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Prostitution: Constitutional or Unconstitutional? You Decide

Constitutional or Unconstitutional?

  • It's Constitutional To Lease Your Body for Another's Pleasure

    Votes: 29 85.3%

  • It's Unconstitutional to Lease your body for Another's Pleasure.

    Votes: 5 14.7%
  • Total voters
    34
Politicians prostitute themselves on a daily basis, so I don't see why HONEST prostitutes can't do the same.
 
i don't know if i could afford a unionized hooker...
 
samsmart said:
This poll is highly manipulative.

The reason why the federal government is able to outlaw prostitution is because the Constitution gives Congress the power to regulate interstate commerce. That includes making some forms of interstate commerce illegal. Such as prostitution.

Now I say this despite supporting the legalization of prostitution. The criminalization of prostitution is constitutional. However, despite that it's a bad idea to do so. It's much better and safer and healthier to regulate it - which Congress can do since it's constitutional for them to regulate interstate commerce.
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How is prostitution interstate commerce? If I live in a state and the hooker resides and works in the same said state, how is that interstate? Even when I cross a state line to buy something in that other state, it's not considered interstate commerce. Most interstate commerce, as I understand it, is business to bussiness, with internet sales now coming into the picture. This sounds like that decision that farmers who don't put their product on the market are engaging in interstate commerce....utter BS.
 
sazerac said:
I consider it very much my business. I'm a person that won't let someone commit siuicde.
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By what standard is it your business that you consider justified in violating privacy and the right to deny a private transaction? As to your second line, are you saying that you would rather let a person dying of a terminal illness, who is in immense pain, to either suffer through that pain or "live" the remainder of their days in a drug induced coma, instead of allowing them an early release?
 
Welcome to the most abused clause.


Those hookers use stuff that is produced in other states, right? Part of their business is interstate, eh?
 
ecofarm said:
Welcome to the most abused clause.


Those hookers use stuff that is produced in other states, right? Part of their business is interstate, eh?
Click to expand...

With that logic then there is nothing that is not interstate commerce related.

The actual business of hooking itself is not interstate. If a drug store buys stuff via interstate means, the transportation and the manufacture aspects are interstate and regulated, but what that drug store does locally is not subjected to interstate regulations because nothing is crossing state lines. This is not to say anything about the multi state chains, but the local stores.
 
maquiscat said:
How is prostitution interstate commerce? If I live in a state and the hooker resides and works in the same said state, how is that interstate? Even when I cross a state line to buy something in that other state, it's not considered interstate commerce. Most interstate commerce, as I understand it, is business to bussiness, with internet sales now coming into the picture. This sounds like that decision that farmers who don't put their product on the market are engaging in interstate commerce....utter BS.
Click to expand...

Okay, if the hooker is in doggie position, right on the state line with her mouth in PA and her arse in WV offering up both ends, I think that just might be interstate commerce. Of course, if she happens to have one hand across the MD state line and that is the hand that collects the money, Gawd is she gonna get taxed to death on that deal.
 
TDZ said:
It's the oldest profession in the world they say, prostitution. In some countries it totally legal. In other countries (mostly western and especially the United States except for Reno) it is illegal.

The question is, under the United States Constitution, including all of the Amendments is it Constitutional or Unconstitutional for one to lease/rent their body out for the sexual pleasure of another?

Since this is stupid post day, why not.
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Porno is legal - why not other means of sex as income?

On the other hand - it is illegal to sell your bodyparts to someone else for their use as a transplant, etc - netting a black market of organs, etc. . . so I'm on the fence.
 
Ikari said:
A person owns there body, it is their innate property. Prostitution should be legal, taxed, and unionized.
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But, according to the conservatives, a man and particularly a woman do NOT "own" their own body.
And this, like so many other details, is NOT covered in the Constitution, nor should it be.
 
earthworm said:
But, according to the conservatives, a man and particularly a woman do NOT "own" their own body.
And this, like so many other details, is NOT covered in the Constitution, nor should it be.
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How about "according to right-wing extremists". Many of us "conservatives" support the right to choose and encourage personal responsibility and accountability over one's own body.

I would only deviate in the sense that "breeders" who leech off the system or chronic child-abusers should be sterilized.
 
You know Tessa, I'm going with earthworm on this one. Women don't own their bodies in the "Conservative" platform viewpoint. Examples:

1. Abortion - The Conservative Platform is strong in it's position on Pro-Life. It's not the Liberals trying to overturn Roe v Wade.

2. Prostitution - It is a Conservative stance that Prostitution is illegal. If the Liberals had their way, Prostitution would be legalized and regulated, though it will never become part of the Liberal Platform due to how many it would alienate from voting for them.

