not created a heaven of happy hookers as traffickers view the Netherlands as a having business potential.
However by not having prostitution in the legal arena puts those gals/men in the position of being around other criminals by default, rather than by choice. I have no doubt that if a woman could be and feel and know that what she was doing wasn't illegal, she'd not have a pimp who would jack her up on drugs and sell her to abusive assholes. It's the fact that it's illegal to start with that puts them in an environment where it's essentially unavoidable; they will be exposed to and made a part of other criminal activities.
 
Prostitution, like vandalism, tends to create a climate for other criminal offenses.
In contrast to what the proponents claim, there is

Most enforcement actions are directly due to citizens complaints, so evidently, those living around it have concluded that there are social impacts.
Citizen complaints lead to prostitution arrests : News : CarolinaLive.com
Citizen complaints lead to prostitution arrests - WFSB 3 Connecticut
Five arrested in undercover prostitution sting in Gainesville - The Independent Florida Alligator: Crime

My guess is that prostitution, like vandalism, creates an environment for furhter criminal activity.

Other social impacts include:

- AIDS CDC - Sex Workers - Other Risks - Risk - HIV/AIDS At the end of the day, a certain percentage of the hookers and the hooked dont alot of personal discipline and thus are not known to be interested in precautions.

- Exploitation of women http://www.europarl.europa.eu/RegData/etudes/etudes/join/2014/493040/IPOL-FEMM_ET(2014)493040_EN.pdf Evidently the Dutch policy on prostitution has not created a heaven of happy hookers as traffickers view the Netherlands as a having business potential.

If it's not a criminal activity, why would it encourage more criminal activity?

And regulation and oversight would reduce disease.
 
At the end of the day, the current practice works fine:

-Hooking is illegal
-local municipalities, in response to local conditions, decide how stringently those laws are enforced. Enforcement can vary from fairly strict to pretty token.

I love that blatant legal hypocrisy AND action seems perfectly fine to you. And this is what kids would be taught.

@_@
 

Thanks. Both hooker and john should be punished with extensive jail terms.

Now...why? Aside from breaking a law that is victimless, what did they do wrong to deserve that punishment?
 
Because the State should not facilitate environments that increase social costs (actively spread STDs).

The State should also not facilitate environments that lead to the exploitation of its citizens (even if the exploitation is "willing").
It does not matter whether it is prostitution, usurous loans, or exploitive labor contracts that are "voluntary".

Please note, this does not mean that I am advocating a Bloomberg nanny state.

Your links didnt show that STDs were increased in society from legalized prostitution.

As a matter of fact, who says there will be an increase in sex at all? It might even get more expensive if regulated and taxed.
 
For that matter, I am not personally exploited by usurous loans or loan sharking either- does that mean they should also be legal? Or, can the State forbid certain loan arrangements?

There are actual victims in those examples.
 
why does society need to "get involved" when it is no ones business but the ones agreeing to the contracts?

Actually society has more of a reason to get involved than the law. If people think that a certain rate of money loaning is too high they need to either create a loan with a lower rate or go find one. Not demand a law that will cap the rate. That is the key difference between society and the law. In the case of the topic of the thread, if society truly wants no prostitution then either they move to a place where it is not happening or the exert social pressure and make it unprofitable/undesirable for those prostituting.
 
It should be legal and regulated like any other business. This is a women's safety issue to me. Illegal prostitution leads to abuse, disease, crime, and human trafficking. It just makes NO SENSE to me to make prostitution illegal.

So does legal prostitution, as the Netherlands has been discovering.

It should absolutely remain illegal-- but maybe, as a civilized and compassionate country, we should stop arresting and prosecuting the victims of prostitution, and focus instead on the perpetrators. I mean, that's what I'd do.
 
I'm always conflicted on how to respond to the prostitution question, since it really depends on the situation and how it's being defined. I'll start off by saying I have no moral position on this, don't really care what religion may say about this.

