Here you have the laws the way you want them, and STILL these things happen. Tell me how these laws you admire make life better for these women? Perhaps you should spend your time and energy working to make a better life for these people instead of seeking to have them locked up.

Also, your creepy focus on less palatable actions ignore the fact that these things occur without prostitution, and are not fundamental to the question, and are likely uncommon, despite your ridiculous attempt to make it seem so. Your definition of prostitution is false, and your statistics suspect, and you are hypocritical, or at best irrational, since you condemn prostitution as coercion, yet endorse coercive action by the state as response.

Ultimately, people like you don't really care about the lives of other people. It is just a self-justifying cover for one of the lowliest of desires, power over others. Your desire to make this activity illegal proves it.

And before you or other irrational people attempt to go there, no, I don't think prostitution is a desirable activity, and I think it damages the self-esteem of all involved, and more, but it is still NOT anyone else's right to decide for them. There are many immoral vices, but it is just as immoral to advocate for the power of a gun (the government) in response.

You, and no one else, can make a valid principled stand for involving the government in non-coercive activity. You have not made the case that all prostitution is coercive, just undesirable. They are not the same thing.

<<Laws against prostitution should exist because prostitution is abuse and exploitation of society's most vulnerable women. The great majority of prostitutes are in abusive relationships, were raped as children and became hookers as teenagers, and are drug addicts. Even for the 1% who are "high priced call girls", their lives are pretty damn miserable too--from a developed fear of intimacy to being forced by clients to shit on coffee tables in front of other laughing men--and I can well believe you would have to be mentally skewed to do it. Part of hiring a call girl, for the high rollers, is the pleasure of debasing another human being (they will admit to this). Prostitution, like rape, may in fact be more about power than sex. Many of these men have attractive wives and girlfriends but they still want to piss on some hooker. Prostitutes for the most part don't enjoy their work--almost 90% in Nevada, where prostitution IS legal, express a desire to get out of it. But they don't feel they can.

These are simple quantifiable facts, and anybody who says otherwise is simply ignorant or lying.

It's been proven that legalization does not help and increases trafficking by legitimatizing the demand. If the goal is actually to stop prostitution (and for this we would have to agree that prostitution is very exploitative of the women involved) then it makes sense to take some legal action against the men committing the mistreatment--the hookers and johns. It doesn't make sense to legalize their behavior.

But first you have to be willing to see prostitution for what it really is, and many people can't seem to do that.>>

I noticed that Van Riper was willing to use suicide missions to have the Iranians win. I'm wondering if they are as willing to do that as say the Palestinians have been. Definitely the military should plan for that. Obviously, though, we cannot use the same tactics against anyone. Still, his tactic of using messengers to avoid eavesdropping was funny and ironic, they rely so much on high-tech surveillance they forget simple workarounds. Anyway, I imagine his career is not on track for more stars or anything anytime soon. Our leadership has no room for truth-tellers or competence.

--Ron Robertson

And that is that it's tiresome for one's relationships and rights to be considered valid political fodder. I've always found it extremely offensive that people can vote on my rights. I remember being told back in 2000 by a neighbor that a bunch of people in her church (in coastal Los Angeles!) registered to vote for the first time so they could vote against gay marriage. These assholes didn't care about anything in our country all this time, and decide that somehow, some way, gay marriage was a threat to them?!? That's the kind of stupids you have voting on other people's rights, and if you aren't offended by that then you're a moron, at best.

The California Supreme court ruling was simply a recognition of reality, and a valid interpretation of rational rights any person should have. There is no rational reason why gay people should have lesser rights than non-gay people. Try hearing (like I have) that your equal rights are "special rights" and not be angry. That's typical conservative double-talk, whatever they name something is its opposite, like calling anti-choice for abortion "pro-life" (while at the same time often being pro-death penalty), special rights for straights being called a "Defense of Marriage Act." Of course, they have to give dishonest names for what they want, because if they were being honest only the craven would support these views being made into law.

All gay people I know, myself included, are only looking for equality before the law, nothing more, and certainly nothing less. If this tiny step in the right direction somehow gives the presidency to another republican, then this country is too fucked up for anything rational to matter.

Are you saying that being married is inviting the government into your bedroom? The sodomy laws were where the government was involved in what happens in the bedroom, that's a totally different topic, and your conflation of this with gay marriage is, well, moronic!

The point about gay marriage advocates, for those who can't think, is that there are important benefits that go along with marriage for people in committed relationships, and that EQUALITY BEFORE THE LAW means that gay relationships should not be treated differently than straight ones (again, before the law).

If a gay person (or straight for that matter) doesn't want the risks/benefits of getting married, then they can choose not to get married. No one is forcing them. The law does force second-class citizenship on gay people and their relationships. Why is that so hard to understand, why is that concept so difficult for you to get? It's EQUALITY BEFORE THE LAW that is the whole point. And gay people who bring in children into their relationships should have serious obligations for those children's welfare. That has nothing to do with gay relationships either.

So, one more time for the cognitively challenged. It's about EQUALITY BEFORE THE LAW!

<<Gay marriage advocates are morons

What moronic idiocy is this? Two of my gay friends pointed out that gays fought pretty recently to get the government out of people's bedrooms, and now they are inviting government back in.>>

Is it true that the Israeli constitution confers or denies rights based on race (and/or religion, both have similar problems)? If so, that would be the base for a lot of problems they're having, since a foundation based upon race has inherent problems with justice.

I had not known about Juan Cole being denied tenure, and only last week had heard that about Norman Finkelstein (who I'd not heard about at all before). It seems clear that they were denied tenure on very dubious grounds, and it further devalues the worth of both institutions to have done that. Basically, it strikes me as cowardly and short-sighted.

--Ron