A number of people have argued that since prostitution was illegal, and Palfrey knew she was risking jail, I have no right to be indignant that she got caught, and sentenced to jail, and then killed herself rather than take her sentence like a man. Or rather, like a man would take it if men got sentenced to jail for their involvement with the prostitution industry.
They have further argued that "rage" is not the proper response to the illegality of something that a majority of my fellow citizens think should be illegal.
I just can't accept that. Would I apply the same logic to economic crimes in the Soviet Union, ca. 1925? Would I say of a shop owner who killed himself rather than face the gulag, "Well, you can't blame the state--he knew the risks when he started buying and selling for profit."
No, because I don't recognize the state's right to criminalize trade--more deeply, I don't recognize the right of the state to interfere in voluntary transactions between consenting adults that do not directly and concretely harm a third party. Not harm as in "Comrade Bakunin needs many more customers at his state store", but harm as in "The poison is leaching onto the property next door."
When an unjust law makes someone's life so unendurable that they end it, I lay much of the responsibility at the foot of the law, the system that contributed. Yes, clinical depression is complicated. But suicide very often has a traumatic trigger, and it's pretty clear that the trigger here was the unnecessary prosecution of a woman who wasn't doing anything the government had any business interfering with. I can understand perfectly the complaint that you don't want a brothel in your neighborhood--but that's a zoning problem, and anyway, she was running a call girl ring. The finer hotels in our nation's capitol have not been noticeably degraded by the presence of the occasional young and improbably well dressed woman tapping discreetly at the doors to a few of their rooms.
And I really can't accept the notion that I'm not entitled to be enraged at a law that a majority support. First of all, I reserve the right to be enraged when the paper boy drops my newspaper on the steps instead of the vestibule and passersby steal it. And second of all, I think that there are a lot of sorts of laws that don't become more just because a majority likes them. Slavery was not okay because a majority of southerners supported it. Imprisoning small traders was not okay because a majority of Soviet Russians hated them. Etc. I don't think that anti-prostitution laws are on the same level of injustice as slavery--but I do think that they are among the things the state has no business interfering in. Especially when it is discreet and out of the public eye, as this woman's business was. Her employees were not exploited streetwalkers, and she was not a pimp beating them up for their cash. Nor were they bothering anyone who didn't want to employ a prostitute.
Don't get me wrong--I take a very dim view of married men who consort with prostitutes, and mere words are inadequate to describe what would follow if I found out my husband had done so. But I certainly wouldn't blame the prostitute, nor think that she should be arrested while my husband got out of jail. Nor would I think that the real problem lay, not in my jerk of an imaginary husband, but in the state's failure to adequately police the prostitution industry.
Well said. One small issue, mostly unrelated to the main thrust of what you're saying -
"I don't think that anti-prostitution laws are on the same level of injustice as slavery--but I do think that they are among the things the state has no business interfering in."
It is true that various laws supported the institution of slavery, but it is absolutely absurd to consider the existence of slavery to have been the result of government interfering in a situation that otherwise would have been slavery-free.
"I don't think that anti-prostitution laws are on the same level of injustice as slavery--but I do think that they are among the things the state has no business interfering in."
Uh oh! I didn't think the slavery point contributed to your argument much. And then I got to this sentence. Careful with those comparisons!
furthermore, I feel that a lot of the real problems associated with prostitution (drug abuse, disease, abusing women, women being forced into prostitution) would be mitigated by legalizing it because the way things are now the woman don't want to go to authorities with these problems because they are, themselves, criminals.
(and I still want my damn jet pack)
I think you've really gone off the deep end here. Sure, she didn't deserve to go to jail and she certainly shouldn't have ended up offing herself. But you don't help yourself by comparing a panderer to a slave or a shopkeeper. Being a pimp just doesn't fall in the same category as basic freedom or the right to support yourself.
I am not crazy about criticizing the prosecutors - I don't really *want* prosecutors to ignore organized crime rings solely because libertarians think the law is a dumb one.
If you want to use the suicide as an argument for decriminalizing prostitution, go for it, but I don't have a problem with prosecutors prosecuting crimes.
(Klein's pearl-clutching over the fact that the prosecutors were going after the madam and not the johns doesn't resonate with me either. Palfrey was the head of an organized crime conspiracy. Everyone else was just a member of the conspirancy.)
You are completely right to be enraged that rich white people can't engage in prostitution whenever they want. Call girls and high class brothels should absolutely be legal. Not streetwalkers though. We don't want the wrong kind of prostitute. This is the greatest outrage since that rich white girl was arrested for acting like a crazy weirdo in front of a public monument. And do you know how much trouble rich white people have to go through to get poor brown people to clean their houses for them? We need to fix that. I have fond childhood memories of the poor brown people who cleaned my house. An outrage!
Unnecesary reclarification of misplaced outrage.
When an unjust law makes someone's life so unendurable that they end it, I lay much of the responsibility at the foot of the law, the system that contributed.
You make the assumption that she ended her life because laws against prostitution were unbearable, and as if, the "right to prostitution" was a reasonable expectation of growing up in the United States.
That is absurd. She of course did not have to live like she lived. She had, oh, maybe a bazillion other careers she could choose. It would be like me offing myself because my weed selling enterprise gets me busted. Would you feel sorry for me and outraged?
Nor do most people engaged in running rings cap their careers via killing themselves. Thus we are linking two separate and unrelated issues: the issue of whether prostitution should be legalized and the issue of mental health.
Apparently she felt the risk of getting caught was well worth the $2 million of income that flowed in.
You can feel outraged that prostitution is illegal. Or you can feel outraged at the death of a perhaps valuable member of the human race. But you cannot feel outrage over the artificial twining of the two in a manner that the suicide compels certain policy arguments.
I am not crazy about criticizing the prosecutors - I don't really *want* prosecutors to ignore organized crime rings solely because libertarians think the law is a dumb one.
If you want to use the suicide as an argument for decriminalizing prostitution, go for it, but I don't have a problem with prosecutors prosecuting crimes.
Agree 100%. It's a fundamental rule of law concern if prosecutors ignore laws they consider "unjust." It's their job to enforce the law, not to agree with it. I'd add, FWIW, that pimps do go to jail.
I'm not sure I accept the argument that prostitution should be legal simply because it's consensual, but I am quite sure this is a political matter to be settled by the legislature, not prosecutorial discretion.
First of all, it's wholly illegitimate to equate laws enacted by dictatorships or oligarchies with those enacted by democratic governments. I recognize that libertarians don't distinguish between types of regimes, but that just shows the incoherence of libertarianism, which can only evaluate governments by whether they conform to the speaker's ungrounded moral intuitions.
Second of all, how did prostitution become the moral flashpoint? The United States isn't run on libertarian principles. People serve much longer sentences for selling drugs than they do for running prostitution rings; where's the outrage on that? Where's the outrage about smoking bans, or state university bans on hate speech, or seat belt laws, or laws against foie gras or dogfighting, or rent control, or laws requiring landlords to rent to unmarried couples, or so on ad infinitum.
" ... but it is absolutely absurd to consider the existence of slavery to have been the result of government interfering in a situation that otherwise would have been slavery-free. ..."
