<strong>I need to interject here from a feninist's point of view. Prostitution generally (though not specifically) exploits women and men profit.
Having lived the last 7 years in a place where prostitution is everywhere, you see that it is the pimps, triads and corrupt police officers who profit while women are afflicted with abuse, demoralization and disease, families are broken and men lose their ability to treat women with respect.
Self-managed prostitution is legal in Hong Kong, but only one out of a thousand prostitutes here do this. And self-managed prostitution is very dangerous because it offers little protection from abuse, robbery and extortion.
In the US, there are also huge problems. From the worst case scenario "Five dollahs for a blow job" (heard that one when I was 16) crack moms to the "best case" Heidi Fleiss societies, it is the sex worker who gets all of the hell while others profit -- drug dealers, pimps, madams and police officers.
The only way prostitution can work is in a highly regulated, taxed system with free medical checks and condoms, counselling, financial advice and a system of security. Until a society can accept this as the better of two evils, women will suffer for it.
If any of you feel compelled to visit a prostitute, make sure she is happy with what she's doing, and is taking home 100% of the money you give her. Otherwise, you are perpetuating abuse.</strong><hr></blockquote>
I agree with your proposed ideal system. Ideally, prostitution should be exploiting men with women taking all the profit.
Why not get down to business and put the goods on the table?</strong><hr></blockquote>
Well, if we have to pay couldn't it be a bed? Or would that cost extra?
Seriously though, prostitution seems to work well in the Netherlands. Are there any locals here that can offer any information? I believe it's regulated as you (plural) suggest and seems to work just fine.
<strong>How many of u here want your daughters to be prostitutes?? And how many of u would encourage your sons to find prostitutes for pleasure??
Prostitution just isn't right!!!</strong><hr></blockquote>
That isn't a reason to keep it illegal. That is your own reasoning for not buying services and encouraging your daughters not to learn the trade. Just because you wouldn't do it or you wouldn't encourage your family to do it doesn't mean that you should therefore repress everyone by not allowing anyone to do it. That is very self-centered, egotistical, and as you like to say, just plain isn't right.
<strong>And sex among teenagers isn't right (and we wouldn't have our daughters do it), so we shouldn't have sex education in schools or sell condoms to minors? And drugs aren't right, so they should be illegal too (alcohol has proven to us that regulation is the best system).
Whether these things are right or not is not the point. They are here. They will always be here. They will never go away. So we'd better handle them in a way that protects people and educates people, and keeps people from being victimized and exploited.</strong><hr></blockquote>
You get it. It fills me with such joy to see someone else that actually gets it. It is the few people like you that keep me sane in this world of idiots. Thank you for my sanity today.
<strong>Once prostitution is legalized you'll be seeing coupons in the sunday paper for hummers and buy one get one free quickies.</strong><hr></blockquote>
Was John Locke really in favor of legalized prostitution? Wow I didn't know that.
[/QB]<hr></blockquote>
It's not explicit, but given the opportunity to comment on it I'm sure it would be disregarded as an issue at all. Secondly, the term "legalized" is one I hate. Prostitution should just not be a crime. It has been a while since I've read much of Locke's work, but the general take-home message from his social commentaries is that we should worry about our own properties, and not those of others. This diverges into a long, hard to read section on rights, but essentially I think he would be in favor of making Prostitution not a crime.
Wow, it's amazing. How pathetic has our society become? I for one have never had the desire to have sex with anyone other than my wife, who happens to be the most amazing person I know. I can't imagine that there is this much thought and worry put into legalizing prositution. I mean really, does it really encourage you to pay someone to suck you off for twenty minutes and then go on with your life?
For crying out loud, take a magazine into the bathroom and save your self the money.
I really love the one where you quote the declaration of independence. You are aware that it is a historical document and not a legal one right?! I'm pretty sure, in fact I'm positive that there is no constitutional right to pay someone to gratify you sexually. And there shouldn't be.
Anyone who thinks that legalizing drugs and prostitution will help make America a better nation is a complete and total idiot. Really, you're dumber than anyone I have ever met.
