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Monday, March 10, 2008
Eliot Spitzer and Happier Hookers
Since former New York Attorney General and now New York Governor Eliot Spitzer has put prostitution in the news with his involvement in a prostitution ring, I’ll take this opportunity to remind Western Standard readers of the debate between Karen Selick and Michael Coren on this subject.
Read “Face-off: Happier Hookers” and decide for yourself who’s right about prostitution laws.
Posted by Matthew Johnston on March 10, 2008 in Current Affairs | Permalink
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Comments
I do not want prostitutes or any other vendor of goods or services hanging around on my street. I don't care what the demand for those things happens to be. They should go to another place where no one gives a damn.
Posted by: dewp | 2008-03-10 5:48:38 PM
Selick>"With dozens of prostitutes' bodies having turned up on the Pickton farm, it's about time we allowed them the chance to screen their clients and work in the relative safety of brothels, instead of trolling the streets."
Pickton's victims were lured to the farm on the promise of drugs, according to the testimony in the trial.
It was the illegality of drugs not prostitution that made those women victims.
Coren>" Immoral, but not illegal. The law merely tries to limit this ugly enterprise and keep it from the streets, and it is only partly successful."
What is ugly about prostitution?
The fact that ugly men can get sex too or that people are having a meaningless shallow commitmentless sexual liaison for money instead of for free?
Immoral? Maybe.
But compared to what, having an abortion for the sake of convenience?
No.
Selick>"Nobody's arguing that insane killers would disappear under decriminalization, just that prostitutes could better protect themselves from them."
IF prostitutes were more responsible and less mobile, IF when they disappeared in large numbers as they did in the Pickton case and the police looked for the cause of their disappearance as readily as any other missing women, this would be true.
Coren>" And have you considered that the last person who should be telling society how to conduct itself is a prostitute?"
An ad hominem argument.
I think, maybe, the last person who should be telling society how to conduct itself is a journalist or politician, if every adult member of society weren't already automatically intitled to, that is.
Posted by: Speller | 2008-03-10 5:48:48 PM
There is probably a significant argument here which would relate to the discussion about keeping intoxicating "recreational" drugs illegal.
With prostitution we have had a dramatic societal shift (degeneration) to the point where essentially the ONLY thing that a fine young man cannot find is a woman who will NOT have sex with him on the first day she lays eyes on him.
Young women willing to have sex essentially indescriminately are common (as flies).
So, essentially, prostitute-type sex is now completely LEGAL everywhere. But yet, we still do have a prostitution industry.
So, in other words, Legalizing "it" does not make it go away or become a non-problem (note dwep's comment above, evidently he has observed or considered a downside to this other "victimless" crime).
The HUGE negatives associated with illegal drugs can obviously similarly be easily expected to continue to plague anyone who doesn't participate in this crap, even if "we" made all of it "legal."
The Libertarian arguments on vice type activities (which are not victimless) really fall apart if held up to any sort of normal community reality.
Posted by: Conrad-USA | 2008-03-10 6:47:38 PM
I do not want prostitutes or any other vendor of goods or services hanging around on my street. I don't care what the demand for those things happens to be. They should go to another place where no one gives a damn.
Posted by: dewp | 10-Mar-08 5:48:38 PM
-----
dewp - you don't see very many plumbers hanging around on the street corner looking for customers. It's the illegality of the trade that keeps these women on the street.
Posted by: Matthew Johnston | 2008-03-10 7:01:32 PM
There is no law against plumbers hanging out on my street, except vagrancy. There is no law against prostitutes hanging out on my street, except vagrancy. There is no law against prostitution. I also don't want to see the clients of prostitutes hanging around. It's against the law to be a client of prostitutes.
Posted by: dewp | 2008-03-10 7:11:54 PM
Conrad,
Since alcohol prohibition, the 18th Amendment, was repealed in the U.S. in 1933, there are still moonshiners, bootleggers, and illegal booze-cans.
What you don't have is 1934 Chicago resembling 2006 Baghdad the way 1929 Chicago did.
It's a concept called "harm reduction".
Posted by: Speller | 2008-03-10 7:12:05 PM
The Libertarian arguments on vice type activities (which are not victimless) really fall apart if held up to any sort of normal community reality.
Posted by: Conrad-USA | 10-Mar-08 6:47:38 PM
----
Conrad-USA -- libertarians and conservatives have the same objectives when it comes to community harmony. Libertarians believe prohibition spreads the harm associated with drugs and prostitution from the individual drug user and prostitute to the rest of the community.