Not sure I follow that. How could one old, physically weak plantation owner keep hundreds of young, physically strong individuals enslaved over an extended period of time without the help of a government? A shovel or a pickaxe makes a pretty effective weapon in the right hands.
First of all, it's wholly illegitimate to equate laws enacted by dictatorships or oligarchies with those enacted by democratic governments.
Let me get this straight. A law that is unjust if decreed by a dictator is just if it receives "yes" votes from half the adult citizens plus one? And you accuse libertarians of incoherence?
As long as their is a demand for sex, there will be a supply. Continually punishing the suppliers won't make the market go away.
It's the height of hypocricy for the government to punish prostitutes when so many members of the government seem to use them.
Tell it, Megan!
Re Matthew et al: Your point that the existence of slavery in the southern states did not come about because of the state interfering in an otherwise-slavery-free situation is legit as far as it goes, but it probably goes less far than you think. There was, for example, the Fugitive Slave Act, which required that any slave who escaped to a free state should be returned to his owner. This is ultimately what the Dredd Scott case was about, and it was in this context that the Supreme Court shamefully ruled that Mr. Scott was not a person with standing to sue. It doesn't take much imagination to play out what the implications of an opposite ruling (or the absence of the Fugitive Slave Act) would have been: For one thing, a midwest full of free black citizens who could offer refuge to escaping slaves. It would not have instantly ended slavery by any means, but the historical dynamic would have been radically different.
I'm 90% with you. You just lose me on one major point, because it just feels like an irrational/emotional response to a visceral situation, rather than a real thought out position:
The state sentencing someone to prison, followed by that person killing themselves, does not make the state responsible for their death.
You wouldn't feel that way if you approved of the law in question, and when 5-10 year sentences get handed out for other laws we disagree with (say, the War on Drugs) you wouldn't just assume that the convicted will kill themselves and call the law enforcement murderers.
I agree that the law and the conviction are unjust, but the fact that she responded so strongly to her conviction doesn't make the unjust conviction itself more special than other unjust convictions.
No, in the latter cases, I would view the suicides as a tragic necessity of protecting the citizenry from attack. In the case of the drug laws, it would depend upon the offenders; drug lords are generally violent thugs who should be taken off the streets for multiple reasons, while drug users are not.
As for the other laws--where's my outrage? I was outraged at the smoking bans, I'm outraged by our drug laws, I'm outraged at rent control, I think animal cruelty is within the just domain of the state, and I think seatbelt laws are inappropriate, though not on par with the others since I'm not aware of anyone who has had their life irreparably harmed by having to click a seatbelt. I'm mad at laws that shouldn't exist, and I'm really mad when those laws have this kind of collateral damage.
Yes, I also don't think the state is responsible for her death. They don't have to be responsible for her death to make the law unjust and the state officials who enforce it preferential in their prosecution. But I don't believe that how she reacted to their actions can make their actions better or worse - if she had faced the prosecution with a smile on her face, would the government's sins be less significant?
Her death is sad. And the government's actions inspire anger. But ne'er the two shall meet; they are two separate issues.
Ultimately, I think the responsibility for the situation is fundamentally hers. After all, it's a widely known fact that pimpin ain't easy. Let her pimp or let her die, that's the game she chose.
The death is important because it tells us how bad the punishment we're inflicting on people for this crime is. If it's worth killing yourself to avoid, even only for some people, shouldn't we be asking ourselves if it's worth it?
I agree with Megan for the first time in a while, at least in part. The best way to deal with black markets is usually to legalize whatever good or service is being traded, then tax it and regulate it.
If prositution were legal, the government could ensure that prostitutes were using condoms to prevent the spread of disease. Legalization would also provide a safer working environment for the women engaged in prositution in general, aside from considerations of disease.
The status quo, where prostitutes walk the streets and police largely ingore them is certainly inferior to a legal and regulated market for prostitution.
That said, like some others, I'm a little puzzled by Megan's er... passionate reaction. As I understand it, this woman was probably facing only five or six years in jail, so it seems hyperbolic to claim that the government was seeking her head on a pike or threatening her with a "gulag."
This woman was violating the law. She knew the risks she was running. I might prefer to abolish the income tax, but I don't excuse Wesley Snipes for dodging it. The law isn't whatever I want it to be, nor whatever Wesley wants it to be, nor whatever Megan wants it to be.
There are cases when a law is so unjust that one is justified in disobeying it, but this is clearly not one of those cases. This woman wasn't engaged in civil disobedience--she was knowingly running big risks for money...
I'm much more upset about high taxes (and spending) than I am about laws against prostitution. In conrast, Megan seems quite willing to accept current levels of government control in general, so her outrage at this particular form of government interference seems disproportionate and... well, a little odd.
I think you're assuming you know her state of mind when you don't. I doubt that her life prior to this was otherwise consumed with unmitigated joy. How much of it is the result of preexisting conditions and how much is the result of our government's action is unknown and unknowable. So "If it's worth killing yourself to avoid," will vary from person to person and I don't think we should assume that this poor woman is the Reasonable Everyman.
Is it worth it to inflict unjust punishments on citizens for violating an unjust law? Obviously not. Of course I don't support the sentencing for breaking a law I don't think should exist.
If it's worth killing yourself to avoid, even only for some people, shouldn't we be asking ourselves if it's worth it?
That doesn't make much sense to me - some people have their "kill themselves" threshold set so low that anything could set them off. It's tragic that Palfrey is dead, but her suicide doesn't tell us anything about how bad jail is unless we know more about Palfrey.
Frankly, the fact that several thousand people are presumably in jail and we presumably spend several million dollars+ in investigating, prosecuting, defending, and punishing commercial sex crimes is a much better reason to "ask ourselves if it's worth it" than one idiosyncratic suicide.
People with their "kill themselves" threshhold set that low don't usually make it into their fifties. She wasn't AFAICT manic depressive, which is by far the highest risk factor.
Megan,
Your reaction - the moral outrage when presented with unjust laws and the horrific outcomes they necessarily generate - is admirable and correct. Perhaps though you understand some of the reaction your dismissive posts regarding Ron Paul generated? The people who supported him based on the moral foundation of libertarianism and individual rights - not some nonsense that majority will makes right or the position that if there is some wrong, government (monopoly of force) is the only entity that can fix it. Examine your reaction and your reasons for being upset, and then see how Ron Paul's platform compared with all the other status quo candidates. Certainly as a practical matter there was little question he had much of a chance to reform the leviathan. Just as a practical matter prostitution and drug laws are going to be with us for a long time. But morality is not contingent on practicality, as I am sure you'll agree.
You are drawing a false moral equivilency here. Again, I actually agree that prostitution should be legal, for exactly the same reason you believe it should be legal. And still I am able to see that fact does not make Palfrey a maryter in the way a soviet citizen who commited suicide to avoid being shipped to Siberia for telling his neighbors he did not like comdade Stalin was.
Surely it must be possible for there to be a bad law that doesn't rise to the level of a crime against humanity. A bad law that you should speak out against, but then either just obey, or, if you are willing to face the consquences, publically break in a act of civil disobedience. I think the minimum wage law is wrong for exactly the same reason, but still I obey it, and wouldn't have much sympathy for someone who secretly broke it on a massive scale, then shot himself rather than face the consequences when discovered.
