I feel that prostitution should be legalized, and I have no issue with consenting adults agreeing to engage in behavior for an agreed price.

That being said, I feel the issue is that the position Spitzer took was one where he swore to uphold the law and Constitution.

He violated that oath when he violated the law.

Think of a dirty cop, it's a similar analogy.

But how can his alleged behavior -- paying another adult roughly $1,000 per hour to travel from New York to Washington to meet him for sex -- possibly justify resignation, let alone criminal prosecution, conviction and imprisonment?

I think the problem may be a Mann Act violation?

In any case, 1.) prohibiton of any popular human behavior only creates a new criminal class (we have overcrowding at all levels of the criminal justice system) 2.) It drives the behavior undergound and creates a new black market that is entirely unregulated and out of control. 3.) Regulation is better than prohibiton because it is controlled.

DCLaw1 wrote: "Let me put it this way. If mammograms were made illegal, so that one could only get one by going to an organized crime operation that - by nature of their illegal business - was involved in violence, extortion, and other terrible activities, would mammograms thereby be rendered inherently immoral?"

Setting aside for a moment that this is a rather silly analogy, please note that I haven't commented on the morality or immorality of Spitzer's actions. As far as I'm concerned, judging the morality of his actions -- even if I were inclined to, which I'm not -- would take knowledge about the situation that I'm not privy to.

What I'm remarking on is the criminality of his actions -- which is relatively simple -- and the ethical and practical ramifications, given the legal status of prostitution and the real-world implications of that status, especially in regards to the office he holds.

Now there's a legal precedent for ya!

As I posted in the War Room letters thread, this festival of moral abdication (all acts between consenting adults = constututionally protected privacy) just proved how right were Sen. Rick Santorum and the other critics of the majority in Lawrence v Texas. The (il-)logical extension of this notion is that all laws against sodomy, prostitution, bestiality and incest are void as being violative of Constitutional "privacy."

Please, please make this a plank in the '08 Democrat Platform.

Is prostitution okay for your family?

Those who want legal prostitution - would you really be okay with your mother or daughter being prostitutes? Most likely the answer is no.

I'm not interested in controlling the private lives of other adults. I don't think I know better than they do what's best for their own lives. I'm not interested in restricting other people's private, consensual choices -- whether they're family members or not.

If your sister or mother want to earn a living as a prostitute, why do you think your judgment about how they should their lives should trump their own?

Prisons are built with stones of Law. Brothels with the bricks of religion.

William Blake

Those who want legal prostitution - would you really be okay with your mother or daughter being prostitutes?

***

If you wouldn't want your own mother or daughter sucking d**k for money, then don't wish it for someone else's daughter.

I assume, therefore, that you think hardcore pornography should be illegal too? After all, would you really be okay with your mother or daughter being in a porn movie?

Is this how we decide what should be illegal and illegal, by what degree we would approve of our mothers and daughters engaging in the activity?

Your position is based on the idea that sex is somehow "dirty".

I would rather my daughter be a prostitute and suck dick for a living than work as a prison guard in a "for profit prison".

But then I don't see sex as inherently dirty, as you obviously do.

Great column, Glenn.

While I think we need to seriously re-think the way we treat "illegal sexual activity between consenting adults" -- and that's a conversation about we haven't even begun to scrape the surface -- I'm with you. What makes any of us so morally superior that we can sit in judgment of Spitzer, or anybody who engages in less-than-straight-arrow behavior? He is a hypocrite and he should be punished for whatever wrong-doing he committed ("trafficking" - across state lines, a fine for the illegal act[s]), but calling for him to resign is way out of bounds.

Have we become so numb to right-wing Fundamentalists' view of the world that we, too, buy into that view without even flinching? And really. What's the greater evil? The fact that he paid for the services of a professional, or the fact that unwarranted wiretaps put in place by the Bush Administration happened to snare his emails and phone calls?

We need a big reality check here!

Mizmoon writes,

Those who want legal prostitution - would you really be okay with your mother or daughter being prostitutes? Most likely the answer is no. I think the proponents imagine some other woman - some disposable woman who is not as good as their mother or daughter- to actually be the prostitute.

If you wouldn't want your own mother or daughter sucking dick for money, then don't wish it for someone else's daughter.

Utterly irrelevant and non-salient. I might not want my adult children getting tattooes or drinking to excess--or, vastly worse, becoming Republicans--but that's no justification for making these illegal.

Your comment, whether knowingly or not, essentially justifies laws that limit the freedom of certain classes of citizens (in this case women) because another class of citizens (i.e. men, specifically ones related to these women) object to their having such freedoms, on allegedly "moral" grounds no less (but in reality because of the still-prevalent desire of many men to control the lives of women and determine what's "best" for them).

And no one said that they "wished" prostitution for anyone (male of female, gay or straight), just that they didn't wish to limit their freedom to enagage in it, if they so choose, as either client or professional, because they simply have no moral basis for doing so.

I find private citizens owning assault rifles to be objectionable and bizarre, and vastly more insane and immoral than prostitution, yet I don't hear a great clamor to make this illegal.

Look in the mirror.