Now about the root problems- How do we help prostitutes? If you want to help them you can go to the streets and befriend them; show them genuine love. Should a pimp be a prostitutes best friend? Most of them have come from difficult home situations or they have been on the streets for a while. Especially the teen prostitutes in Houston.
I get your drift but those prostitutes don't get tested daily do they? My hunch tells me that they get tested monthly so they have a full month to spread their STD to their johns before it is caught.
Legalize their profession to remove the dangerous aspects and social stigmas, place regulations and safeguards to improve their working conditions. Pretty simple. And to the person who will inevitably say "but but but some prostitutes will still be abused/mistreated/suffer".. that's all expected... cause you know what? there's always an exception to every rule... but the error is made when you mistake the exception for the norm. If you truly want to help someone, set them free.
I believe in Nevada its every week they get tested for certain things, like Herp/Aids... then every month they go through other tests. But either way, they require condom usage and seeing as how the girls livelihood depends on their cleanliness i doubt they would risk it if they felt the situation wasn't safe. Once again, no reason to turn the exception of one person getting an STD and possibly spreading it at a sex ranch (or whatever you want to call it) when the same possibility exists for you or I getting an STD with proper condom use.
The problem with illegal prostitution in this country is the abuse that exists with the pimps. The girls often get very little of the money, are physically abused, and are in situations where they are not safe. In Nevada, most of it occurs in the brothels with security, etc. Also, with illegal prostitution, the pimps will find a runaway, get her strung out on drugs, and keep her strung out so she keeps being a profit center for him. If you legalize and regulate it, it is a better life for the girls. Now is as good a time as any to put this bit of whimsy in this thread... A guy is talking to his buddy. He says "Hey man, I just joined the prostitute club." His friend did not believe him, and asked to see the membership card. The buddy says "No...you joined the parachute club." The guy says..."Damn...I just bought 100 jumps."
knives have a better purpose than paying someone for sex. in all seriousness...give me a break. the crap this stuff feeds, whether it's illegal or legal, is so utterly indefensible it's ridiculous.
are you missing the entire point of the article i posted? this is amsterdam local officials saying, "yeah, we've legalized it...but it's created all this crime...so we're going to reduce it as much as we can, aside from this area of town where we'll make an exception because it's great for tourism." yeah, we know it feeds the sex slave trade...but geez, we're making money here. disgusting
Are restaurants inspected daily by health inspectors? You're arguing an essentially unrealistic standard that doesn't apply to practically any other area of health and safety regulation. If the concern is that legalized prostitution might be problematic since there aren't constant health inspections the answer would be to have surprise testing of prostitutes like they do for Olympic athletes to see if they are doping.
Though the article you posted earlier in the thread cited most of the problems on Holland's failure to enforce their laws regarding sex slavery and not legalization of prostitution per se.
I think I can agree with everything you say but say that prostitution should be legalized. I'm not going to argue the morality of prostitution or deny that there are many problems caused by prostitution. The problem that I see though are the externalities caused by keeping it illegal. You focus on one of the seven deadly sins, lust, yet consider that there are lots of other problems from the other seven deadly sins too. In that case should we outlaw all you can eat buffets because they facilitate gluttony or should we outlaw plastic surgery because it facilitates vanity?
For the record, my opinion is that prostitution rises to a level of moral repugnance that should keep it forever illegal. That's just my opinion. Additionally, I think the government has no place in allowing things condidered wrong just to tax it. It creates a situation where society profits from depravity. Where ever one's morals originate, I would think the idea of a situation such as this would be undesireable.
uh....no. the article says this is HOW they'll get the change they want this way: "Asscher said the city would use various techniques to reshape the area, including rezoning, buying out some businesses and offering others assistance in "upgrading" their stores. In the past, the city has shut a number of brothels and sex clubs, relying primarily on a law that allows the closure of businesses with bookkeeping irregularities." So it isn't that they're enforcing laws they weren't previously enforcing...it's that they will use different techniques to minimize the number of brothels. Because they know these brothels....WHICH EXIST LEGALLY IN AMSTERDAM..are still creating problems with the other crime they bring. But, of course, they'll bow down to the mighty dollar (or euro) to make sure they can keep it around...because, despite the fact that they specifically recognize it's helping to fuel the sex slave trade (DUH!!), hey everyone needs to make a buck, right? Pitiful. I'm sorry, but I find that to be absolutely awful. Human beings > Profit.
