Of course, you can characterize all sex workers as victims, but at some point isn't everybody? You can find fault with the criminal justice system and advocate for a focus on the rehabilitation of offenders, if that's more palatable, but I would be hesitant to exonerate these rational economic actors.

I have mixed feelings about whether or not prostitution should be legalized. However, I see no reason if it remains criminalized why johns should not be prosecuted as well and to the same extent. Who are the johns the victims of? Are they not also engaging in an economic transaction.

You seem to be equating them with addicts who cannot control themselves. Or am I misreading you?

Clean, Green, New Zealand...

http://www.justice.govt.nz/plr/

http://www.osh.dol.govt.nz/order/catalogue/235.shtml

When I spoke of infidelity, it was the johns I was speaking of, so I agree with you.

This is the reason why prostitution will always be a detested, marginal activity--because the married and committed men who frequent prostitutes must hide their behavior.

There is no sea change coming anytime soon in which a majority of wives and girlfriends are going to be happy to know their men are going to whores. There just isn't. And a hooker's clientele isn't just lonely single guys, not by a long shot. She'd starve in a week if that was the case.

Prosecute the johns, not the prostitutes--simple, straightforward. Of course, I believe in prosecuting pimps too, so this wouldn't have saved the "D.C. Madam".

This is about embarrassing the powerful.

The interview I read said she was concerned about doing hard time.

--the prostitutes who get paid in short skirts, a room to live, and the drug of their choice. The money they make goes right back to the pimp, which is fine as long as they have enough to get high. It's really not a choice by any normal definition.

Re: legalization, if there is some moral force behind prostitution laws, why is it legal to give it away, but not sell it? To me, that should be the end of any argument justifying prostitution laws.

Re: the notion that the death of Ms. Palfrey was suspicious, and that perhaps her phone records are missing. While I suppose one could never absolutely rule this out, the phone records were posted on the internet for a period. I'm sure many enterprising journalists downloaded the files for future political research. In fact I download some for use in political races in Texas, although they have yet to yield any nuggets. So I doubt that there will be any loss of information, nor would there have been any great incentive to for a potential customer who know about their publication to desire Ms. Palfrey to be dead.

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.

...but it doesn't change the fact that she chose to commit the crimes she was convicted of. Pimps exploit their prostitutes and are therefore reprehensible. The fact that this pimp was also a woman doesn't change that.

The only injustice in this case lies in the fact that the johns involved aren't being exposed and shamed as well, not that Palfrey was prosecuted for her crimes.

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.>>