What do you really define as being a good environment exactly? Do you have any self-respect, any sense of morality, or even just plain old common decency?
Get real. Prostitution is the worst form of degredation of women. And for that matter, it's degrading to men as well.
Freedom does not equal anarchy. We have laws because we have a common sense that our society is better off without certain evils. Sure, you have the God-given free will to sin as you please, but that doesn't mean you should.
And, in case you don't care much about morality or reality for that matter, I just want to ask you this. Do you really want the government regulating your sex life? Can you imagine having to report your sexual activities on a W-2? Having to declare when and where you had sex? Paying the government money based on how often and how much you pay?
What's next, certain gifts to your girlfriend are now taxable income?
Get real people, and more importantly, get a life.
I think the irony lies in the fact that if you are a woman and you shag around you're, in certain people's eyes, a slut but you don't get arrested. It only becomes illegal if you ask money for it. How un-capitalistic is that!!??
Do you really want the government regulating your sex life? </strong><hr></blockquote>
There are so many points in your post that I disagree with, I can't cover them all. But please look at this sentence. Making prostitution illegal (I agree with the idea that it should be made not a crime rather than legal) is the government regulating your sex life.
If you can't see that then you're probably blinded by your own bias.
Does anyone know when and why prostitution was made illegal (specifically in the US)?
I always find the historical perspectives on things like the banning of pot, lsd, alcohol, sodomy, whatever to be interesting. After all there is a difference between what right/wrong, moral/immoral, encouraged/discouraged, and legal/illegal.
So what happened to push prostitution over the line?
To illustrate, here is some info about a drug that caused nearly three quarters of an entire generation to die before the age of 5. Note it wasn't banned, just taxed.
[quote]
Although it wasn?t any inherent medicinal quality that made it popular in 18th-century London, the spirit we know today was conceived with one in mind by Sylvius of Leyden, in late-16th century Holland. Genever, as it is still called in Holland, was a medicinal concoction comprised of neutral grain spirits and the essence of juniper berries and other botanicals. Genever is thought to be taken from the French term, genièvre, for juniper, whose powers to aid digestion had been known for at least a century prior to gin?s actual creation. While Sylvius didn?t distill genever for commercial purposes, other Hollanders, most notably Lucas Bols, seized the opportunity and began producing gin for sale and export by the 1580s. In the 16th and 17th centuries, the Dutch were prominent traders of goods, spices and spirits around the world, and gin?s fame spread to every port where Dutch ships docked?including England.
Gin received a royal push into English culture through Parliamentary action in 1688, when Holland?s William of Orange replaced the disliked and deposed James II on England?s throne. With ?King Billy?s? ascension, all things Protestant and Dutch were suddenly fashionable, while anything French and Catholic was deemed obsolete. Gin quickly unseated French wines and brandies on the island nation, yet it was derisively referred to as ?Parliamentary brandy.? The Distilling Act of 1690, which effectively banned French imports by means of excessive taxation, was reportedly rammed through Parliament by influential land barons, cronies of the new king, who wanted to sell their grain crops to distillers. As a result, the law encouraged England?s native distilling industry, centered in and around London, to step up production of grain-based spirits for the good of the nation?s economy.
It wasn?t long before gin palaces and dram shops?as Londoners called them?popped up all over Great Britain?s capital city in the early 18th century. The tawdry neighborhood shops peddled poorly made neutral grain spirits to anyone willing to part with a couple of pennies. In the overcrowded city of half a million mostly impoverished and ill-educated souls, no less than 7,000 gin palaces flourished in the 1720s and 1730s. By some estimates, there were dram shops in one of every four buildings in London. Records from that time show that for every citizen, 14 gallons of gin were legally produced in the city. Add to that statistic all the illicit gin distilled in countless back-alley stills and the volume of gin produced becomes a tidal wave, and inebriation ran as rampantly through London?s cobblestone streets as vermin.