In many ways all casual sex is a 'transaction' so the issue (in my mind) that money transfer or barter has occurred is simply irrelevant. The true problem with prostitution is the coercion, trafficking, drugs, and the abuse by pimps. All of that is obscene and needs to be illegal.

Then you are left with sex! I live in Thailand, where there is always only 6 degrees of separation from someone you know in the 'entertainment' industry. Thai prostitution isn't (generally) dominated by coercion and pimps. It's more a case of poor women working as independent contractors so to speak, selling sex directly to customers as Bar Girls, just to make money to support their families, not generally as I fear is common in the US to support a drug habit

So I guess the real question, in a US context is: is it the sex that people have the problem with, or all the crime and abuse that surrounds the sex?
 
It has already been legalized. It is called politics.
 
Why do you look at things in terms of extremes? Do we allow doctors to practice in the middle of the park in public view? Do you think prostitutes and johns dont prefer privacy?

People cannot even drink and smoke in public in most places....and those are legal.

And why do I have to approve of prostitution to support it's legalization? Of course I wouldnt....there are millions of jobs I would hate.


You have to resort to extremes because you have no realistic argument. You just have a moral indignation that you are trying to shore up with 'fake' reasoning.

Everyone has a right to do with their bodies what they want . So in that vein I admit I have no right to dictate.

Am not trying to play the moral card. I just simply wonder who here who supports it would like to have their teenage daughter look as it as a future profession. Is that fair enough?

It seems we all like prostitutes but none of us would like their own daughter or wife working that profession.

And if legal why couldn't one's wife do a few tricks for Christmas spending money and still be able to hold her head high.
 
Everyone has a right to do with their bodies what they want . So in that vein I admit I have no right to dictate.

Am not trying to play the moral card. I just simply wonder who here who supports it would like to have their teenage daughter look as it as a future profession. Is that fair enough?

It seems we all like prostitutes but none of us would like their own daughter or wife working that profession.

And if legal why couldn't one's wife do a few tricks for Christmas spending money and still be able to hold her head high.

I wouldn't want my daughter to work in a slaughterhouse killing lambs, or emptying port-a-potties and septic tanks for a living, or working as a policewoman in the worst section of Detroit either, but that doesn't mean these professions should be illegal.
 
Everyone has a right to do with their bodies what they want . So in that vein I admit I have no right to dictate.

Am not trying to play the moral card. I just simply wonder who here who supports it would like to have their teenage daughter look as it as a future profession. Is that fair enough?

It seems we all like prostitutes but none of us would like their own daughter or wife working that profession.

And if legal why couldn't one's wife do a few tricks for Christmas spending money and still be able to hold her head high.
It's an appeal to emotionalism that shouldn't be part of the issue.
 
No, I don't think government has an obligation to protect people from their own stupid actions.

This is a free society, not a nanny state.

And such darwinian societies do not remain free very long. International communism's appeal was in part due because certain societies practiced social darwinism:

- exploitive share cropping was were permissable as the farmers were voluntary
- exploitive labor conditions permitted as workers were voluntary
- All education was 100% cash and carry. Most of those in uhmm.... "voluntary contracts" could not afford it so neither they, nor their children, could escape from the system.

Needless to say, these conditions created alot of social turmoil, which led to people looking for "solutions" that reduced freedom.

In short, a wise State protects people from themselves (to a degree). Failure to do so on a large scale, can result in alot of social turmoil with reductions in freedom, quality of life and capital. Putting limits on interest rates and banning certain exploitive "voluntary" labor contracts does not equal "nanny state".
 
Last edited:
And such darwinian societies do not remain free very long. International communism's appeal was in part due because certain societies practiced social darwinism:

- exploitive share cropping was were permissable as the farmers were voluntary
- exploitive labor conditions permitted as workers were voluntary
- education was 100% cash and carry. Most of the exploitive could not afford it so they can't escape from the voluntary system.

Needless to say, these conditions created alot of social turmoil, which led to people looking for "solutions" that reduced freedom.