What made the Soviet Union rise to the level of a crime against against humanity is that it criminalized so many fundamental human activities, like speaking your mind to your neighbors or trying to feed your family, that it became basically impossible not to violate its laws. Palfrey can hardly call on that excuse.
I'm not sure that I'd call "I'm not going back to prison" the sort of low threshold that prevents someone from surviving an otherwise normal life.
But we don't really have to argue about it, since we have all the data we need. Whatever sentence they were going to give her (since she hadn't been sentenced yet, we don't know for certain, but it wasn't life in prison or execution) is a sentence that is given to thousands of others convicted for other crimes. The vast majority of those similarly sentenced did not respond with suicide. So it's really not fair to say that giving someone a prison sentence is equivalent to compelling their suicide. That sort of moral equivalence would pretty much shut down the death penalty debate, and would basically be an argument for no prisons anywhere ever...
Oh, come on. You have to be kidding. We can debate the propriety of prostitution all day long. But when you do something that you know to be illegal and get caught, you assume the risk of prosecution.
I don't think prostitution laws are proper. I don't think drug laws are proper. (Legalize and regulate with both, I say.) But blaming the government for someone's suicide when they know that what they were doing was illegal is ridiculous.
She was an adult, and she knew that what she was doing carried risks. If she wasn't willing to accept those risks, she shouldn't have been doing it.
and I think seatbelt laws are inappropriate, though not on par with the others since I'm not aware of anyone who has had their life irreparably harmed by having to click a seatbelt.
I must politely disagree. If you don't buckle up, you'll probably get turned into a missile in the event of an accident. You could easily go flying through your windshield into someone else's property, perhaps even the windshield of the car you just crashed into. See the first wreck scene in the movie Crash, the one with James Spader not the Sandra Bulluck one. I'd argue there is a significant foreseeable risk to others caused by not wearing your seatbelt. Analogous to driving a truck around without the cargo strapped down.
David - You make the distinction between "bad law", and "crime against humanity". I agree with that distinction, but I would add a category in between. Perhaps "unjust law". I think this case might fit in to that category.
One question...how do you all know for sure that she did kill herself? Could she have...had help?
Myself, in her boots, I'd have made it quietly clear to my clientele that as long as I was free and alive, their secrets were safe...but if I were busted, well..."I have a complete list of all of you, along with what you wanted and who you did it with, and a video of one of my girls in a miniskirt reading it off. Twenty-four hours after I am arrested for this, that video is going on Youtube. The Internet is everywhere, gentlemen. I'm not asking you for extra money; just for protection."
How about being angry that 2 years ago medical researchers discovered a drug that stops severe depression within hours--not weeks--but it isn't being used yet.
They found that ketamine works on the most treatment resistant cases of depression (people who go through multiple drugs and aren't helped by them).
But since it has the side effect of potential hallucinations (its legal use is as an anasthetic), they won't prescribe it for depression. Instead they're making other drugs based on the same biochemical mechanism*: those drugs might not be out for years.
Meanwhile, tens of thousands have died in the US from suicide. They have a drug that can work and is legal (but also used as a party drug), and it isn't being used.
If the choice is telling someone that they'll need to wait another 6 weeks to find out if yet another drug will fail to lift their severe pain, or give a drug that might make them feel like they're at a rave, I'd err on the side of stopping pain.
--------------
* http://www.technologyreview.com/Biotech/19156/
1. I don't really get the folks who think "only" 71 months in a U.S. prison is a picnic. Note that she'd already done some time and had an idea of what she had to look forward to. I'm guessing those who think it's no big deal haven't had the pleasure.
2. Successful enforcement of any criminal statute that carries significant jail time is certain to lead to a higher rate of suicide, rape, murder, assault, illness, etc. among those sentenced. It's a cost that's justified when the conduct being punished is sufficiently reprehensible, but from where I sit, Palfrey's crime fails in every way to justify that cost.
3. Many posters are hung up on the "free will" aspect of this. That would be a better argument if you were defending the prosectors against an IIED claim, rather than explaining why Megan shouldn't be outraged.
Again, I'd rather have prostitution be a heavily regulated legal enterprise, but I really do think the "traumatic trigger" theory of suicide is wildly overblown. Yes, very rarely, you'll encounter a suicide in which there were absolutely zero previous signs of depression, and suicide will suddenly be committed after a traumatic event. Emphasis on "very rarely".
I'm not trying to nitpick here. I think the "traumatic trigger" theory of suicide often obscures the nature of clinical depression. The clinical depressive is quite often looking for the "traumatic trigger" and will continue until it is found, absent intensive medical care. If it isn't a felony conviction, it will be some other sort of trauma that the sick person is seeking, or at least not avoiding, often subconciously. The clinical depressive needs help in learning to develop other habits of thought, via therapy, or altering brain chemistry, or both. Often, by focusing on the "traumatic trigger", the nature of the disease, and what is needed to combat it, is overlooked, out of too much focus on the external event which only superficially "triggered" the suicide.
Now, kathryn, THAT'S an outrage, not that our prostituion laws aren't outrageous as well.
But I certainly wouldn't blame the prostitute
Not at all? Of course, the prostitute never made any vows to you. But suppose instead your imaginary husband commits adultery. Presumably this does not endear you to his paramour. Has the other woman done anything wrong morally, or perhaps at least been a jerk? Many people, often including the other woman herself, would say yes.
Why doesn't the same apply to the prostitute?
No, because I don't recognize the state's right to criminalize trade--more deeply, I don't recognize the right of the state to interfere in voluntary transactions between consenting adults that do not directly and concretely harm a third party.
Maybe I lack imagination, but I'm trying to figure out why this logic could not be used to justify all sorts of flagrant tax dodges, and it isn't coming.
If Wesley Snipes commits suicide tomorrow, will you have the same reaction?
Will,
Did you see the last quote in the MIT TechReview article? It's the director of the NIMH saying that
1. it's terrible that patients have to wait weeks or months for depression treatments to start working [per drug: some folks go through several to find one that works]
2. this delay isn't found in other illnesses.
3. [But they're not going to use ketamine--implied]
4. Therefore patients have to wait years for a treatment even though one exists--albeit with side effects--right now.
What? 20,000 people dying a year in the US can be tolerated because some hallucinations as a side-effect isn't tolerable?
Given how many people use ketamine as a club drug, those "side effects" can't be that bad, and refusing to treat pain even if that pain is strong enough to make someone want to die makes no sense to me.
-----------------
"In any other illness of depression's magnitude, patients aren't expected to just accept that their treatments won't start helping them for weeks or months," said NIMH director Thomas R. Insel in a statement released by NIMH. "The value of our research on compounds like ketamine is that it tells us where to look for more-precise targets for new kinds of medications that can close the gap."
If sex is just a transaction between consenting adults, then why can’t your husband consort with prostitutes?
Could it be because sex is not a commodity but a giving of one’s own self? An act that presupposes commitment and that can't be separated from children, marriage, culture, and society as a whole.
If sex is just a transaction between consenting adults, then why can’t your husband consort with prostitutes?
Hmmm...should men who date our gracious hostess be allowed to eat out, or should they remain faithful only to her cooking? What if her squeamish prudishness prevents her from doing the things they really need her to do in the kitchen, i.e., use some damn butter on the croutons instead of olive oil? She fed her last boyfriend butter, for chrissake!