Another reason for its popularity was gin?s reputation for being a healthful drink, which was probably true, considering the risks associated with other beverages. Milk and municipal water were notoriously suspect due to the lack of hygiene at the time, and cheap gin became the daily tipple of the city?s struggling working-class majority. Even though much of the day?s gin was virtual rot-gut, it was touted as being more healthful by distillers because it was ?boiled,? meaning distilled. To mask the off-flavors and impurities of the period?s gins (which were made from the fermented mashes of wheat or corn and then distilled once in crude pot stills), dram shop owners routinely added sugar, honey, juniper and any other flavorings they could lay their hands on.
Frankly, calling these vile spirits gin is a disservice to not only what started out as juniper-flavored genever in 16th-century Holland, but to contemporary gin as well. Yet to the masses, gin was the mildly sweet, aromatic elixir that temporarily dissolved the tedious miseries of everyday urban existence. Signs in the windows of gin palaces tellingly read, ?Drunk for a penny, Dead drunk for two, Clean straw for nothing.? The straw was employed when patrons ignominiously passed out from overconsumption. Lots of straw was required in 18th-century London.
Within a single generation, London became an intoxicated city and a haven to a crippled society whose working class was often rendered useless because it was sodden with neutral grain spirits. As usual, society?s most defenseless members, its children, were the most adversely affected. From 1720 to 1750, London?s death rate regularly outpaced its birth rate due primarily to alcohol poisoning, accidents caused by dipsomania and drinking-induced impotency. Appallingly, due to a combination of fetal alcohol syndrome, parental abandonment and general poor health, three-quarters of all the children baptized between 1730 and 1749 perished before their fifth birthday.
By 1735, general behavior on all socioeconomic levels turned so despicable and tragic in greater London that the outrage of enough people in power evolved into the outcries in Parliament that spurred the country to action.
Starting with rather ineffective legislation in 1736 (because it was too prohibitive and, as a result, quickly backfired) and ending with vastly improved and judicious legislation in both 1743 (the Gin Act) and 1751 (the Tippling Act), London?s gin plague gradually abated. The Gin Act, designed to reduce the number of mom and pop gin palaces, regulated who could sell gin. The Tippling Act raised the taxes on gin production to the point where only serious distillers with ample funding could continue making it, thereby eliminating many back-alley distilleries.
In France many prostitutes are trade by mafia coming from the east. Some prostitutes do this by free will, some said they enjoy it, but the most of the times, prostitute's lifes are tragedy.
Whenever there is illegal money there is people ready to do the job. And in the prostitution aera, there is plenty of this people. They take youngs girls in countries, and they said to ther, that they will discover a wonderful life elsewhere, and what is this wonderfull life : becoming bitch and even been raped the first time in order to teach them the job.
This is the 90 % reality of prostitution. A very sad situation.
Like Objra said i don't see how a state should regulate prostitution. I think he should try to keep in jails people who take advantage of her.
The pornographic industry is no far better, so i would not give the advice to buy reviews to read while alone in your bathroom ... At least if you canno't resist there is free sites on internet.
OBJRA10 is my new favorite person here. Next to Fellowship, he's the only other person here who seems to make statements based on common sense and real life.
He actually got out of the university and into the real world.
He might not say it as pretty as some of the Egghead Brigade around here, but I sure like reading it.
We reactionaries have to stick together, after all...
<strong>Wow, it's amazing. How pathetic has our society become? I for one have never had the desire to have sex with anyone other than my wife, who happens to be the most amazing person I know. I can't imagine that there is this much thought and worry put into legalizing prositution. I mean really, does it really encourage you to pay someone to suck you off for twenty minutes and then go on with your life?
For crying out loud, take a magazine into the bathroom and save your self the money.
I really love the one where you quote the declaration of independence. You are aware that it is a historical document and not a legal one right?! I'm pretty sure, in fact I'm positive that there is no constitutional right to pay someone to gratify you sexually. And there shouldn't be.
Anyone who thinks that legalizing drugs and prostitution will help make America a better nation is a complete and total idiot. Really, you're dumber than anyone I have ever met.