I don't mean to come off like a jackass to any of you personally. It's not the prostitution issue here that I'm upset about...it's the weighing cash against human lives thing that bothers me. More than bothers me. Fortunately on a message board I can restrain myself from cussing like a sailor in my anger on that...but honestly, makes me angry.
Who exactly in this thread has argued otherwise? You seem to imply that money laundering criminals can only use brothels for their money laundering. Clearly this is not the case. You are attacking the vehicle used to commit the crime, rather than the crime itself. If they close down all these businesses, and criminals start using delicatessens for money laundering, can I expect that you would then support closing of all delicatessens in Holland?
My focus isn't on money laundering...but on the sex slave trade. I've read it argued in this thread that, because it's been legalized it minimizes the chance or opportunity for the sex slave trade to be involved. I've argued to the contrary. More importantly, I'm amazed at reading the quote in the article I posted, recognizing that the sex slave trade is alive and well where there is prostitution..and seeking to limit it...but only so much so they can continue to appeal to tourists. http://www.wilsoncenter.org/index.cfm?fuseaction=wq.essay&essay_id=459603 The *21st-*century Dutch are leading exponents of the idea that legalizing and regulating prostitution can reduce sex slavery. But as they have discovered, it is hard to promote a legalized sex trade, with its inevitable links to organized crime, without becoming a magnet for slave traders, and city officials in Amsterdam are now working to shrink the city’s famous red-light district. Germany, which has also embraced legalization, has almost 10 times the number of people engaged in prostitution as neighboring *France, and, correspondingly, more trafficking victims.
Ok, well then the article you posted the other day that you keep refering back to appears to be irrelevant to your point. It clearly states that these locations are being closed over money laundering concerns. What about in the USA? Is there a greater prevelance of sex slaves in Nevada than anywhere else? A quick google would seem to indicate that the locations with a sex slave problem are elsewhere, but I don't really know.
Well the consequences of STDs especially AIDS are much more severe than fecal matter on the lemon slices... Weekly testing may be as stringent as is reasonably possible, but it ain't good enough for me... as a secondary reason for staying away.
I totally understand, and agree. I guess I see this issue differently. I don't have a personal dog in this fight. I have never been to a hooker, and never will. What I see is a subculture of exploitation and a sex slave trade of another kind with girls that are desperate and strung out. This subculture, in large part, has been created by the illegality of prostitution. The organized crime elements that run it presently, get the girls strung out and abused to keep them dependent upon them so they can continue to make money. A legalized system where girls are given health care, testing, and a drug free and safe work environment can be created through regulation. Human life > profit. We agree, but see this very differently.
The article I was referring to was this one: [rquoter]http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3071965/ Amsterdam, a city synonymous with hedonism, is perhaps best known for its legalized sex industry, in which prostitutes pay taxes and undergo regular health exams. The city’s Red Light District is a virtual Disneyland of sex — with only European Union passport holders allowed to ply the trade. But only a few miles’ drive from the city center, traditional Dutch tolerance is helping fuel the trafficking problem. In Theemsweg, a fenced-in, football field-sized parking lot built by the government for unregulated sex workers, girls sit in bus shelters — also courtesy of the government — waiting for clients. There are no EU citizens here — and the prostitutes’ countries of origin are strikingly familiar: Ukraine, Moldova, Belarus, Romania, Bulgaria, Czech Republic. On weekends, men looking for cheap sex wait in cars that back up for a mile. Sexual encounters, which take place right in the cars, cost $20. Smuggled into Europe Asked how she got to Theemsweg, 20-year-old Anna from Russia’s Far East said, “You don’t want to know.” Dutch police officials, speaking privately, estimate that as many as 70 percent of the prostitutes in the Netherlands are working illegally, using false documents provided by smugglers to skirt Dutch and European laws. With the women facing poor odds, activists are working overtime to try to thwart traffickers and rescue some of the thousands of sex slaves in Europe. The International Organization for Migration, backed by U.S. funding, has managed to return only 400 of the perhaps hundreds of thousands of Moldovan women victimized by the sex trade. Activists are beating a path to rural areas to educate young girls about the dangers of the trade.[/rquoter] In that article it states that Holland has laws regarding who can engage in prostitution but points out that the Dutch tolerance has made them lax in enforcing it.
