It is a silly argument. Because: 1) FAAAAAAAAAAAAAR less people die from botulism. You are most likely to get it when you're over 60. 60% of cases are fatal. It is a far cry from AIDS. 2) Contagion risk. You can get AIDS easier than Botulism. 3) For the most part, you are able to not have sex with people who are likely to be infected. Don't pick people up at a club, discuss sexual history with your partner. However, getting Botulism is completely random. You can't check the kitchen of every restaurant for Botulism. I happen to work in a risk-based regulation framework. Your argument is poor. If you are legalizing prostitution, you must check more than you do for food. The risk of impact is much much higher.
There is something other than laws and money in this world. You can reduce crime by making something legal - but what does that mean? If you legalize cocaine, there will be less drug crime, duh. The point is that there is a moral part to this. Prostitution is wrong and therefore legalizing it is wrong IMO. The woman who is a prostitute can work at a McDonald's I'm sure. Why doesn't she? She should have society's best interests in mind as well, shouldn't she? If you really care about the girl, give her a job, give her some training.. Heck, marry her. Don't make it easier for her to do something so demeaning and profit off of it. Turning the other way is one thing, but I certainly would not want my country to prosper off prostitution. I just don't see it to be ok because no one would want it from their child. No one. Some will say they don't care (which is disturbing to me personally), but when you see your child selling their body for money, then you'll realize. The givernment is receiving taxes from it, so you are profiting from your child being a prostitute. You are pimping out your child or the children of your country. Suddenly, you are the criminal... and for what? A few more bucks.
I read through the thread and saw you use that argument a couple of times. I'm not a fan of it.. You probably don't want your child to become an alcoholic. Shoot, I don't think people WANT their child to end up being a career janitor or working at McDonald's. Why? Because people hope for great things out of their children But at the same time, these are their lives and their decisions. Just because you don't want something for your child (or don't want them to make a certain choice) doesn't mean it should be illegal..
And what RR said on this one.. If there was no money? Things would be traded for one another.. and prostitution would still exist. And without trade, I don't think anyone would be moving in a positive direction. Sorry to go after 2 of your posts consecutively, but they were the ones that stood out the most to me. Generally, yeah it's probably not the best thing for a person psychologically, but I think fundamentally they should be able to make up their own minds. Once it becomes an issue on how it affects the economy/society/crime and all, I don't think I'm qualified to make that call since there are more factors at play than I understand fully..
... and that's the point. Virtually no one worries about those health problems while everyone entering or deciding not to enter a bordello or backseat or cheap hotel must have the STD issue cross their mind. And a lot more people eat out than pay for sex. How are the numbers on the world botulism epidemic. What does Bono say?
I side with MadMax and others who oppose legalization. As I've said in other threads, I was more open minded until talking at length with a public defender who has spent his career defending arrested children. He's had hundreds of cases with kids well under 18 taken in for prostitution. In very few cases were these kids volunteering their services as a choice where multiple options were given to them. If the government would truly put a stop to this and truly regulate it, maybe legalization would be fine, but all people who work closely with this problem predict a growth in the abuse of minors. The very real slave trade, in this country, is a serious and largely unknown problem. Please see the Not For Sale campaign. The comparisons to food poisoning make little sense to me. How is getting the poops from eating bad meat in any way comparable to letting humans buy and sell the sexual activities of children? I just can't get into that analogy.
There's a huge difference between wanting your child to be president and not wanting them to be a prostitute. You want your child to be happy. Being whatever they want. But what you don't want is for prostitution to make them "happy". Just like you don't want them to become cocaine dealers. Hell, just like you don't want them to smoke cigarettes or become alcoholics. You don't want it from them because it is wrong to do those things, because renting out your body for money is wrong, you should not put a value on that. If you want to get really technical, then think about the following: - Being a prostitute your entire life risks so many things. For example, STD's. For example, not being able to have children because you were on birth control your whole life and it messed you up. For example, if you are not always on birth control and you get pregnant then your liveliness is gone for 9 months, then what do you do? You get an abortion? How many times? It's damaging. It's not a life a human being should live. You are destroying all people involved in the process. - This may be controversial, but being the child of a prostitute is not up to you. You are thrust into that world if your mother conceived you while being a prostitute. Why should you be put in that position (as the child)? Therefore, should you force abortions? That's inhumane. In this life we have choices. All the choices we want. You can be a prostitute right now. But that's not what we're talking about. We're discussing whether the government should say "Prostitution is allowed in this land." and I don't think they should. That is not the kind of moral minimum standard that the government should have. They cannot satisfy everyone, but they must have a moral position if they are deciding what is and isn't allowed. The current position is that you can be a prostitute, however, the sacrifice is that you will be punished if caught. You have the choice and the cost right in front of you. I think that it's a fair value proposition.