What do you really define as being a good environment exactly? Do you have any self-respect, any sense of morality, or even just plain old common decency?
Get real. Prostitution is the worst form of degredation of women. And for that matter, it's degrading to men as well.
Freedom does not equal anarchy. We have laws because we have a common sense that our society is better off without certain evils. Sure, you have the God-given free will to sin as you please, but that doesn't mean you should.
And, in case you don't care much about morality or reality for that matter, I just want to ask you this. Do you really want the government regulating your sex life? Can you imagine having to report your sexual activities on a W-2? Having to declare when and where you had sex? Paying the government money based on how often and how much you pay?
What's next, certain gifts to your girlfriend are now taxable income?
Get real people, and more importantly, get a life.</strong><hr></blockquote>
You find it immoral. You find it repugnant. Don't do it then. I never said I wanted to either but unlike you, I respect the rights of my fellow American. If it is between two consenting adults, what right do you have to forbid them? You have every right to tell people that they shouldn't do it. However, you have no right to tell them that they cannot.
Honestly, what's the difference between buying a girl a diamond bracelet and f**king and being up front with a clean prostitute?
I think too many readers here are misinterpreting the thread. I don't think anyone here advocates prostitution in any way. Personally, I'm against it, and I would try to convince a friend against it providing he gave it some thought in the first place.
But I don't see why the government needs to protect us from ourselves. This is something we don't need. The government is neither wiser nor more moral than we are, especially in regard to our own, personal affairs. The separation of church and state is an important one. Why has it been compromised in the past 60 years?
And as a response to pscates, I don't see why you measure maturity as a disinterest in ideals. Reality is what we make of it, and life in the US has been very different in the past than it is now. I don't see why it shouldn't be different in the future.
[quote]Freedom does not equal anarchy. We have laws because we have a common sense that our society is better off without certain evils. Sure, you have the God-given free will to sin as you please, but that doesn't mean you should. <hr></blockquote>
There are basically two kinds of freedom, and in the end they connect at the hip. There are personal freedoms and economic freedoms. The classic socialist will advocate personal freedom, but not economic freedom. The textbook fasicst is the opposite. Anyway, I believe that both freedoms should be available, and if you do your reading, you'll find that our founding fathers did too.
The only laws that should exist are ones that regard personal property. Basically, we're talking about the Bill of Rights. Since you so cleverly pointed out that the Declaration is not actually a set of laws, I'll use the Constitution instead.
While criminalized prostitution is not explicitly unconstitutional, it is definitely not in the spirit of our constitution or our declaration of independence. Am I idealistic? yes. But this country was built on ideals, and it worked quite well for quite a long time, until a few politicians with a lot of "common sense" decided to make trouble. (People don't need alcohol, do they? Let's ban it. It's a sin. . . .)
Unfortunately for our founding fathers, Puritans just had too much "common sense" to believe that the Church and state should be separated. And modern puritans like yourself have the same problem. You try to run other people's lives. Let people with no "common sense" self-destruct. They will want advice then. It is the truly compassionate way to live. . . . Prevention is overrated, and the lesson will be learned best if it is learned in a person's own frame of reference.
[quote] Anyone who thinks that legalizing drugs and prostitution will help make America a better nation is a complete and total idiot. Really, you're dumber than anyone I have ever met.
<hr></blockquote>
no different than when america was a better nation when alcohol was illegal...or if smoking was illegal....
hey i am a happily married man of over 17 years, i couldn't care less if alcohol, cigarettes, pot and prostitution were all illegal...just think the country should be somewhat consistent...now they are even showing commercials of guys getting girls stoned and raping them...hell, pot people don't do that, beer people do....
Anyone who thinks that legalizing drugs and prostitution will help make America a better nation is a complete and total idiot. Really, you're dumber than anyone I have ever met.