In short, a wise State protects people from themselves (to a degree). Failure to do so on a large scale, can result in alot of social turmoil. Putting limits on interest rates and banning certain exploitive "voluntary" labor contracts does not equal "nanny state".

We weren't talking about share cropping and labor conditions and education. We were talking about government protecting people from their own stupid mistakes. We disagree on the role of government.
 
We weren't talking about share cropping and labor conditions and education. We were talking about government protecting people from their own stupid mistakes. We disagree on the role of government.

You stated that a govenment should not protect people from their own voluntary and foolish decisions. I am stating wise government should protect people from their own decisions (to a degree).

So, yes, we do disagree on the role of government. A government that practices unrestricted social darwinism - and you appear to advocate such a government, will fail due to social turmoil. This results in a loss of freedom and capital.

We no longer have share cropper agriculture, but we do have an economic system heavily dependent on loans. Placing limits on interest- even oif signing the loan is "voluntary" does not equal "nanny state". Rather, such limits can reduce social turmoil. It was the same with certain "voluntary" share cropping arrangements.
 
You stated that a govenment should not protect people from their own voluntary and foolish decisions. I am stating wise government should protect people from their own decisions (to a degree).

So, yes, we do disagree on the role of government. A government that practices unrestricted social darwinism - and you appear to advocate such a government, will fail due to social turmoil. This results in a loss of freedom and capital.

We no longer have share cropper agriculture, but we do have an economic system heavily dependent on loans. Placing limits on interest- even oif signing the loan is "voluntary" does not equal "nanny state". Rather, such limits can reduce social turmoil. It was the same with certain "voluntary" share cropping arrangements.

That's all nice, but it has nothing to do with the discussion about prostitution.

I'm a big girl and believe I can take care of myself, you seem to think you need government to protect you from yourself. End of discussion. We won't agree on this and share cropping and loans aren't relevant to this discussion. Thanks.
 
I'm a big girl and believe I can take care of myself, you seem to think you need government to protect you from yourself.

Actually... no. My personal financial decisions in real estate have been pretty successful.

I also realize that the social darwinism that you advocate leads to exploitation which leads to social turmoil which could impact the the economy in a negative way. This would, in turn, impact me.

The fact that you or I, as individuals, are capable of making good decisions is not really that relevent.
 
I'm always conflicted on how to respond to the prostitution question, since it really depends on the situation and how it's being defined. I'll start off by saying I have no moral position on this, don't really care what religion may say about this.

In many ways all casual sex is a 'transaction' so the issue (in my mind) that money transfer or barter has occurred is simply irrelevant. The true problem with prostitution is the coercion, trafficking, drugs, and the abuse by pimps. All of that is obscene and needs to be illegal.

Then you are left with sex! I live in Thailand, where there is always only 6 degrees of separation from someone you know in the 'entertainment' industry. Thai prostitution isn't (generally) dominated by coercion and pimps. It's more a case of poor women working as independent contractors so to speak, selling sex directly to customers as Bar Girls, just to make money to support their families, not generally as I fear is common in the US to support a drug habit

So I guess the real question, in a US context is: is it the sex that people have the problem with, or all the crime and abuse that surrounds the sex?

IMO its the sex.
 
Everyone has a right to do with their bodies what they want . So in that vein I admit I have no right to dictate.

Am not trying to play the moral card. I just simply wonder who here who supports it would like to have their teenage daughter look as it as a future profession. Is that fair enough?

It seems we all like prostitutes but none of us would like their own daughter or wife working that profession.

And if legal why couldn't one's wife do a few tricks for Christmas spending money and still be able to hold her head high.

It's just like legalizing drugs....it's a matter of Constitutionality and personal freedoms and things where the govt has no business being involved.

No one says doing drugs is good or the right thing to do. Legalizing is not a moral judgement on it. Maybe parents could do a better job of raising their kids and explain that? IMO if there were more good parents there would be less prostitutes and drug addicts anyway.
 
Back
Top Bottom