Cure of Ars, I think sex can be many things, but illegal shouldn't be one of them. There are lots of things that it is immoral to do to your spouse--some that I submit are much worse than consorting with a prostitute--that shouldn't be illegal.
"and then killed herself rather than take her sentence like a man"
TR: In my case I don't think I meant anything like this. Maybe I should've used a man instead of Cleopatra, but she's who first sprang to mine as someone who chose death over capture.
Killing yourself to avoid capture is a time-honored tradition with both men and women since antiquity. The idea some are stating that "this couldn't be true, she must be depressive" is sort-of a modernist "everything is an illness" kind of thinking which I don't believe in. I mean it's possible it's about many things, including depression, but I think it's quite possible it just is what it sounds like.
I can see a certain romantic appeal in the tradition even, but I admit I don't agree with it. If prison is so terrible this is more an issue of prison reform than prostitution laws.
"Or rather, like a man would take it if men got sentenced to jail for their involvement with the prostitution industry." Megan McArdle
TR: So male pimps don't get sentenced to jail? Really? Do you have any evidence for this? And sting operations that arrest Johns, they don't actually exist? And male prostitutes are rarely if ever arrested?
I would point out that the woman who committed suicide here was the pimp, and not the prostitute - so if prostitution were legal, her occupation would not have existed.
Apparently one of this woman's prostitutes did commit suicide rather than face jail time, so I feel bad for that woman, and I do in fact blame the state for her death. But it's murkier to blame the state for the pimp's death, since the state created the opportunity for the pimp to realize her gains in the first place.
On the general topic under discussion:
You have no moral obligation to obey an unjust law. The punishment you receive if you break an unjust law is itself unjust. The state's moral culpability is not mitigated in any way by the fact that you are given a reasonable opportunity to know about the unjust law in advance. That makes the state morally responsible for unjustly harming you with their punishment, or with the consequences of that punishment [for example, the collapse of your mental health].
It might not be prudent to break a particular unjust law, so you might feel like saying, "Hey, you dumbass! You should have anticipated that these bad things would happen to you!" but that's not really relevant for the assignment of moral fault.
As far as I know, most people sentenced to long prison terms for pandering are the operators of high-end call girl services, since those are the people it is easy to catch and arrest: they have fixed abodes, telephones to tap, they can be charged with money-laundering and racketeering, and their employees make good witnesses. Those are also the people least likely to be exploiting or abusing the women who work for them. And, of course, the people who cause no public nuisance with their activities.
They are also almost all women, because the usual path to running a call girl operation is to have been a call girl.
I am no expert on the subject, of course, so I'm open to correction, but this is my understanding of how the industry works. I'd also ask you to recall when you saw a high-profile arrest of a man for running an escort service?
Human trafficking is different, and the people who do it are human filth. However, the problem is not the prostitution, it's the coercion of women into being prostitutes. High end escorts are not coerced.
I agree with you, Megan, about this particular case. I think the best policy is to have prostitution be illegal with moderate penalties and limit enforcement largely to streetwalkers. The fact is, streetwalkers in significant numbers can ruin the atmosphere of a neighborhood. My first trip to New York as a young man in 1978 was badly marred by multiple streetwalker solicitations in Times Square; the 1990s crackdown on streetwalkers has made midtown Manhattan much more attractive to tourists than it was in the late 1970s. Discreet escort services do not disrupt neighborhoods in the manner that streetwalkers do, and police and prosecutors should leave them alone.
I'd also ask you to recall when you saw a high-profile arrest of a man for running an escort service?
Well, I've seen a pimp who put a 12-year-old on the street convicted. He apparently had a website, so does that count as an "escort service"?
An observation: rich drug users and high-end call girls do not cause problems. But poor drug users and streetwalkers/pimps do. How do we feel about going after the problems--i.e., putting poor people in jail--while letting rich people off? Probably we don't like it, which is part of the motivation for going after these kinds of high-end services.
I'd also ask you to recall when you saw a high-profile arrest of a man for running an escort service?
You're joking, right?
April 2008
http://www.sltrib.com/news/ci_9023258
"Steven Santiago Maese, 31, was arrested and booked into the Salt Lake County jail Monday after he left his lawyer's office. He is scheduled to go to trial today on felony counts of exploiting a prostitute, money laundering and racketeering.
...
Maese, who ran The Doll House [an escort service] until several weeks ago, was charged in October 2006. His case has been the subject of recent media coverage for two reasons."
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/13/nyregion/13recon.html
March 2008
"Marshals escorted the defendants into the courtroom, before Magistrate Michael H. Dolinger of the Federal District Court in Manhattan. Mark Brener, 62, accused of being the ringleader, looked to be dressed in the same black shirt he had been arrested in. Cecil Suwal, 23, was charged with being the operation's day-to-day manager."
Don't you claim to be a reporter?
With you mostly, but like some others .... it was JUST as bad before she died. The death is on her, her own choice. The puritanical laws that made her life worthless are on us all.
Ah yes, the concept of Divine Right yet again, yet this time it is the decisions of the mob (or actually it's representative) which has become elevated beyond reproach. Society does not serve the law, the law serves society. If it does not then it is unjust and invalid. Full stop.
If sex is a giving of oneself to another, then doesn’t putting a price on it amount to a form of slavery? If sex can have less meaning then this, then you should have no problem with your husband playing with prostitutes. Can you give me an example of something that is worse than consorting with a prostitute that is ont illegal?
Thanks for your response. I enjoy your blog.
Oh.....and as far as objecting your husband consorting with prostitutes goes....if they only removed that one-wife-at-a-time limit I'm sure a lot fewer husbands would be tempted, and the prostitutes could concentrate on the non-husbandly types.
Be honest .... if polygamy were allowed in the USA, wouldn't Drezner look just a little bit tempting?
(In no way should this be taken to mean that Drezner is consorting with prostitutes.)
I don't like people with whom I'm in a monogamous relationship having sex with other women. Or men. This has nothing to do with the status of prostitution--I also wouldn't want him having a child with a host mother, even if no sex or money were involved.
And no, I don't think prostitution is slavery, any more than I think housecleaning or cooking is slavery just because building a home and preparing food for someone is a special, loving, task--or that providing childcare is slavery. Slavery is wrong because it's coercive, not because it involves buying services that shouldn't be sold.
Let me introduce you to Laquiesha. She's 22, living a fine life as a prostitute in Los Angeles. She's been hooking for 4 years now, and lives a fine life shacked up with Lil JC, a wonderful young man connected with the Bloods.
She's only been beaten up a few times this month, and it's getting warmer now so that tight skirt and bra don't feel so cold at 5 am when she gets out to hit up the breakfast shift, those guys wanting something going home from nights or going to work early. Most likely, nobody's going to kill her because murders are down in south LA. With any luck, she'll make enough that Lil' JC won't kick her back out for more. She's working up to being JC's bottom bitch.
Yeah, Megan, you know a hella lot about what you're talking about.
But wait, you say. If it's legal, it'll be different.
Because that's when everybody gets a pony.