[/QB]<hr></blockquote>
I also support this notion in terms of legalizing drugs being a bad thing to do. I'm still contemplating the prostitution issue though.
i think walking into the topic of legalizing prostituion thinking that it's a "victimless" crime is a mistake.
now you can try and argue that legality and illegality are the reasons that prostition has such negative effects on women, but i don't think that's true.
i think that it's inherently degrading and harmful to sell your body and your self respect for money.
have any of you ever known girls who were strippers or prostitutes? it's almost invariably a destructive extension of a shitty life, and it spirals down, not up.
Comments
<strong>I need to interject here from a feninist's point of view. Prostitution generally (though not specifically) exploits women and men profit.
Having lived the last 7 years in a place where prostitution is everywhere, you see that it is the pimps, triads and corrupt police officers who profit while women are afflicted with abuse, demoralization and disease, families are broken and men lose their ability to treat women with respect.
Self-managed prostitution is legal in Hong Kong, but only one out of a thousand prostitutes here do this. And self-managed prostitution is very dangerous because it offers little protection from abuse, robbery and extortion.
In the US, there are also huge problems. From the worst case scenario "Five dollahs for a blow job" (heard that one when I was 16) crack moms to the "best case" Heidi Fleiss societies, it is the sex worker who gets all of the hell while others profit -- drug dealers, pimps, madams and police officers.
The only way prostitution can work is in a highly regulated, taxed system with free medical checks and condoms, counselling, financial advice and a system of security. Until a society can accept this as the better of two evils, women will suffer for it.
If any of you feel compelled to visit a prostitute, make sure she is happy with what she's doing, and is taking home 100% of the money you give her. Otherwise, you are perpetuating abuse.</strong><hr></blockquote>
I agree with your proposed ideal system. Ideally, prostitution should be exploiting men with women taking all the profit.
Prostitution just isn't right!!!
<strong>
Why not get down to business and put the goods on the table?</strong><hr></blockquote>
Well, if we have to pay couldn't it be a bed? Or would that cost extra?
Seriously though, prostitution seems to work well in the Netherlands. Are there any locals here that can offer any information? I believe it's regulated as you (plural) suggest and seems to work just fine.
<strong>How many of u here want your daughters to be prostitutes?? And how many of u would encourage your sons to find prostitutes for pleasure??
Prostitution just isn't right!!!</strong><hr></blockquote>
That isn't a reason to keep it illegal. That is your own reasoning for not buying services and encouraging your daughters not to learn the trade. Just because you wouldn't do it or you wouldn't encourage your family to do it doesn't mean that you should therefore repress everyone by not allowing anyone to do it. That is very self-centered, egotistical, and as you like to say, just plain isn't right.
[ 01-20-2003: Message edited by: BR ]</p>
<strong>And sex among teenagers isn't right (and we wouldn't have our daughters do it), so we shouldn't have sex education in schools or sell condoms to minors? And drugs aren't right, so they should be illegal too (alcohol has proven to us that regulation is the best system).
Whether these things are right or not is not the point. They are here. They will always be here. They will never go away. So we'd better handle them in a way that protects people and educates people, and keeps people from being victimized and exploited.</strong><hr></blockquote>
You get it. It fills me with such joy to see someone else that actually gets it. It is the few people like you that keep me sane in this world of idiots. Thank you for my sanity today.
<strong>Once prostitution is legalized you'll be seeing coupons in the sunday paper for hummers and buy one get one free quickies.</strong><hr></blockquote>
Imagine the joint advertisements for cucumbers!
[ 01-20-2003: Message edited by: BR ]</p>
Was John Locke really in favor of legalized prostitution? Wow I didn't know that.
[/QB]<hr></blockquote>
It's not explicit, but given the opportunity to comment on it I'm sure it would be disregarded as an issue at all. Secondly, the term "legalized" is one I hate. Prostitution should just not be a crime. It has been a while since I've read much of Locke's work, but the general take-home message from his social commentaries is that we should worry about our own properties, and not those of others. This diverges into a long, hard to read section on rights, but essentially I think he would be in favor of making Prostitution not a crime.
For crying out loud, take a magazine into the bathroom and save your self the money.