Drugs and prostitution are bad; prohibition is worse...for everybody.
Posted by: Matthew Johnston | 2008-03-10 7:17:46 PM
The problem with tying the survival sex trade into the discussion of the rest of the sex industry - this is a discussion I had extensively with that Liberal girl who was pushing for a resolution to legalize prostitution a few years ago - is that they are more or less totally different concepts.
Most of the women on the streets are there for reasons of pure survival. Not all - but most. Most of them would still be on the streets if solicitation were legalized.
In any case, you've only got to pick up the Georgia Straight to know that prostitution is de facto legal in this country. Last time I picked up that paper there were something like five newspaper-sized ads for prostitution - and that's just in Vancouver.
It's become far more common. I know, personally, of five women who I went to high school with (or who went to the high school next door) who ended up in the sex industry. None of them was, so far as I know, drug dependent or survival-driven.
I imagine that it's a trend that we'll see continue into the future.
More accurately, it's a reassertion of an older form. After all, didn't Mark Steyn point out that - in London in the early 19th Century, one in four unmarried women was a prostitute?
Posted by: Adam Yoshida | 2008-03-10 7:38:40 PM
>"Most of the women on the streets are there for reasons of pure survival. Not all - but most."
Yoshi
>"I know, personally, of five women who I went to high school with (or who went to the high school next door) who ended up in the sex industry. None of them was, so far as I know, drug dependent or survival-driven."
Yoshi
Either there is a contradiction between the above statements or you used to hang with some pretty tough desperate customers, Adam.
Pene & Teller on Prostitution
*WARNING* Gratuitous Offensive Language & Some Brief Nudity
Part 1
http://youtube.com/watch?v=oBmbZmrsz6U
Part 2
http://youtube.com/watch?v=WCWSY5nYZAI
Part 3
http://youtube.com/watch?v=JFVM15Wtfx8
Posted by: Speller | 2008-03-10 7:52:11 PM
Adam Yoshida's comment was quite interesting and upsetting to me, regarding the girls he knew from school who became prostitutes. It is/was no longer (necessarily) from economic "necessity" but rather, reaching back to my earlier comment, re. ...the ONLY thing that a fine young man cannot find today is a woman who will NOT have sex with him on the first day she lays eyes on him.
These girls (of Adam's acquaintance) have become prostitutes because they lived like (unpaid) prostitutes at the behest of the Feminists (and other Atheists) who wish to destroy the natural human family, and our entire culture and freedoms with it.
You CANNOT hold any sort of normal society together with this crazy pretend "philosophy" (Libertarian) that evil (it amounts to slavery ultimately) vice type activities can be "legal" and that solves the problem.
A community speaks its beliefs and values in the kinds of things it condones (i.e. marriage between one man and one woman) and what it vilifies or makes illegal. Then the Rule of Law holds THAT community together.
Nothing matters if you are a hermit or if you live in the wilderness (that's probably why Alaska evidently has legal intoxicating drug use). But anywhere that might be called a "community" cannot flourish (e.g. move on to a next generation and a next one) with vice-type activities effectively condoned.
Ask Mr. Yoshida to interview one (or all) of those four girls and find out how "happy" they are with their sexy lifestyle and future prospects (as an OD'd corpse).
Then have him interview four young guys who can't find a non-Feminist-Liberal-used-diseased girl who wants to raise a family dedicating her life to her husband and their children.
It is all simple human fact, the rest is rhetorical bull.
Posted by: Conrad-USA | 2008-03-10 8:33:15 PM
Conrad,
Alaska is a more severe climate to live in but has every bit as much right to the title of respectability as an American community as any other in the U.S.A.
Furthermore, regarding sex, you are correct that young women are giving it away.
Is is your contention that the United States or Canada should begin to move in the direction of Saudi Arabia or Yemen in so far as criminalizing sexual contact between unmarried couples, arresting them, and punishing them?
Is that the level of moral intrusion you want to see the police performing, Conrad?
What's next Conrad, the Spanish Inquisition?
Posted by: Speller | 2008-03-10 8:44:56 PM
Conrad,
Please forgive me for being so harsh in my tone.
You know I am a born again Christian.
I freely chose as an adult to become a Christian.
I believe that God has given us free choice and that excludes your Roman Catholic concept of being born into your religion where your babies really don't have a choice.
I believe that Jesus chose to die on that cross knowing that I was given the choice to believe or not to believe.