Just stop it. Stop it right now. You know nothing about what you're trying to talk about here. You know nothing about other countries' attempts at decriminalization or legalization, nothing about our attempts at diversion, nothing about law enforcement, nothing about street culture. You've paid no attention to Nevada, no nothing about the differences between regulatory and non-regulatory schems for decriminalization, nothing about the land use issues that will pop up and mess up your disneyworld of legalization.
You know, literally, NOTHING.
So stop it. Stop being such an idiot.
Just stop it. Stop it now.
I don't like people with whom I'm in a monogamous relationship having sex with other women. Or men.
Why not?
Follow up question: are you going to endorse an unemployment office cutting off benefits because a woman won't take a job as a stripper or prostitute? Still another: if a guy bursts into your home and forces you to cook a 4-course meal at gunpoint (preferably involving caged veal), is that better or worse than being raped at gunpoint?
These are thoroughly stupid questions, but they expose the problem with your blithe treatment of prostitution as shopkeeping: sex is different from other human behaviors such as, say, eating, or highway construction, so perhaps the law should treat it differently.
Slavery is wrong because it's coercive
OK. So indentured servitude is a nifty form of voluntary exchange? No coercion here, just the desire to earn a living wage.
The passing and enforcing of a law isn't some abstract process, either. The intent behind the conception and implementation can be quite nasty.
Case in point: back in 2004 our town voted to make the possession of less than 30 grams of marijuana a misdemeanor, punishable by fine. In fact, you couldn't be arrested for that amount, only given a summons to appear in court, with the maximum fine being $250, no matter how many times you had been cited (I don't smoke, btw.)
A couple of years later, the ordinance was amended by the city council after a great deal of arm-twisting by the police. Their major objection was that they couldn't hold the threat of prosecution for possession of marijuana over people's heads to convince them to 'co-operate'. I am not making this up.
I should add that Props I & II passed with about 70% approval of the voting public; this wasn't some bare majority finessed by a clever and well-funded campaign, this was just broad popular support.
In a case like this, I've got no problem saying the police have no business going after 'offenders'. But . . . that's small town cops for you. I also think that the difference in intent makes a difference in whether the law should be obeyed or not. My example is clearly straight out of Joe's Garage.
"yet this time it is the decisions of the mob (or actually it's representative) which has become elevated beyond reproach." Robin Goodfellow
TR: Sigh. The way Amendments and laws work voting is often involved. And it's not voting that requires unanimity either. For an Amendment there's a two-third majority in each House and then states vote on it with a 75% majority approving. (There's another method, but it's never been used) In lesser cases there are referendums. So yes "representatives of the mob", if you consider a super-majority a mob, have every right to make laws. That's how laws work.
Granted there is no Amendment on prostitution, it's just what states want. However even if there was an Amendment it'd still be something decided by "the Mob" going by what you say.
So your position, and that of McArdle's I gather, is that there is a "right to prostitution" that goes beyond the law or the Constitution. Outside of a small cadre of libertarians I don't think you'll ever get much support for that idea. Still if you do think your personal wisdom is above the law then you should be willing to take the consequences of that. Thoreau and Rosa Parks went to jail, they didn't run away. If your principles mean that much to you they might require sacrifice.
MM on high-end call-girl rings: "Those are also the people least likely to be exploiting or abusing the women who work for them."
No, the people least likely to be exploiting or abusing the women who work for them are the people who operate licit businesses, whose employees have a variety of legal protections available to them. Palfrey had the option of opening a coffee shop or a nail salon. Instead, she chose to incur the additional risks of running an illegal business, presumably because the opportunities for exploitation of illegal practices (including illegal ways of expoliting the labor at her disposal) offered additional returns.
I respect the arguments in favor of legalization. But Palfrey didn't go into this business hoping that it would be legalized; she wasn't lobbying Sen. Vitter to help her go legit. She went into it BECAUSE it is illegal, and I have no qualms about making her accept a few years in prison as the downside risk of her choice.
I think sex can be many things, but illegal shouldn't be one of them.
It isn't, last I checked. However, certain transactions involving the direct exchange of money for goods and services are illegal, and I don't think the puritans can be hung with that one since prostitution was, at one point, widely practiced in the western US. Apparently people got tired of witnessing the consequences.
I again suggest you find a book like Soiled Doves and see if your preconceptions of what the state should, and should not, be regulating are as good as you think. (Especially since you don't mind the state regulating carbon at a cost that would severely curb my ability to visit family members as often as I do.) Far more lives were ruined by voluntary legal sexual trade than were ever ruined by prosecuting high-dollar pimps who were collecting the substantial rents associated with illegal operation.
This fruitless endeavor of talking past each other really makes me nostalgic for the classic Live from the WTC posts. There wasn't anyone who had out-read, out-angled, or out-calculated you on anything, and the posts showed it: charts, spreadsheets, bulleted lists, book reviews. If anyone thought otherwise, bam! -- twenty more powerful counterpoints. We're all a good deal older now, and living out different phases of life, but even so...
Rob Lyman: Sex is indeed "different" for most of us. But if there are people out there for whom it isn't, for whom it's just another business transaction, why should the rest of us care?
aMouseForAllSeasons: You're right, the puritans didn't give us prostitution bans. It was those neo-puritans, the women's christian temperance movement. They also gave us alcohol bans.
Alcohol also causes a great many social ills. Quite possibly an alcohol ban, even with its negative side effects, would yield a net benefit to social health. Also, government control of everyone's diet would almost certainly be a net benefit to social health. But we don't accept those regulations because we believe that people have a right to self-destructive behavior.
Sex is indeed "different" for most of us. But if there are people out there for whom it isn't, for whom it's just another business transaction, why should the rest of us care?
There's no reason we need to care about it, so long as we are confident that sex workers really do consider it just another transaction and are not the victims of coercion or abuse. That is a pretty dubious proposition for the majority of prostitutes (although call girls would seem to be in the best possible position in that respect), precisely because sex is different.
Our gracious hostess doesn't really think that sex is just another transaction in her own life, she things that other people think that sex is just another transaction. That's an unexamined assumption that calls for some serious consideration, which is not revealed in statements like "sex should not be illegal" or blithe comparisons to ordinary shopkeepers, whose products are concededly "different."
It does not strike me as inherently unjust to ban a practice which is usually coercive and borders on slavery just because in some theoretical mindspace--and perhaps even a few places in the real world--it is actually not too bad. Pimping is an evil, evil profession the vast majority of the time; this particular counterexample (assuming it is a true counterexample) doesn't suffice to show that this evil should be legalized.
I'm not glad that Palfrey's dead. But I'd kind of like to be certain that she didn't destroy the lives of some of her girls or leave them washed up and miserable (or suicidal) before I get too choked up about her suicide.
As long as their is a demand for sex, there will be a supply. Continually punishing the suppliers won't make the market go away.
The same is true of child pornography, contract killings, slave labor, and all sorts of other commodities the transaction of which most people think it is perfectly legitimate for the state to interfere with. Should we legalize all of those as well just because we can't get rid of the demand by punishing the suppliers?
The argument hinges on whether prostitution causes sufficient external harm so as to justify state interference in the marketplace in order to depress demand - people who oppose legalizing prostitution generally believe that it does, and do have some evidence to support that view.
"It does not strike me as inherently unjust to ban a practice which is usually coercive and borders on slavery..."