I really love the one where you quote the declaration of independence. You are aware that it is a historical document and not a legal one right?! I'm pretty sure, in fact I'm positive that there is no constitutional right to pay someone to gratify you sexually. And there shouldn't be.
Anyone who thinks that legalizing drugs and prostitution will help make America a better nation is a complete and total idiot. Really, you're dumber than anyone I have ever met.
What do you really define as being a good environment exactly? Do you have any self-respect, any sense of morality, or even just plain old common decency?
Get real. Prostitution is the worst form of degredation of women. And for that matter, it's degrading to men as well.
Freedom does not equal anarchy. We have laws because we have a common sense that our society is better off without certain evils. Sure, you have the God-given free will to sin as you please, but that doesn't mean you should.
And, in case you don't care much about morality or reality for that matter, I just want to ask you this. Do you really want the government regulating your sex life? Can you imagine having to report your sexual activities on a W-2? Having to declare when and where you had sex? Paying the government money based on how often and how much you pay?
What's next, certain gifts to your girlfriend are now taxable income?
Get real people, and more importantly, get a life.
<strong>
Do you really want the government regulating your sex life? </strong><hr></blockquote>
There are so many points in your post that I disagree with, I can't cover them all. But please look at this sentence. Making prostitution illegal (I agree with the idea that it should be made not a crime rather than legal) is the government regulating your sex life.
If you can't see that then you're probably blinded by your own bias.
I always find the historical perspectives on things like the banning of pot, lsd, alcohol, sodomy, whatever to be interesting. After all there is a difference between what right/wrong, moral/immoral, encouraged/discouraged, and legal/illegal.
So what happened to push prostitution over the line?
To illustrate, here is some info about a drug that caused nearly three quarters of an entire generation to die before the age of 5. Note it wasn't banned, just taxed.
[quote]
Although it wasn?t any inherent medicinal quality that made it popular in 18th-century London, the spirit we know today was conceived with one in mind by Sylvius of Leyden, in late-16th century Holland. Genever, as it is still called in Holland, was a medicinal concoction comprised of neutral grain spirits and the essence of juniper berries and other botanicals. Genever is thought to be taken from the French term, genièvre, for juniper, whose powers to aid digestion had been known for at least a century prior to gin?s actual creation. While Sylvius didn?t distill genever for commercial purposes, other Hollanders, most notably Lucas Bols, seized the opportunity and began producing gin for sale and export by the 1580s. In the 16th and 17th centuries, the Dutch were prominent traders of goods, spices and spirits around the world, and gin?s fame spread to every port where Dutch ships docked?including England.
Gin received a royal push into English culture through Parliamentary action in 1688, when Holland?s William of Orange replaced the disliked and deposed James II on England?s throne. With ?King Billy?s? ascension, all things Protestant and Dutch were suddenly fashionable, while anything French and Catholic was deemed obsolete. Gin quickly unseated French wines and brandies on the island nation, yet it was derisively referred to as ?Parliamentary brandy.? The Distilling Act of 1690, which effectively banned French imports by means of excessive taxation, was reportedly rammed through Parliament by influential land barons, cronies of the new king, who wanted to sell their grain crops to distillers. As a result, the law encouraged England?s native distilling industry, centered in and around London, to step up production of grain-based spirits for the good of the nation?s economy.
It wasn?t long before gin palaces and dram shops?as Londoners called them?popped up all over Great Britain?s capital city in the early 18th century. The tawdry neighborhood shops peddled poorly made neutral grain spirits to anyone willing to part with a couple of pennies. In the overcrowded city of half a million mostly impoverished and ill-educated souls, no less than 7,000 gin palaces flourished in the 1720s and 1730s. By some estimates, there were dram shops in one of every four buildings in London. Records from that time show that for every citizen, 14 gallons of gin were legally produced in the city. Add to that statistic all the illicit gin distilled in countless back-alley stills and the volume of gin produced becomes a tidal wave, and inebriation ran as rampantly through London?s cobblestone streets as vermin.