The choice to love Him or not love Him.
The choice to accept His free gift of grace the He won on that cross or reject it.
Sin itself is a free choice, Conrad.
Where there is no choice neither is there morality nor love.
Posted by: Speller | 2008-03-10 8:55:48 PM
Speller: Don't be so hard on Conrad. He is not wrong. But the females have to decide how they behave. Their society can guide but not force.
Posted by: dewp | 2008-03-10 10:01:42 PM
dewp,
I did apologize to Conrad for my earlier tone.
What I have trouble with is the idea that a girl meeting a guy for a date, having dinner, drinks, and a movie bought for her, and then sleeping with him and going on to another is so different from prostitution, or that the behaviour that occurred during the date should be punished as prostitution is, when the two behaviours are almost identical.
The difference, as I see it, lays only in frequency and the mode of seduction.
Both are "dates" and both have the same element of risk.
The next step for society is either to decriminalize prostitution or criminalize shallow brief sexual liaisons where money is not exchanged.
Posted by: Speller | 2008-03-10 10:17:35 PM
Speller- as in the Muslim practise of "temporary" marriages?
Posted by: DML | 2008-03-10 10:33:50 PM
No DML, I hadn't thought of that.
I was thinking of the guy meets girl at the car rental agency, asks her for a date, goes out for pizza and beer with her, takes in a movie, then takes her back to his flat and they bump uglies for a while, after which she goes home and the guy doesn't phone her.
That kind of "shallow brief sexual liaison where money is not exchanged."
Posted by: Speller | 2008-03-10 10:42:01 PM
Speller: One should not agonize over these behaviours that you describe. It'll dry up the heart. One should look instead at love, compassion and respect. Everyone needs those things to give and to receive.
Having said that, give 'em hell.
Posted by: dewp | 2008-03-10 11:21:20 PM
Speller - my point is the distinction.
The women on the streets - like the Pickton victims - are in it as a matter of survival. Most of them are in such shape that they wouldn't be able to work in a legal industry, which would presumably be regulated, taxed, normalized, and supervised. So, legalizing prostitution isn't a solution for those women - because they wouldn't have a place in a legal industry (and don't have a place in a semi-legal one, in any case).
Their position is kind of like that of Crysal Meth in terms of drug legalization. Even a system of legalization couldn't possibly legalize crystal meth - who would manufature and sell it?
Now, not all of the girls I mentioned ended up in prostituion. One is a stripper. Another is an adult film actress. The other three are escorts. I only actually knew one of them well enough to call a friend (though, for a time, she was a very close friend) - and there was another one who I'd say hovered on the edge between acquaintance and friend (though, many years ago, I had a terrible crush on her). The others I know about through the social grapevine. Given that the two schools had a combined population of four thousand and that I'm only talking about people in my year - we're talking some serious numbers here.
As for the rest - I don't know. They're young and beautiful and they're living like there's no tomorrow because, well, perhaps there isn't. In the end though, for all of them, it's been their choice. A choice made based, so far as I can tell, on rational economic calculations.
I don't have any real problem with it. They're making money. They seem to be safe - see the Penn & Teller video re: Nevada and diseases. Some of them must genuinely love the job. For the rest - well, plenty of other people do things that they hate every day for money too.
Posted by: Adam Yoshida | 2008-03-10 11:30:14 PM
I'm just not understanding you tonight, Adam.
What am I missing?
"Most of them would still be on the streets if solicitation were legalized."
Why?
You say they are there for pure survival, that is why most people work.
What is it that would keep most prostitutes from operating within a legal framework?
Is it disease? Is it needle tracks or other signs of physical unfitness? Are most under-aged?
What is it that I can't see here?
About this statement, "Their position is kind of like that of Crysal Meth in terms of drug legalization. Even a system of legalization couldn't possibly legalize crystal meth - who would manufature and sell it?"
Did you listen to the WS Radio: Jacob Sullum interview radiocast?
Amphetamines were legal at one time and easily acquired for many years later.
Methadrine/methamphetamine was one of those legal amphetamines once.
There really isn't any reason not to legalize it again and pharmacuetical companies would, indeed, make it.
http://thewalllasmemorias.org/modules/publish/?tac=History_of_Crystal_Meth
Posted by: Speller | 2008-03-11 12:15:39 AM
Yes, Speller - exactly. The prostitutes who work on the streets are there because many of them are drug dependent, mentally ill, or whatever. They need help - but that help isn't going to make them part of a legal industry. How on Earth would they ever work as part of a legal industry? If they could, they'd already be working in the semi-legal sector (read the back pages of the Georgia Straight to see what I mean by that).
