"'Sad realities may color your experience and make life harder for you, but they do not render you incapable of choice.'

You have no proof of that statement."

I don't believe it is a statement that needs proof. As I said to Asehpe, I think you are conflating difficult with impossible, and that's not fair. The difference between the two is important. Making another choice may be hard. Its never impossible. Such impossibility is simply outside of the nature of choice itself.

"Also, I believe communities should have a right to regulate their streets at least somewhat. If you disagree, then you would have to acknowledge that I have a right to spit on the stree, let my dog run lose, walk around naked, and make noise at all hours."

I see streets as public space, and I see public spaces as places for people to publicly be themselves, and to interact with each other in freedom as equals. Other than basic safety regulations, I don't think that communities should have the right enforce conformity on anyone. I value the self too much.

"The reason for doors is privacy."

On this, you and I are in agreement. And this, I contend, is the proper antidote to annoying or distasteful neighbors. If you don't like what's going on in the street, and don't want to see it, all you have to do is shut your door.

You just quoted me out of context. Not fair.

However, the fact is, there is a measure of freedom that is lost in the example that you cite. Not a lot. But some.

"What about her freedom? Had she no right to be free of assault and street harassment?"

Yes, AKA, she does. As I said earlier, I don't have a problem with laws that ensure the basic safety of a person in public, nor do I have a problem with those laws being enforced.

I could be wrong - correct me if I am - but I imagine that the neighborhood you lived in was not heavily policed. I would imagine that would be a reason why prostitutes congregated there. I also imagine that that could be a reason why the men who came to that area seemed to feel that they could disregard the law with regard to harassment and assault.

If it were legal, and the prostitutes no longer had to fear police harassment, perhaps they would congregate in more heavily policed areas of the city, for their own safety. Or, perhaps, if men started harassing or assaulting them in a certain part of the city, they would more readily report such abuse to the police, bringing it to their attention. Or perhaps some of them, looking for more palatable customers, would move elsewhere, thus rendering that area not so much of a prostitution hotspot and spreading the trade out more equitably throughout the city.

You are indicating that the problem was not the prostitutes, but the harassment from the men who were coming to see them. The only way to solve that is police attention. However, the prostitutes themselves are going to avoid police attention so long as their trade remains legal. The way I see it, the only way to bring the police into that sphere is to legalize the activity.

"Leaving the law aside and dealing only with what is right and what is wrong (because morality and laws don't always match), why would it not be okay for ole Max to have girls 16 and 17 in his films..."

You're exactly right. Eighteen is, in fact, an arbitrary line. It was drawn by temperance advocates in the 1880s in response to a sensationalized, and largely fictional, white slavery scare. Prior to that, it varied from state to state, but was usually somewhere between 12 and 16. Personally, I think that 16 is, biologically and psychologically, closer to the mark of actual adulthood than 18.

However, 18 is the line that has been drawn, and the woman in question was, in fact, over that line. Thus she was, according to both the law and her own testimony, a consenting adult.