Now, in the Conservative camp if a woman owned her own body then they would have no position whatsoever on Abortion, in that it's totally up to the woman. In prostitution, where there is no "Forced Prostituion" only voluntary if a woman did own her body then she would be free to lease/rent/sell it off as she saw fit.

In addition, neither party condones one destroying their own body. Both Platforms, in their own sense, are against substance abuse, self-multilation beyond piercings & tattoos, suicide, driving without a seatbelt and in some instances even helmet laws. If we truly "owned" our bodies then we would be totally free to do with them whatever we wanted regardless of the consequences to ourselves. Drug consumption would not be illegal if we did own them.

So, does this mean the Declaration of Indepence's Preamble is a crock?

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any form of government becomes destructive to these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness.
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I would counter that while the Constitution itself may not cover it, the Declaration of Independence does. If an individual, such as a nymphomaniac, is most happy when persuing sex for pay then to interfere via passing a law making it illegal does in effect violate the Declaration of Independence that this country was founded on. Wouldn't it be strange to see the people rise up against the gov't just because they couldn't participate in prostitution?
 
Iwa said:
Who is the government to tell ME that I cant have sexual intercourse with someone else for money? It has nothing to do with right or wrong good or bad it has to do with whether you should be allowed to or not. The government can tell you not to kill someone because thats someone else, but the government can't tell you you cant sell yourself. Because thats you.
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Would anyone here want their daughter to be a prostitute, or a porn queen, cause I think they're the same thing pretty much. I would die inside everyday if my kid was doing this.

People cannot do anything they want because we have laws that prevent anarchy. I think prostitution has a tendency to lean toward anything goes Most prostitutes in brothels have to work when they are ill, menstruating, and pregnant. They have to do what the John wants. They have to pay room and board and like 50% of what they make to the brothel owner. Sex trafficking would get easier. Women being forced into prostitution from other countries because they are poor. More children would be abused. More people would get HIV because it takes almost 6 weeks to really know if someone is HIV positive after being tested. There's a window that can say you're ok, and then you find out you're not.

You might say these women love sex, and that's there choice to sell it. My answer is most women only love sex when they are in love with a single partner, all the other baloney is untrue. There's a lot of porn out there that says differently, but most women want one man.

There are prostitutes who fake it, but many women do this with their partners all the time. Women have different psyches about sex. There has to be a lot of foreplay for many of us. Once the foreplay has kicked in, it's really quite fabulous.

Too much prostitution for men can lead to laziness when they get a real GF.

Here's a quote:

The US Department of State, wrote in its Nov. 24, 2004 article "The Link Between Prostitution and Sex Trafficking" provided on its website:
"The U.S. Government adopted a strong position against legalized prostitution in a December 2002 National Security Presidential Directive based on evidence that prostitution is inherently harmful and dehumanizing, and fuels trafficking in persons, a form of modern-day slavery. Prostitution and related activities—including pimping and patronizing or maintaining brothels—fuel the growth of modern-day slavery by providing a façade behind which traffickers for sexual exploitation operate.
Where prostitution is legalized or tolerated, there is a greater demand for human trafficking victims and nearly always an increase in the number of women and children trafficked into commercial sex slavery...
Few activities are as brutal and damaging to people as prostitution. Field research in nine countries concluded that 60-75 percent of women in prostitution were raped, 70-95 percent were physically assaulted, and 68 percent met the criteria for post traumatic stress disorder in the same range as treatment-seeking combat veterans and victims of state-organized torture. Beyond this shocking abuse, the public health implications of prostitution are devastating and include a myriad of serious and fatal diseases, including HIV/AIDS...
State attempts to regulate prostitution by introducing medical check-ups or licenses don’t address the core problem: the routine abuse and violence that form the prostitution experience and brutally victimize those caught in its netherworld. Prostitution leaves women and children physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually devastated. Recovery takes years, even decades—often, the damage can never be undone."
 
TDZ said:
1. Abortion - The Conservative Platform is strong in it's position on Pro-Life. It's not the Liberals trying to overturn Roe v Wade.

snip

Now, in the Conservative camp if a woman owned her own body then they would have no position whatsoever on Abortion, in that it's totally up to the woman. In prostitution, where there is no "Forced Prostituion" only voluntary if a woman did own her body then she would be free to lease/rent/sell it off as she saw fit.
Click to expand...

While I may not agree with the stance at least there is a basis for this stance, in that a life (in theory) is at stake, whereas in prostitution, force issues aside, there is no more risk than say skydiving, and all that are on the two adult willing particpants only.