As for the rest - are you kidding? I can see drug companies marketing pot. Perhaps even a few other drugs. But Meth? The only way they could ever do that would be if they were granted some sort of absolute legal immunity. Hell, the tobacco companies can barely avoid being sued to death...
Any form of plausible drug legalization would legalize pot and perhaps some other drugs. Maybe even, under controlled conditions, it would go so far as cocaine and heroin - but there's no way that there'd ever be a way to legally produce and market the most addictive drugs - crack cocaine, meth, etc.
Thus, any form of plausible drug legalization wouldn't really deal with the underlying problems of the street drug trade.
Similarly, legalizing prostiution would make life easier for those already operating (like pot growers in Canada) on a quasi-legal basis, but it would do nothing for those at the fringes, like women on the streets.
There might be, say, something on the order of a thousand women working in the sex industry in British Columbia. Most of them are already working in legal or semi-legal environments. Those that aren't are there because they can't, for whatever reason, work within those environments.
Posted by: Adam Yoshida | 2008-03-11 12:26:37 AM
OK, Adam, so now I see your argument as being most prostitutes are unfit to work within a legal framework.
Is that the case in Germany?
Are the majority of prostitutes in Germany operating outside of the legal frame?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prostitution_in_Germany
About the Meth: I know the WS Radio: Jacob Sullum interview radiocast at March 10, 2008 at 06:09 PM
on the Shotgun is long at about 25 minutes, but please give it a listen and click this link for information about amphetamines>
http://thewalllasmemorias.org/modules/publish/?tac=History_of_Crystal_Meth
Alcohol is well known to be addictive but I haven't read about anyone suing Molson for causing alcoholism or liver disease yet.
Posted by: Speller | 2008-03-11 12:46:15 AM
No, Speller - most of them there (and here) are working within the legal or semi-legal framework. My point is just that, whatever the other merits of legalizing prostitution (and I'm for it, in any case), justifying it on the grounds that it will "stop future Picktons" doesn't account for the fact that those women aren't on the streets because there isn't a legal alternative - they're on the streets because there isn't a legal alternative for them, and there isn't one.
I'll listen to the interview in the morning.
Posted by: Adam Yoshida | 2008-03-11 12:56:29 AM
"Is is your contention that the United States or Canada should begin to move in the direction of Saudi Arabia or Yemen in so far as criminalizing sexual contact between unmarried couples, arresting them, and punishing them?"
Yes. It would differ from the current totalitarion intervention only in intent. A California court can force a Catholic hospital to give a transvestite a boob job by threatening punishment. How is the Church of Liberalism and its state enforcer any different than the Saudis?
Posted by: DJ | 2008-03-11 1:01:12 AM
Adam, I argued against the, it will "stop future Pickton's" line at 10-Mar-08 5:48:48 PM second comment from the top.
Pickton's victims went to his farm on the promise of drugs, not because he offered to pay money for their sexual services.
If the drugs favoured by these victims were cheap and legal they would have purchased them at a store not gone to Pickton's farm.
Posted by: Speller | 2008-03-11 1:05:00 AM
DJ, it would be a lot harder to get the public to support arresting an unmarried couple for making out in the living room of one of the adults homes than it would be to get support for the legalization of sex for money.
Posted by: Speller | 2008-03-11 1:10:15 AM
Speller -
So often you have accurate factual data at your fingertips which you generously offer into these discussions.
In this instance you mischaracterize Roman Catholic philosophy and Church membership rules into a hidious charicature of slavish Totalitarian Saudi-Islamic "religion."
Anyone who has at any time affiliated with the Roman Catholic religion can depart without "doing" anything; it is a Faith, a belief (system) which mission is to perpetuate the teachings of Jesus in earthly society. Nothing more (at its best, and considerably subject to human error and bad motivations, at its worst - of which I think the Vatican Council II of the early 1960's was nearly the definition of the worst).
I'm not equiped to dissuade you from a Libertarian philosophy, and occasionally I ridicule that philosophy as naive and demonstrably errant. You take shots at my religious philosophy (which is also tightly bound up in my conservative American allegiance to human liberty) citing long ago historical (and certainly inerrantly reported-described-explained by the Liberal media and "elite" universities) extreme circumstances of Catholic Church administration.
