Tuesday, March 11, 2008
Legalizing Prostitution [Andrew Stuttaford]
Mark (Steyn), I'm no fan of Gov. Spitzer. In many ways he was a disgrace as a prosecutor, but if he's brought down by this, he will be a disgrace brought down by a bad law.
Lisa, I'm not convinced by your arguments, I fear, something that just reflects our very different ways of looking at this issue. For you, one of the key things is the immorality (as you see it) of prostitution. I, on the other hand, think that the idea that the state can stop an adult freely deciding to prostitute what is, after all, his or her own body is yet another example of big government run wild. People should not be treated as chattels of the state.
That said, I think Jonah makes a crucial point when pointing to the importance of opprobium. Tolerance is not necessarily the same as approval. Just because something is legal does not mean it is 'all right': the failure to grasp that fact lies at the root of much of the legislative bloat imposed on most western countries (by right and left) over the last half century or so. We might not agree over what we disapprove of, but Jonah and I can agree about the uses of disapproval.
Where you and I do agree, Lisa, of course, is on the unacceptability of coercion. In essence, you believe that coercion and prostitution inevitably go together (Derb seems to be arguing something similar, even if the reasons he gives are different), and that by legalizing prostitution, and thus (presumably) boosting the market for such services, you increase the chance that people will be coerced into the trade. The counter-argument, for which I have considerable sympathy, is that banning prostitution makes it (1) a more profitable proposition for criminals, and (2) pushes it further away from any form of supervision. Both consequences are more likely to increase the extent, and ferocity, of coercion. A better course, I reckon, would be to (1) either legalise it/keep it legal; (2) follow the British example and make/keep pimping (the most obvious potential source of coercion) a crime; (3) reinstitute effective border controls within the EU and (4) properly punish any instances of coercion, abuse and trafficking that are discovered.
03/11 02:15 PM
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