[QUOTE}In addition, neither party condones one destroying their own body. Both Platforms, in their own sense, are against substance abuse, self-multilation beyond piercings & tattoos, suicide, driving without a seatbelt and in some instances even helmet laws. If we truly "owned" our bodies then we would be totally free to do with them whatever we wanted regardless of the consequences to ourselves. Drug consumption would not be illegal if we did own them.[/QUOTE]

To some conservatives, and even to some liberals, such self-mutilation is destroying one's body. For that matter the political left would tell us what we can and can't eat or at least be offered by restraunts and stores. That's no different from the religious right telling us what kinds of sex we can have. Neither side really belives we "own" our bodies. They just disagree as to what aspects they will allow us to control.
 
danarhea said:
Politicians prostitute themselves on a daily basis, so I don't see why HONEST prostitutes can't do the same.
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We are speaking of sex for pay specifically.
 
Aunt Spiker said:
Porno is legal - why not other means of sex as income?

On the other hand - it is illegal to sell your bodyparts to someone else for their use as a transplant, etc - netting a black market of organs, etc. . . so I'm on the fence.
Click to expand...

It's not the immediate act itself, but what it necessarily leads to which is undesirable.

Porn depicting realistic children, for example, is illegal even when no children are involved not because of some grandstanding moral high-horse, but because child porn leads to child abuse. Pedophiles, those interested in such porn, don't stop with videos. Pedophiles always escalate. Child porn is thus illegal to curb that escalation into real child abuse.

Selling your own organs is another good example. Yes it's your body, but you are not allowed to sell your organs because when organs had a legal value, criminals took initiative and began serial killing to fulfill the demand of the organ market. It was a real big problem far beyond grave and morgue robbing, which is why we outlawed it.

Likewise, a woman can go sell her sexual services, but make it legal and pimps start running sex rings and taking advantage. In Nevada the abused, drug addicted street-walker is the norm, not the clean 'professional' located in a licensed brothel. Criminals take over and continually escalate, bringing in women from other countries against their will. The human sex-slave market is alive and well in Nevada.

It's imposable to have an informed opinion on the topic of prostitution without looking at what it leads to.
 
Jerry said:
Porn depicting realistic children, for example, is illegal even when no children are involved not because of some grandstanding moral high-horse, but because child porn leads to child abuse. Pedophiles, those interested in such porn, don't stop with videos. Pedophiles always escalate. Child porn is thus illegal to curb that escalation into real child abuse.
Click to expand...

None of this is true. There is no evidence whatsoever that any exposure to pornography, depicting adults, real children, or fake children, encourages or leads to the abuse of children. At all. Zero. None. Don't make stuff up.

There is, however, the possibility that such desires could be (in some cases) satiated with a proxy, like porn. After all, there are plenty of guys who look at rape porn, but then don't go out and rape anyone. Their desires are fleeting, and satisfied with fantasy. Why would pedophiles be any different?

Selling your own organs is another good example. Yes it's your body, but you are not allowed to sell your organs because when organs had a legal value, criminals took initiative and began serial killing to fulfill the demand of the organ market. It was a real big problem far beyond grave and morgue robbing, which is why we outlawed it.
Click to expand...

This part is actually true. And it makes sense. Even if you catch the perpetrator afterwards, they still stole someone's body parts and, you know... murdered them. So really, the problem is murderers. But at least the logic here is sound.

Likewise, a woman can go sell her sexual services, but make it legal and pimps start running sex rings and taking advantage. In Nevada the abused, drug addicted street-walker is the norm, not the clean 'professional' located in a licensed brothel. Criminals take over and continually escalate, bringing in women from other countries against their will. The human sex-slave market is alive and well in Nevada.
Click to expand...

Those clean professionals are the norm in the counties where prostitution is legal. To suggest that "criminals" will "take over" a legal industry is to suggest that post offices are subject to the same problem. If a criminal element can infiltrate one legitimate business, they (the mafia?) can do the same for any industry. If an industry is above board, in the light, then it removes the criminal element. It doesn't increase it.
 
Paschendale said:
None of this is true. There is no evidence whatsoever that any exposure to pornography, depicting adults, real children, or fake children, encourages or leads to the abuse of children. At all. Zero. None. Don't make stuff up.

There is, however, the possibility that such desires could be (in some cases) satiated with a proxy, like porn. After all, there are plenty of guys who look at rape porn, but then don't go out and rape anyone. Their desires are fleeting, and satisfied with fantasy. Why would pedophiles be any different?



This part is actually true. And it makes sense. Even if you catch the perpetrator afterwards, they still stole someone's body parts and, you know... murdered them. So really, the problem is murderers. But at least the logic here is sound.



Those clean professionals are the norm in the counties where prostitution is legal. To suggest that "criminals" will "take over" a legal industry is to suggest that post offices are subject to the same problem. If a criminal element can infiltrate one legitimate business, they (the mafia?) can do the same for any industry. If an industry is above board, in the light, then it removes the criminal element. It doesn't increase it.
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So your saying that those who view child porn are not likely to act on that sexual urge and there is no proof that looking at porn, specifically child porn, will lead to abusive acts towards children.