Rob, prostitution tends to be like slavery when it is illegal. When it is legal and regulated the conditions are markedly better for the women in that business--that is simply indisputable.
If you really want to improve the lives of prostitutes, you should favor legalization combined with strict regulation and scrupulous enforcement against violations of the law.
This doesn't really work because nations like the Netherlands and Germany certainly have plenty of problems with prostitution. In Germany there's a good deal of human trafficking and women going into prostitution to feed drug habits. In 2005 "23% of the persons registered at the Dutch Foundation Against Trafficking in Women were Dutch citizens." According to one study 17% of Dutch prostitutes have HIV/AIDS and problems with drug addiction also exist.
Rob, I am not taking Will Wilkinson's position that selling sex is like selling toothpaste. I am taking the position that it shouldn't be illegal. I believe in peoples' sacred right to do things that are really bad ideas, even immoral, as long as there aren't third parties directly involved. I wouldn't become a prostitute; I wouldn't want anyone I know to become a prostitute; and I wouldn't want my husband to consort with one. But the same thing goes for alchoholism. Or motorcycle racing. Etc.
Regardless of what I think of the morality or wisdom of prostitution, I cannot see that this woman hurt anyone. Her employees were there voluntarily. Her customers were there voluntarily. What they did together might have been a bad idea--but if you think that the state is not responsible for her decision to kill herself, then surely you must also believe that she is not responsible for their decision to do something bad?
Why is she considered an out law rather than an entrepreneur?
I think the point is if the majority of the American people were polled re: prostitution, the majority would either be indifferent or support it. There are already studies to suggest this.
However, it seems to be an issue of discretion. There IS a difference between having women on the stroll ( which ushers in undesirable traffic, drugs and the like)vs a woman who is discreetly running her business OFF the streets. If the indignant chorus is to get them off the streets, we don't want it in our neighborhood-well IT IS off the streets. At least it was in this case. There were no underage girls hired, or allegations of drug use or illegal aliens. Why is this illegal? Instead, you have lazy cops trolling Craig's List busting WOMEN trying to survive. Not everyone is going to be a Dr and a Lawyer and we have outsourced all of our "unskilled" labor jobs to other countries-so what refuge do SOME of us have left?
It is a feminist issue. There are plenty of women ( and men) that are on the edges of sex work. Your own daughter could be allowing foot worship(She remains fully dressed while a man basically massages her feet-she can get paid 200 an hr for this. Beats working at Starbucks for a week and after taxes clearing maybe a bit more than that)and could be arrested for prostitution. Your sister could be putting herself thru school by dancing and gets 200 extra for a slightly more risque lap dance and get popped for being a "ho".
The landscape of America is quickly changing. There are more single, divorced, single /woman moms than ever before and they have to eat. Our country is getting increasingly more difficult to survive in even if you do have a S.O. For many of these females this is only a temp stop until they get on their feet so to speak. But if others choose this way of life then they should be allowed to do so.
No one thinks it strange how the government is running after women in the sex trade lately? Our country is hitting a serious recession-it seems like this is just a distraction. For what it is worth-I think this woman was murdered.
This is a feminist issue. My body-my business.
Pimping is an evil, evil profession the vast majority of the time; this particular counterexample (assuming it is a true counterexample) doesn't suffice to show that this evil should be legalized.
Actually, of course it does.
If your law equally punishes activities which are evil and activities which are not evil, your law is unjust. Period.
That's really the bottom line. If I can contrive an example of a prostitution exchange which is truly harmless, the state should not punish that transaction. And unless you can write the law in a law that distinguishes between the harmful and the harmless transactions, there is no justification for having the law.
"Oh, but we need to have this law to stop this other problem over here, even if it treats some people unjustly as a result," is no argument. If we're going to have a just society, we have to start with just laws. Laws that treat some people unjustly [in ways not due to errors in their application] are unjust on their face.
Sab: Am I understanding this correctly? If the economy is creating hardships for single woman then your answer is to... let them prostitute themselves, or engage in activities on the "on the edges of sex work"? And this is a *feminist* position?
Of course your body SHOULD be your own business, but if you're going around and selling it for the enjoyment of horny men, that's no longer quite the case, is it? In that case isn't it also the business of your customers, and your employer, and even, in the case of some hypothetical legal & regulated sex industry, even the government? I think there are some very good reasons, from a feminist perspective also, to be uncomfortable with the idea of a society where the standard advice to an out-of-work single woman is "why don't you go give a few lap dances?" I can't think of too many ideas better designed to reinforce the notion that men are the only real, fully dimensional human beings and women are simply objects of pleasure whose value, at the end of the day, comes down to their chest size. If more women are prepared to try and make it while single, insofar as this indicates that the social obligation to find a husband and stick with him no matter what has lessened, this might be progress from the perspective of women's independence. But it sure as hell isn't so if at the end of the day we find ourselves right back at the notion that women are ultimately dependent on their willingness to grant men sexual favors in order to survive, just in a different form and without even the pretense of mutual respect that traditional relationships are supposed to offer.
Maybe for some people sex is just another activity, but surely a basic regard to human dignity demands, at the very least, that we do what we can to safeguard each woman's right to come to her own conclusion on that (for many of us rather important) question. Building a society where the answer to financial hard times is "go into sex work" is going to make that awfully difficult. This is ESPECIALLY for your hypothetical young woman trying to put herself through school, who may not have had much experience in or time to think about these matters but will nonetheless have to live with her decision for the rest of her life. Even after she gets out of the "temp stop," she will never be able to change the fact that for a period of time her body was in the most intimate possible sense the property of her employer and her customers, who would have had the right to make use of her as they pleased without any minimal obligation to view her as a human being.
Personally I *do* think sex is different, and I can't accept the idea that this belief is just a kind of bourgeois luxury that women in poorer financial straits should be expected to part with like an overly expensive pair of shoes. For plenty of women, independence not only from traditional forms of subjugation but also from having to make themselves physically available to men for whom they feel nothing, a refusal to be viewed as commodities solely on account of their gender, and the belief that intimacy should be an expression of love are fundamental elements of personal pride and identity. I honestly believe that the more women are pressured into abandoning these rather simple precepts, and the less men are expected to respect them, the worse off we all are as a society.
I honestly don't know if criminalization is the answer, and quite accept that the hardships the current regime creates for those women who ARE pushed into prostitution is also an evil in and of itself; and certainly everything possible should be done to alleviate the circumstances that are pushing women into prostitution in the first place. But I think the subject deserves a much more careful consideration than a sort of blithe "let them sell sex" approach, and at least some acknowledgment that while the laws on the books pose their own set of problems, giving prostitution a more prominent status in our society isn’t an entirely rosy proposition either.
Yes Kay-that is EXACTLY what I meant.
