Aside from religious pressure, is there any reason to keep prostitution illegal in the US (except for Nevada, of course)

At least a prostitute leaves after you give her money. A wife will bleed you dry and steal your soul.

Yes, it is unfair to and demeaning to women.

If it is going to continue to be ilegal I want the people buying the service to be the ones arrested.

@marinelife – suppose the women are doing it voluntarily, with a good salary and benefits? Such as in several counties in Nevada – can’t the women choose for themselves if they are being demeaned?

While they don’t actually make life any better for most people, at least those laws help to keep cops off the streets. In fact, there is a case to be made that making prostitution legal actually does improve life for people, aside from the prostitutes and their customers.

No.

And who says prostitution is a WOMAN’S purview?

I live in a small town in the Midwest US, and prostitution was okay here up until about 1960. What did it hurt?

No, there isn’t.

Prostitution should be completely legal and regulated in the U.S. I have never heard of any legitimate reason for it to be illegal.

Religion isn’t standing in the way of the free market. Conservatives support both, so it would be impossible for those two things to conflict!

@marinelife So are pay inequality, mass media, the internet, and many of the laws concerning bitch control and abortion. I find the Hobby Lobby ruling far more unfair and demeaning than a women who chooses to work at a legal brothel in Nevada.
You must be thinking solely of the street-walkers who are forced into it by unethical pimps; something that would decline if prostitution were legalized.
Imagine it being a legal profession, subject to regulations, with protections for it’s workers. Is it demeaning to voluntarily work a job that has benefits other than not being smacked by your boss? The women at the Bunny Ranch are far less demeaned than those who are forced to work in an unregulated black market.
Keeping it illegal is what makes it demeaning. Can’t admit what you do for a living, no health plan, no recourse when your boss backhands you…. yet you would rather keep it that way than legalize it?!

^ You must be thinking solely of the street-walkers who are forced into it by unethical pimps; something that would decline if prostitution were legalized.
Just for exploration sake, not all street walkers are forced into it, some are just greedy and like sex and figure why give it away free, others are bag ‘hos who hook to pay for their habit. I know people don’t like to admit those truths, but it is what it is.

@Hypocrisy_Central

You speak from vast experience there?

I would suggest that some people may come up with a myriad of reasons.

But whether or not they are valid is a matter of opinion.

My personal view is that freedom of choice and sovreignty over ones own body and mind is inalienable.

The only problem which comes into play is the fact that money is essentially under copyright and owned by the people who print it. So they get to dictate what you can and can’t buy with it.

What they cant do tho, is stop you from giving ot away for free!

Ie. You give me a free blowjob, and I’ll give you some free cash….

Arguing that in court however, is an entirely different matter.

Perhaps some women could do it & not be addicts or abused but too many are wrecks. We have them in the bible belt now.

@KNOWITALL Based on info from my friends there, that’s nothing new. And it’s more common for people to turn to the seedy underworld of drugs and illegal prostitution when there are few ways to make a legitimate living; poverty leads to crime and drug use.

Note that the places with legal prostitution have fewer problems there? Something about not hiding in the shadows tends to clean things up.

@KNOWITALL: Perhaps some women could do it & not be addicts or abused but too many are wrecks.

You’ve got your causes and effects backwards there.

@Darth_Algar You speak from vast experience there?
I would not say ‘vast’ experience, but I will say more insight than the average person. When you are found to be straight, and speak English women will have some interesting conversation.

That would be a good question to ask of those who believe all streetwalkers are forced into it, and have some sadistic pimp keeping them in it; if they have ‘vast’ experience to be able to say that. ~~ ;-P

@Hypocrisy_Central

So, because you’re straight and speak English (which, presumably few people are and do) you have a lot of conversations with street prostitutes?

I have known 3 prostitutes as well, some think it’s just easy money. Go to the truck stop & make a couple grand a wknd.

@Darth_Algar So, because you’re straight and speak English (which, presumably few people are and do) you have a lot of conversations with street prostitutes?
II do not have knowing conversations with hookers, though some of the women who sat in my chair were, or de facto prostitutes. Some for sure were amateur (from their own mouths). Basically if you are straight and English speaking the same way guys use barkeeps to confide in, these women use me in the same capacity.

@Hc mAny people prostitute for money, golddiggers, congress, etc… Polite society frowns but it has & will be there.

What’s a prostitute? Seriously – I knew of a woman (a person who was the mother of a girl that my ex-wife went to college with) – who was not a street-walker at all.

This was a women who, when she was married, had become accustomed to a posh life style. She had some money of her own, but not much.

Every summer she would go up to Saratoga for the racing season, “on retainer” we should say, with one or more men. She slept with them for money as a purely contractual thing. She didn’t love them, she was there as a convenient sex toy at a price, every summer. She was more like a call girl, but for months at a time.

Is that prostitution? As currently defined, of course it is. But this woman wasn’t not pimped, she handled her own business affairs, and looked like she was having a good time.

My point: not all prostitutes are walking the streets and diseased