I submit that all of my religious philosophy has in fact been in existence and operation with very favorable results for billions of people over twenty centuries, and with terrible or unjust results for only a tiny few in relative or even absolute terms.
I can also surmise from Adam Yoshida's comments that he could actually find far fewer of the "fine young men" who I hoped he would contrast with the several prostitute young women of his acquaintance, and so he didn't address that part of my comment. The plight of those young men is by far the sadder part of the Feminist story, and which has led to the adverse population and demographic shifts in our free nations.
A last comment, DJ hit a nail on the head if we want to be relativists, but again the Catholic Faith endeavors to lead people into and through a beneficial life, rather than "force" a set of beliefs (as thought that is even possible - unless someone is drugged?).
Posted by: Conrad-USA | 2008-03-11 10:09:57 AM
Conrad-USA, did you know they are also letting women wear PANTS now? The nerve!
As a young woman, I know plenty of young women who don't fit into the bizarre stereotype you've set up of all of us acting like vapid whores falling all over one another to sleep with the first thing that breathes - especially if we can catch something!
The fact that we're not living life in Leave it to Beaver-land doesn't warrant the kind of overreaction you're having to changing social mores.
PS - Your stubborn refusal to fix your incorrect capitalization of political philosophies continues to be annoying.
Posted by: Janet | 2008-03-11 7:49:14 PM
Janet -
Thanks for speaking up.
It is my assumption based on experience that women are far less likely than men to take an individual stand on any philosophical or even moral issue. I've come to believe that this is "human nature."
Consequently, I'm at a complete loss to figure out how we are going to recover from the devastation of Feminism, which I see as utterly demeaning women to a form of animal, and cold-blooded animal at that, i.e. who kills and eats her own offspring.
The female "need" to be popular seems to produce the group think, impenetrable brick wall.
Janet - you have immense potential to influence society for the good, by merely holding yourself to the highest best standards of conduct, morality, and justice for all members of your society, that you have been taught or ever encountered in your life.
Men are attracted to women, not just for sex, but for love-lifetime-relationship bonding, based on mutual human needs.
If a woman (and if all women) holds herself in proper fine justifiable human dignity then she elevates all men, who will naturally attempt to win her favors (i.e. approval - generally, but exclusive love-relationship, for the one man she then chooses).
The Feminist degradation is utterly unnatural in every aspect of human history and continued existence. And of course, it is Atheistic.
Posted by: Conrad-USA | 2008-03-12 12:22:16 PM
I have always been at least agnostic if not less accepting of the existence of any god, and am currently in a monogamous relationship that's going on five years - he's an atheist. It's almost as though morals are completely independent of religion! Black is white! Up is down!
Posted by: Janet | 2008-03-12 8:44:01 PM
Janet -
My hope would be for your happiness throughout your life.
My comment regarding women holding themselves to the highest dignity and thereby elevating men, touches on the notion of "manogamous relationship" with an "atheist" as differentiated from a "sacramental" marriage (with a person who also shares a religious Faith with you).
Were you holding out, waiting for someone who would be manogamous for you for five years (or six...)?
Alternatively, if you did in fact hold out for someone to marry (I use the term sacramental marriage to bring in the eternal spiritual aspect) your action would absolutely separate this man out to be exclusively committed to you, i.e. permanently, as is the situation with the creation of children, a permanent situation.
Many many many men can make the commitment to be (atheist unmarried) "monogamous" with you, until they want to be monogamous with someone else.
Your decisions, and those of all women, determine the future of civilization.
If you accept an unmarried (i.e. temporary) relationship with one man, then those men who WOULD in fact make a permanent decision (as in responsibility for your children together through to adulthood, etc.) are left to choose YOU later as "used goods" and to have that additional level of uncertainty and doubt about the permanence of your commitment.
This situation TEACHES men that there is no possibility of permanence in a relationship with a woman today. And only the dumb guys act in the responsible self-sacrificing way, which women quite evidently do not value (show their approval of, by holding out for and only giving themselves in permanent marriage).
Women reward the least and the worst, by denying the most and the best. In an Atheistic (e.g. Liberal-Socialist-Communist-Totalitarian) society, women get to be fully equal to the worst of the men they encouraged. It's never a matter of "rights" it's just fact.
Janet, you can change that situation, or you can continue to encourage it; and watch the devastation of western civilization. And Up goes down.
Posted by: Conrad-USA | 2008-03-13 10:52:15 AM
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