Although it would be nice I think it would cause alot of problems. Could you imagine if it was legalized? I could imagine pumping gas and seeing some prostitutes making money... mmmmm .. mm .. NO! LOL
whether legal or not, prostitution will exist. the question is what situations are the women who enter the trade freely coming from? obviously we must protect the children but there is no way we can make all people's conditions fair. what percentage of women use the trade as a temporary means to improve their lives?
Agreed. What I meant to say was that what if there was no money and the people of the earth owned everything collectively. As in, the entire population owns 100% of everything. That is the fantasy scenario that I compare things to personally. Prostitution is the oldest business in the world. It will never go away in its purest form. However, our goal should be to reduce it as much as possible. KEY POINT: If we are setting up a system where person x (pimp or whoever) receives money for prostitution, then you are creating a conflict of interest between person x and society. The conflict is that the more prostitution there is, the richer person x gets. The only way to mitigate this conflict of interest is to create a situation where person x receives more money where there is less prostitution. THAT's how you solve the problem, not by diverting the money.
Can you say moral turpitude? All you guys who voted yes need to go study your history about how quickly immoral societies crumble...
yes, legalize prostitution, drugs, etc. Anything that doesn't hurt other people should be legal. Marriage is often just a glorified form of prostitution, but noooo let's not talk about things like that.
I also like this idea. [rquoter] Sweden's Groundbreaking 1999 Legislation In 1999, after years of research and study, Sweden passed legislation that a) criminalizes the buying of sex, and b) decriminalizes the selling of sex. The novel rationale behind this legislation is clearly stated in the government's literature on the law: "In Sweden prostitution is regarded as an aspect of male violence against women and children. It is officially acknowledged as a form of exploitation of women and children and constitutes a significant social problem... gender equality will remain unattainable so long as men buy, sell and exploit women and children by prostituting them." In addition to the two pronged legal strategy, a third and essential element of Sweden's prostitution legislation provides for ample and comprehensive social service funds aimed at helping any prostitute who wants to get out, and additional funds to educate the public. As such, Sweden's unique strategy treats prostitution as a form of violence against women in which the men who exploit by buying sex are criminalized, the mostly female prostitutes are treated as victims who need help, and the public is educated in order to counteract the historical male bias that has long stultified thinking on prostitution. To securely anchor their view in firm legal ground, Sweden's prostitution legislation was passed as part and parcel of the country's 1999 omnibus violence against women legislation. [/rquoter] Futhermore, Pimping should be a sex crime equal to rape, as far as I'm concerned with all the attendent felony penalties and prohibitions, like requiring database registration, etc. Above all, I think the current "tolerate it as long as it doesn't get too 'in-your-face'" is by far the most disfunctional system that could be imagined.
Again though you are missing the point. You are comparing back alley underground prostitution to what would be a legally regulated system with testing.
Again though have you studied the regulation framework of legalized prostition? Under that type of regulation you would be looking at something similar to food testing. What you and giddyup seem to be doing is arguing that at legal regulated market for prostitution would be similar to the risk of the current illegal market. The legal prostitution market as practiced in countries that have it is nothing like the illegal market and has fairly stringent testing requirements.
It does mention that but from the earlier articlet that you had posted it said that Human trafficking was already illegal in Amsterdam but that they were lax in enforcing their laws. This article talks about they are concerned with illegal activity yet even with that they are going out of their way to point out that prostitituion will remain legal. And I as mentioned I was citing an earlier article that you had posted and which I had reposted which said that same thing. You are now confusing the two articles. Thanks and I appreciate where you are coming from. I think we can both agree that exploitation is bad. We happen to disagree on how bad the externalities are regarding keeping prostitution underground and whether a legal regime could work.
The argument has to do with whether legal prostitution would run a signifigant health risk. I fully agree illegal prostitution does as there is no regulation but that would also apply to illegal butchers. The argument Giddyup made was that prostitutes couldn't be tested constantly. My argument is that nothing in the food supply is tested constantly. Now he and Mathloom though seem to be basing their argument off of illegal prostitution. My point is that you don't get the poops alot because our food supply is tested regularly but not constantly in the same way a well regulated legal prostitution system would be tested. For example I'm not aware of massive AIDS or other STD outbreaks among legal prostitutes in Amsterday or Australia or New Zealand where they have stringent testing.