Another reason for its popularity was gin?s reputation for being a healthful drink, which was probably true, considering the risks associated with other beverages. Milk and municipal water were notoriously suspect due to the lack of hygiene at the time, and cheap gin became the daily tipple of the city?s struggling working-class majority. Even though much of the day?s gin was virtual rot-gut, it was touted as being more healthful by distillers because it was ?boiled,? meaning distilled. To mask the off-flavors and impurities of the period?s gins (which were made from the fermented mashes of wheat or corn and then distilled once in crude pot stills), dram shop owners routinely added sugar, honey, juniper and any other flavorings they could lay their hands on.
Frankly, calling these vile spirits gin is a disservice to not only what started out as juniper-flavored genever in 16th-century Holland, but to contemporary gin as well. Yet to the masses, gin was the mildly sweet, aromatic elixir that temporarily dissolved the tedious miseries of everyday urban existence. Signs in the windows of gin palaces tellingly read, ?Drunk for a penny, Dead drunk for two, Clean straw for nothing.? The straw was employed when patrons ignominiously passed out from overconsumption. Lots of straw was required in 18th-century London.
Within a single generation, London became an intoxicated city and a haven to a crippled society whose working class was often rendered useless because it was sodden with neutral grain spirits. As usual, society?s most defenseless members, its children, were the most adversely affected. From 1720 to 1750, London?s death rate regularly outpaced its birth rate due primarily to alcohol poisoning, accidents caused by dipsomania and drinking-induced impotency. Appallingly, due to a combination of fetal alcohol syndrome, parental abandonment and general poor health, three-quarters of all the children baptized between 1730 and 1749 perished before their fifth birthday.
By 1735, general behavior on all socioeconomic levels turned so despicable and tragic in greater London that the outrage of enough people in power evolved into the outcries in Parliament that spurred the country to action.
Starting with rather ineffective legislation in 1736 (because it was too prohibitive and, as a result, quickly backfired) and ending with vastly improved and judicious legislation in both 1743 (the Gin Act) and 1751 (the Tippling Act), London?s gin plague gradually abated. The Gin Act, designed to reduce the number of mom and pop gin palaces, regulated who could sell gin. The Tippling Act raised the taxes on gin production to the point where only serious distillers with ample funding could continue making it, thereby eliminating many back-alley distilleries.
<hr></blockquote>
Whenever there is illegal money there is people ready to do the job. And in the prostitution aera, there is plenty of this people. They take youngs girls in countries, and they said to ther, that they will discover a wonderful life elsewhere, and what is this wonderfull life : becoming bitch and even been raped the first time in order to teach them the job.
This is the 90 % reality of prostitution. A very sad situation.
Like Objra said i don't see how a state should regulate prostitution. I think he should try to keep in jails people who take advantage of her.
The pornographic industry is no far better, so i would not give the advice to buy reviews to read while alone in your bathroom ... At least if you canno't resist there is free sites on internet.
I will never give one dollar for this industry.
He actually got out of the university and into the real world.
He might not say it as pretty as some of the Egghead Brigade around here, but I sure like reading it.
We reactionaries have to stick together, after all...
[puts on asbestos pajamas and ducks for cover...]
[ 01-21-2003: Message edited by: pscates ]</p>
<strong>Wow, it's amazing. How pathetic has our society become? I for one have never had the desire to have sex with anyone other than my wife, who happens to be the most amazing person I know. I can't imagine that there is this much thought and worry put into legalizing prositution. I mean really, does it really encourage you to pay someone to suck you off for twenty minutes and then go on with your life?
For crying out loud, take a magazine into the bathroom and save your self the money.
I really love the one where you quote the declaration of independence. You are aware that it is a historical document and not a legal one right?! I'm pretty sure, in fact I'm positive that there is no constitutional right to pay someone to gratify you sexually. And there shouldn't be.
Anyone who thinks that legalizing drugs and prostitution will help make America a better nation is a complete and total idiot. Really, you're dumber than anyone I have ever met.