Would you like to bet on that one?

I'll be willing to put up whatever you want to risk Paschendale. Though might I suggest that you actually do a little research before you open your mouth and stick your foot in it. Perhaps becoming friends with say, I don't know... Google or Bing might even help you out a little.

Child Porn Leads Pedophiles to Commit Pedophile Acts against children study

That link might help ya out a little. To quote a section of it:

A team of researchers in Toronto, Canada has recently published a paper, titled, "Child Pornography Offenses Are a Valid Diagnostic Indicator of Pedophilia" in the Journal of Abnormal Psychology (August, 2006, Vol. 115, No. 3, 610-615) averaging their results for this methodology across 685 people (some known child offenders (e.g., known pedophiles), some adult offenders (e.g., standard rapists, etc.), some adult porn addicts, and some convicted of child porn viewing, but otherwise not known to be pedophiles. Their results confirm statistically that a predilection for viewing child porn is closely associated with pedophilia. In fact, study subjects convicted of viewing child porn but not previously convicted of any actual child offenses were almost three times as aroused by child porn photos as actual convicted pedophiles. Adult offenders (e.g., standard rapists), as you might expect, showed arousal far more frequently to adult pictures than to child pictures.

What this study does is to establish that child-porn-seeking behavior is in fact, statistically speaking, powerfully associated with the same sort of sexual arousal patterns (e.g, turned on by children rather than adults) associated with convicted pedophiles. You've heard the phrase, "where there is smoke, there is fire", perhaps? Well, here is mathematical evidence that this association works for child porn and pedophilic behavior too. The presence of child-porn-seeking behavior doesn't prove pedophilia, of course, but when it is present, pedophila is statistically more likely to be the case than not.
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Now, as a father I don't need a study to help me out with this thing they call common sense, but since you do, there it is. It is statistically more likely to be the case than not.
 
Whovian said:
I did.... and it sailed over your head.

Let me detail it for you.

NO ONE is saying 'forced prostituion', such as the examples you described, should be legal.

SOME are saying that 'prostitution', self decided, not forced in any way, shape or form, should be legal.

Hopefully that clears it up for you.
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Jerry said:
Am I correct in understanding that we are still hung up on this naive idea that legalized prostitution does not lead to illegal human sex-slave trafficking? How many countries have tried this now? Even Netherlands regrets their decision.

This is like talking to Loosertarians who want to legalize Cocaine. It was legal before, and it ****ed us up, so we banned it. Prostitution takes a similar history.
Click to expand...

So does illegal prostitution. Your point is moot. That side effect exists with either leagl or illegal prostitution, and will have to be vigorously fought in either case. So, moot point.
 
Jerry said:
It's not the immediate act itself, but what it necessarily leads to which is undesirable.

Porn depicting realistic children, for example, is illegal even when no children are involved not because of some grandstanding moral high-horse, but because child porn leads to child abuse. Pedophiles, those interested in such porn, don't stop with videos. Pedophiles always escalate. Child porn is thus illegal to curb that escalation into real child abuse.

Selling your own organs is another good example. Yes it's your body, but you are not allowed to sell your organs because when organs had a legal value, criminals took initiative and began serial killing to fulfill the demand of the organ market. It was a real big problem far beyond grave and morgue robbing, which is why we outlawed it.

Likewise, a woman can go sell her sexual services, but make it legal and pimps start running sex rings and taking advantage. In Nevada the abused, drug addicted street-walker is the norm, not the clean 'professional' located in a licensed brothel. Criminals take over and continually escalate, bringing in women from other countries against their will. The human sex-slave market is alive and well in Nevada.

It's imposable to have an informed opinion on the topic of prostitution without looking at what it leads to.
Click to expand...

So are we banning frivolous sex at all?

It's the same thing. . . except one puts food on the table - the other doesn't.

If goods or money exchanging hands for a service rendered - and without that exchange that same service can still be rendered without issues - then why does the factor of money cause the problem?

I don't know - sometimes I'v ebeen adamately against it and sometimes I'm all for it. It depends on what mood I'm in I guess. :lamo
 
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Aunt Spiker said:
So are we banning frivolous sex at all?

It's the same thing. . . except one puts food on the table - the other doesn't.

If goods or money exchanging hands for a service rendered - and without that exchange that same service can still be rendered without issues - then why does the factor of money cause the problem?

I don't know - sometimes I'v ebeen adamately against it and sometimes I'm all for it. It depends on what mood I'm in I guess. :lamo
Click to expand...

Whats the definition of frivolous?
 
Blue Dog said:
Whats the definition of frivolous?
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1. characterized by lack of seriousness or sense: frivolous conduct.
2. self-indulgently carefree; unconcerned about or lacking any serious purpose.
3. (of a person) given to trifling or undue levity: a frivolous, empty-headed person.
 
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