How could the United States legalize prostitution?

It won’t happen for the next 100 years. We’re still too puritanical.

@gemiwing: I agree with you on that, but why do you think that is?

I blame the Victorian ethos that runs rampant throughout our country. Also the view of women as virgin or whore. We’re still not allowed simply to be. We are reflections, vessels and maids.

I agree wholeheartedly. But like Gemiwing said, we’re too puritanical. Maybe it’s because there is so much religious influence, we still do things the christian way and hide our sexual nature i.e. cheating on our wives after saying you’re a good christian family lol.

I do think prostitution should be legalized. I think the mandatory STD testing should be more often than you said. I am for what you said except the abortion part

@dutchbrossis: Why do you disagree with the abortion part? I think in a profession where you are very likely to get pregnant or get someone pregnant, I would think the same services should be extended to the female clients of male prostitutes why shouldn’t you be able to get an abortion paid for by your insurance?

To add: If a prostitute does get pregnant or if a prostitute gets a woman pregnant and it is decided that there will be no abortion, should insurance help pay medical bills/child support, respectively?

Hell, we could use the tax revenue.

Oh boy, starting an abortion discussion = bad lol. Maybe just start another question lol.

@KatawaGrey If i believed abortion was an okay thing, I would agree with it. I just feel sad whenever I think of anyone getting an abortion, I think of a life who didn’t get to have a choice at all of whether it lived or not. It was forced to have it’s life taken away. Yes I think that would be a better idea if the insurance helped pay bills and child support, that is if needed. Prostitutes make a lot of money, as do strippers. I am not sure how many more prostitutes there would be if it was legal and how much less $ each would make. If they make as much as they can right now, they wouldn’t need help with child support. I am all for making sure they use birth control though.

@dutchbrossis: From what I understand, prostitutes don’t make a lot of money. Their pimps make all the money. If prostitution was legalized and regulated, I would hope that the prostitutes would get to keep a greater part of their earnings.

Prostitution isn’t even necessary anymore. I’m sure it took a big hit in its economy by all those websites that allow people to hook up for just sex for free.

Frankly, both are disgusting to me.

@KatawaGrey I didn’t think about that. Yes I would hope so also. Like I said before if they couldn’t support a child and did have one, I would want them to have help though

I think to make legalization successful you would have to provide alternatives to people who are in financial straits. The deal is that the majority of prostitutes today only resort to this ‘job’ because they are so financially destitute. So even if we legalize it we still have a very specific population of people who engage in a job that has the potential for causing serious mental complications just to earn money.

could you legalize it? sure and it would be significantly safer for those involved. But until as a society we grow past the “moral” issues it won’t happen. Why? Because the majority of people think it’s “wrong” because that’s what they were taught or chose to believe. If you want to legalize it you have to package it in a way that allows people to see it as less immoral/wrong (think of it as a “it’s not a bug it’s a feature” kind of problem) and at the same time slowly move towards it through incremental changes in the thinking of society (a good first step would be people seeing a society at large who accepts sex as natural rather than something to be ashamed of or only spoke of in joking fashion).

It is legal in Vegas.

If it continues to be illegal in the rest of the country I want the people buying to be punished and fined, not the ones selling.

Too many skanky hoe’s as it is… Legalizing it would just produce more.

I think it is just fine the way it is.

It is legal where I am and according to the ads in the paper the majority are not starving or destitute, they are beauty queens working their way through a PhD. I don’t see it making any difference in the amount of taxes I pay, the number of STD’s is not less than other locales. The one who benefits the most is probably the local paper because it sure runs a lot of classified ads for all of these beauty queens.

I have met women in assorted groups who made a living from selling sex. _Most_of them definitely had problems of self esteem. So in general I feel sorry for them that they don’t feel they are worthy or capable or deserving of a less exploitative occupation. I also feel sorry for the men who because of an inability to create or sustain a reciprocal relationship or an inability to control sexual urges need to buy another human being for sex.

@rooeytoo From what I understand in Vegas, the girls are tested for STD’s but the men buying aren’t. So the girls are still at risk really. I too feel badly for the women. When you see interviews with people who used to live that life or still do for that matter, typically they are not happy selling their bodies.

There’s almost an entire chapters in Super Freakonomics on this. The authors of said book seem to be of the opinion that it’s more an economic driving factor than a social one. Good read for anyone who’s interested in this subject… They even found a couple of cops who look the other way, because to get rid of the (illegal in this case) prostitutes would be to start gang turf wars over again.

The US doesn’t outlaw prostitution. Legality is on a state by state basis. As far as I know only two states allow it.

@JLeslie- Prostitution is not legal in Vegas. Nevada only allows it in counties with fewer than 400,000 residents.

Forget my comment about legal prostitution in only two states. Better change that to say just one, I see that Rhode Island outlawed it just last year.

I would support legalization of prostitution in a world where any gender can do it without having to – we don’t live in a such a world. However, I’d support it in this world too if only for the public health benefits we know are a result of legalization.

@AstroChuck I didn’t know, thank you for correcting me. So is it the counties outside of Vegas that have the brothels?? I know for sure there were some call girls in the club I went to when I was in Vegas a week ago. But then, it doesn’t have to be legal for it to be going on.

@JLeslie-
From wikipedia:

“As of 2009, prostitution is illegal under state law in Clark County (which contains Las Vegas) and under county or municipal law in Washoe County (which contains Reno), Carson City (an independent city), Douglas County, and Lincoln County. The other 12 Nevada counties permit licensed brothels in certain specified areas or cities,[4] with the exception of Eureka County, which has no law on the books either permitting or prohibiting licensed brothels.[citation needed] All 12 of these rural counties have had at least one legal brothel in operation subsequent to 1971, but many of these brothels were financially unsuccessful or ran afoul of State health regulations. As of 2009, only eight of these counties have active brothels, while the other four (Churchill County, Esmeralda County, Eureka County, and Pershing County) no longer do.”

@AstroChuck So it was legal in Vegas, and changed in 2009? Did I read that right?

@JLeslie- No. To my knowledge it has never been legal in Vegas. Clark county has too many residents. But prostitutes aren’t difficult to come by in Sin City.
However, before last year there was legalized prostitution in Rhode Island.

I have discussed this issue with many people, criminal all over the world will be really happy if any governments legalize prostitution. It’s going to increase abstraction of crime.

Please find its detailed case study in Australia which has experienced over two decades of legalized prostitution and is promoted as a model for other Australian states and territories to pursue, as well as countries worldwide.
http://action.web.ca/home/catw/attach/Sullivan_proof_01.pdf

@prashantworld That’s a good read, thanks for the link. It seems however that legalizing prostitution doesn’t cause all these problems, it doesn’t seem to prevent them – prostitution is always big business, crime is always a part of, trafficking already happens, nothing is new when it gets legalized. I don’t know what the solution is, but something has to change.

@JLeslie Actually it is legal in Pahrump about 30–40 miles away from Las Vegas. In Las Vegas it is illegal