What do you really define as being a good environment exactly? Do you have any self-respect, any sense of morality, or even just plain old common decency?
Get real. Prostitution is the worst form of degredation of women. And for that matter, it's degrading to men as well.
Freedom does not equal anarchy. We have laws because we have a common sense that our society is better off without certain evils. Sure, you have the God-given free will to sin as you please, but that doesn't mean you should.
And, in case you don't care much about morality or reality for that matter, I just want to ask you this. Do you really want the government regulating your sex life? Can you imagine having to report your sexual activities on a W-2? Having to declare when and where you had sex? Paying the government money based on how often and how much you pay?
What's next, certain gifts to your girlfriend are now taxable income?
Get real people, and more importantly, get a life.</strong><hr></blockquote>
You find it immoral. You find it repugnant. Don't do it then. I never said I wanted to either but unlike you, I respect the rights of my fellow American. If it is between two consenting adults, what right do you have to forbid them? You have every right to tell people that they shouldn't do it. However, you have no right to tell them that they cannot.
Honestly, what's the difference between buying a girl a diamond bracelet and f**king and being up front with a clean prostitute?
But I don't see why the government needs to protect us from ourselves. This is something we don't need. The government is neither wiser nor more moral than we are, especially in regard to our own, personal affairs. The separation of church and state is an important one. Why has it been compromised in the past 60 years?
And as a response to pscates, I don't see why you measure maturity as a disinterest in ideals. Reality is what we make of it, and life in the US has been very different in the past than it is now. I don't see why it shouldn't be different in the future.
[quote]Freedom does not equal anarchy. We have laws because we have a common sense that our society is better off without certain evils. Sure, you have the God-given free will to sin as you please, but that doesn't mean you should. <hr></blockquote>
There are basically two kinds of freedom, and in the end they connect at the hip. There are personal freedoms and economic freedoms. The classic socialist will advocate personal freedom, but not economic freedom. The textbook fasicst is the opposite. Anyway, I believe that both freedoms should be available, and if you do your reading, you'll find that our founding fathers did too.
The only laws that should exist are ones that regard personal property. Basically, we're talking about the Bill of Rights. Since you so cleverly pointed out that the Declaration is not actually a set of laws, I'll use the Constitution instead.
While criminalized prostitution is not explicitly unconstitutional, it is definitely not in the spirit of our constitution or our declaration of independence. Am I idealistic? yes. But this country was built on ideals, and it worked quite well for quite a long time, until a few politicians with a lot of "common sense" decided to make trouble. (People don't need alcohol, do they? Let's ban it. It's a sin. . . .)
Unfortunately for our founding fathers, Puritans just had too much "common sense" to believe that the Church and state should be separated. And modern puritans like yourself have the same problem. You try to run other people's lives. Let people with no "common sense" self-destruct. They will want advice then. It is the truly compassionate way to live. . . . Prevention is overrated, and the lesson will be learned best if it is learned in a person's own frame of reference.
[ 01-21-2003: Message edited by: Splinemodel ]</p>
<hr></blockquote>
no different than when america was a better nation when alcohol was illegal...or if smoking was illegal....
hey i am a happily married man of over 17 years, i couldn't care less if alcohol, cigarettes, pot and prostitution were all illegal...just think the country should be somewhat consistent...now they are even showing commercials of guys getting girls stoned and raping them...hell, pot people don't do that, beer people do....
[QB
Anyone who thinks that legalizing drugs and prostitution will help make America a better nation is a complete and total idiot. Really, you're dumber than anyone I have ever met.
[/QB]<hr></blockquote>
I also support this notion in terms of legalizing drugs being a bad thing to do. I'm still contemplating the prostitution issue though.
now you can try and argue that legality and illegality are the reasons that prostition has such negative effects on women, but i don't think that's true.
i think that it's inherently degrading and harmful to sell your body and your self respect for money.
have any of you ever known girls who were strippers or prostitutes? it's almost invariably a destructive extension of a shitty life, and it spirals down, not up.
pretty women doesn't happen in real life.