Some people (woman) are not particularly sentimental when it comes to sex. They are perfectly adept at putting emotions into compartments. They don't have to be victims and I find it SOOOOO tedious that the last refuge of every ones argument is that the woman choosing this IS a victim. This is my point. I am involved in sex work and am well educated. I had difficulty finding a straight job as did many of my peers. There is a whole secret subculture of us and we do walk amongst you. I was never molested, had issues with drugs etc..and I find what I do to be both profitable and very amusing. For those who are ill suited to the job-well then, get the fuck out of it. For those who find it reprehensible-by all means-don't do it. That is their choice as an adult. But why is the government trying to take away the other choice? Or you for that matter? If you find it distasteful-look away. In fact with re: myself and my peers you would have to actively look for us-nay HUNT us down to get a conviction. My only regret is that I did not discover this work earlier. I don't think it any nobler for me to work three jobs-most of which is taken by the government and transportation money in order to survive.
In fact I think it is stupid-for me. My quality of life is much better and I actually see a light at the end of the tunnel re: my debts. I sleep soundly at night.
You will NEVER root out clandestine affairs, sex for money or any other exchange of goods. It is a primal, biological need and has nothing to do with society. It has been with us since the dawn of time because sex is part of being human.This law is outdated and destroys people lives. I say it is time to be both humane, honest and sophisticated re: our pleasures.
LEGALIZE IT ALREADY. The only people who suffer from this are the women-because it is illegal.
If I am an adult doing this of my own free will-then let me be.
Then that's your choice. I know perfectly well that sex work goes on in the U.S., and don't need to look away; that doesn't mean I will ever agree with the view of human relationships that such work both reflects and encourages. I still strongly believe that one loses something very important in life by not being "sentimental" about sex, but I don't expect to change your mind on that point, nor, since you seem pretty secure in your decision, do I have any particular interest in making the government do so.
My sole concern vis-a-vis the law is that by hammering home the message that prostitution is just another job, we will raise the number of instances in which people who are somewhat less secure will be pressured to abandon their "sentimentality," told they can't afford it, that they're not doing right by their dependents or family or whoever if they insist on working the three jobs when some bloke would pay them twice the money for a little time in the sack. Probably the only way to figure out whether this indeed happens would be to look at places where prostitution is legal, and what effect that has on how people get involved in the trade. I'd be open to convincing on legalization depending on what their experiences suggest.
Again, though, my concern is not with the notion that you and others are off somewhere doing things that I personally morally disagree with, which I agree isn't my concern, at least not in my capacity as a member of the public with a voice in the making of the law. It has much more to do with the coercion, at the very least soft coercion, that can be involved with prostitution, particularly in cases where there are economic pressures involved. Your personal choice is yours to make. What bothers me much more is what sounds like a suggestion that anyone in a lousy position financially should just get over their silly squeamishness and take up sex. Because I do believe that something is lost in agreeing to sell one's body, I think we ought at the very least take particular care to ensure that anyone who goes into sex work does so completely of their own free will, having had time to consider the options. If you can prove that legalization is the best way to ensure this, I'd vote for it myself. On a social level, though, I don't agree with pushing sex as just another line of work. I also think that if economic conditions have grown so bad that women have no other way of earning a living, then there is a serious problem in our society which we as members of the public SHOULD be looking for ways to address.
I take care of me. You take care of you.
People are "coerced" into taking on careers,families and entire lives that they do not want. They and others that may have chosen unwisely re: sex work are responsible for themselves. It is not my concern if these strangers take a misstep-but if they do and it is-should they have the legal stigma of prostitution to
contend with for the rest of their lives? How ironic that if at one point they wanted to leave the life-it would be far more difficult to do so-based on our society's love of invasive back ground checks.
Most of the public have rigidly held opinions based on topics of which they no doubt have no experience with. Like some of them,you are projecting your own values and distaste onto those who do not see the world the same as you. You are negating my own experience ( and I speak for THOUSANDS-believe me. Go check out SPREAD magazine)as well as others. If you have the stomach for it, are bright and have an idea of how to properly spend your money, I don't see why these very normal woman shouldn't profit from their own resources. And a woman's sexuality IS a resource. Not the only one, nor the only one that should be emphasized or recognized. But I don't believe in blunting the gifts that Mother Nature gave us.
I'm tired of the finger waggers who keep trying to tell me that I am some how less, because I chose to charge more for what could be idiotically given away for free. I'm not talking about love. I understand the nature of love. I am speaking of empty sex and most of us have had it. And what for?
I'd rather have a boatload of cash to show for it.
But that is just me.
Laws that treat some people unjustly [in ways not due to errors in their application] are unjust on their face.
Give me a break. Most laws can be applied in unjust ways. For my part, I'd think that if Ron Goldman's dad shot OJ, that would be just; indeed, more just that OJ just running around free. Of course, it would be murder, too. Oops! No more murder laws, because we can think of one single application that is unjust.
Pretty much all of life is a cost/benefit exercise; we outlaw revenge killing because it's bad for society to have blood feuds, and we demand that everyone accept occassional injustice for the benefit of all.
Regardless of what I think of the morality or wisdom of prostitution, I cannot see that this woman hurt anyone.
That may well be true; it may also be true that some of her former employees are suicidal basket-cases because of what she convinced them to do.
Palfrey may have been a wonderful person, but the average pimp is essentially the most abusive boyfriend imaginable. I've seen teenage girls choke up in court because yes, the man over there is their pimp, but they love him, dream of marrying him, and are scared of him going to jail. OK, he sold them to strangers at the age of 13, but he's the only one who ever cared about them.
This is why I'm not sold on rwe's point that legalization will reduce abuses. It might reduce abuse by johns, but johns aren't the real threat. Those girls on the stand weren't turning tricks because they risked arrest going to the cops, they were doing it because they were being emotionally manipulated by a psychopath. There's no reason such manipulation and exploitation becomes impossible if you make prostitution legal. It's just becomes impossible to nail the pimp.
So no, the state didn't make Palfrey kill herself, but many pimps are responsible for making their stable do what it does. Maybe she herself should have been left alone, but one bad case shouldn't gut the law.
Thomas R - "So your position, and that of McArdle's I gather, is that there is a "right to prostitution" that goes beyond the law or the Constitution."
Its not a right to prostitution. Its a more general right to freedom.
Xeynon - "The same is true of child pornography, contract killings, slave labor"
All of those are crimes with an unwilling victim. Prostitution can include an unwilling victim (if someone is forced in to it), but it isn't inherently a crime like those on your lists, and when someone is forced in to it the real abuse is slavery or something like slavery, rather than prostitution.
Kay - "Of course your body SHOULD be your own business, but if you're going around and selling it for the enjoyment of horny men, that's no longer quite the case, is it?"
Yes it is very much the case.
"I think there are some very good reasons, from a feminist perspective also, to be uncomfortable with the idea of a society where the standard advice to an out-of-work single woman is "why don't you go give a few lap dances?""
I think there would be good reason to be uncomfortable with that as the standard response as well, but that has little connection with the idea of legalization of prostitution. Lap dances are generally legal now, and it isn't "the standard response".
"Maybe for some people sex is just another activity, but surely a basic regard to human dignity demands, at the very least, that we do what we can to safeguard each woman's right to come to her own conclusion on that"
And if her own conclusion is that "its just another activity", or that is is something special, but still something she wants to do for money?" You seem to be the one that is against the woman's right to come to her own conclusion on that, or at least to act on that conclusion if you don't agree with it.
"I honestly don't know if criminalization is the answer"
OK, maybe I should take back that last comment, since it implied you had a certain conclusion, but not your saying your not sure.
Re Sab: I don't think either of us are going to change our minds on the moral question, and it's only relevant to my view on policy insofar as it heightens my concern for people who are in a very different situation from yourself. I don't know you, do not presume to judge you overall as a person, and am not usually inclined to "wag my finger" at people for their personal choices - unless they try to persuade my daughter, sister, or women in general to take up a line of work that I believe is degrading. Because that was the tone I read in your first post, I did feel justified in pointing out that some of us view sexuality, like most truly personal things in life, as simply too closely related to one's individual identity as a human being to be for sale. But perhaps that's just me, so let's leave it there.
Re Tim: Let me explain that a bit. There are two possible constraints on a woman's ability to reach/act upon her own conclusion about the nature of sex. One is that upon the woman who in more comfortable circumstances would, or at a later stage in life will, conclude that it isn't just another activity, but ends up out on the street because relatives demand it of her, she is young, she is being exploited by a pimp, whatever. Second is that upon women who feel that sex is just another activity, but can't (openly) sell it because of the law. My own feelings on the nature of sex notwithstanding, I would agree that the ideal situation is to get rid of both constraints. But in case #1, that of the coerced prostitute, the problem really is an issue of basic human dignity; #2 is an issue of the right to make a buck. Literally, this is what it boils down to; we do not criminalize "just sex" (which I don't personally think is the greatest thing either, but certainly wouldn't try to ban), we criminalize prostitution. Of course #2 is still a problem, in the sense that any government restriction that makes it more difficult for people to earn a livelihood is problematic on some level. But that isn't necessarily a controlling interest - we prohibit plenty of potentially profitable activities besides prostitution. So my overriding concern here is still #1, and I would support whatever policy option has the best record of ensuring the abscence of coercion in people's taking up sex work and in getting underage girls off the street, period full stop.
But death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over those who did not sin after the pattern of the trespass of Adam, Paul in Romans 5:14. If the 'trespass of Adam' is aggression for sexual satisfaction as Freud indicates in Totem and Taboo, then 'forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us' bargains the possibility of sexual satisfaction for accepting the aggression of the state and, ideally, makes it easier to shrug off. Such would be my prayer for Palfrey.
"Its not a right to prostitution. Its a more general right to freedom." TF
TR: Which means what?
Essentially the current laws on this deny people the freedom to be engage in potentially *life-threatening physical contact for money. The position of Megan and I guess you is that allowance for this is part of a general "freedom." So much so it just has to be allowed, it's not even something the people can vote on.
This seems to be an extreme view of freedom that I think you even have to realize won't go anywhere. For example people used to duel and duels did not always result in death. In several cases non-lethal weapons were chosen. It was simply a "potentially life threatening" action. So using this logic dueling is therefore not merely something that may be allowed, it MUST be allowed. States have absolute no right to restrict it. Or how about dog-fighting? Legally speaking I don't see how dogs have any rights of their own. Although dog-fighting may create potentially hazardous or emotionally traumatic situations for humans this is irrelevant. Dog-fighting makes money and the mere potentiality of gruesome death is clearly insufficient to deny freedom. Again it's not a matter of it "may be allowed" going by what you're indicating it "must" be allowed. Dwarf-tossing also "must" be allowed and so on and so forth.
However we don't live in libertarian-world we live in the US. (Or UK or whatever) Laws are created by people and their constitutionality is determined. If there's no movement to change them they most likely will not be changed. There is no evidence I've seen to indicate prostitution will be considered a "general right of freedom" akin to sodomy or gun ownership. States will continue to decide individually and, for the most part, they'll say no.
*I believe studies stated 10-15% of Dutch prostitutes had HIV.
Kay - Women (and men) wind up in tough situations sometimes. And sometimes they become prostitutes. The fact that its illegal, just makes the situation harder for them and makes it harder for them to get out of it. If prostitution is illegal, than you have
1 - Those who decide not to become prostitutes, just because its illegal and are better off for avoiding prostitution, even in its legal form.
2 - Those who who decide not to become prostitutes, just because its illegal and are worse off for avoiding prostitution. (Some would say its impossible for people to be worse off by avoiding prostitution, but I disagree. It probably is better for a very strong majority of cases, but people in tough situations, may come out better, it may be the best of the bad choice available to a few people)
3 - Those who would become prostitutes legal or illegal, but are worse off because its illegal.
#1 might be a bigger factor than #2, but I'm not sure its right to make that decision for them. But the bigger concern is number 3, which I think is the largest group of these three.
The practical concerns about group number 3, and the general concern for liberty, are the reasons why I think prostitution should be legal. The counter argument is the practical situation of group number one, but I don't think such people are very numerous.
Chrissakes, people: Megan isn't equating the injustice of slavery to the unreasonableness of criminalizing prostitution. She introduces slavery into the argument for an altogether different purpose: Disproving the (ridiculous) notion that because something is supported by a majority, it therefore is beyond contempt.
For those suggesting otherwise: Strawman, meet Argument.
Yeah, well, it may not even have been a suicide. The DC Madam stated in an interview that if she was found to have committed suicide in the future it would be murder. I'm too lazy to look up the link but you can Google it.
She had a lot of high profile people in her little black book...
The energy that American society puts into making life difficult for sex workers just disgusts me. If you think that sex is sacred, don't become a prostitute. But keep your nose out of other peoples' business.
The charge has been made that Deborah Jeane Palfrey committed suicide…because she didn’t believe in heaven or hell and was material. I took issue with that statement…was invited onto CNN’s Nancy Grace to explain…and offered an email reply from Deborah Palfrey to my attempt to encourage her from a minister’s as well as a loving father’s position.
Her reply contained too many Biblical expressions to allow me to accept that she did not have an awareness of the next world.
After examination of the suicide notes and pertinent info I find it difficult to accept her death as asuicide.
Albeit, I am strongly concerned that the “bad-boys-will-be-boys and “bad-girls-are-hos” mentality that glaringly pervades this society in everything from politics to justice to religion played the strongest part in this unfortunate drama.
I wish no one ill and rejoice at no one’s unfortunate position but if we are truly concerned about the crime why aren’t all parties including “johns” forced into the equation of accountability?
We are as much responsible to preserve dignity in death as we are to preserve the sanctity of life.
My heart and prayers go out to her mother and sister.
Though a minister, my family, too, has shared many of the trials of making life decisions.
It can be heart rending for parents to let go their child and trust they will come back home.
But if we want them to come back at all we must leave on a light of love.
We have had the undaunting task of choosing to hold onto loved ones who did not share our values and beliefs by loving them in spite of their life choices. We’ve learned true love and reaped the invaluable and priceless rewards of our family’s love long after the trial was over.
My counsel to anyone who finds themselves in this position is…love…perfect love. Love them. Fathers love your daughters no matter the choices they make. Mothers love your sons no matter their orientation. If you choose to avoid them and enforce your “rathers” you will lose them and they will never come back to you.
The “church” has miserably failed in our so-called quest for souls. We are too busy staining our glass windows to see the stains outside. We’re too busy padding our pews and offering plates and repairing broken parking lots to pad hearts with love and repair broken hearts and communities.
I have no web site but in this spirit I offer an email address through which I offer prayer, encouragement , and support at jharnage7@aol.com.
Jim Harnage, Silent Ministries