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 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.

-- Mizmoon

We can agree in principle that patriarchy, gender non-parity and inequality are the issues here but do you want the woman who may choose to make a living in this manner to be treated as a criminal and moral outcast?

I think hiring someone to have sex with you should be entirely legal, and I don't care who knows it.

Spitzer was happy to prosecute others for prostitution offenses so as to advance his own career, but unwilling to be a voice for legalization of something he enjoys and does himself.

It reminds me of those people who voted for the Iraq war partly so they could look "tough", but shed no tears for those people who they were sending to their deaths.

If Spitzer had any respect for the law, he could easily have gone overseas to just about any jurisdiction that borders the US and do what he did quite legally, and for a great deal less money. Canada is an obvious destination that is not far from where he lives.

One admires his determination to support American industry, but the fact that such a large amount of money was paid for something that would be readily available for something like $300 Canadian for an hour in nearby Toronto strongly suggests that there was some other element involved (possibly blackmail or some kind of payoffs for extra services, or money laundering). No reasonably intelligent person pays more than ten times what a product is worth for no reason, though if Mr. Spitzer is interested in bridges...

http://www.eros-toronto.com/sections/toronto_blonde_escorts.htm

I don't think we have the whole story yet, so please keep digging.

-I do wholeheartedly share the suspicions of Digby and Glenn about the involvement of the Bush DoJ in this case. After Siegelman, and the partisan purging, and Sarah Taylor and the perversion of the civil rights division, the Bush DoJ has a presumption of malfeasance on my part.-

Naturally they would never use expanded eavesdropping powers to spy on their political rivals, now would they?

I too suspect this is as just another chapter in the ongoing saga of persecuting US Attorneys and Governors who are not 'loyal Bushies' with the aim of creating the 'permanent Republican majority'.

I only care about this, because he's a politician who is supposed to have public service at the forefront of his life during the time he's in office.

All the maneuvering, fornicating, and evading implicitly cuts into what he's supposed to be doing... his job. I had the same problem with Clinton, Craig, etc.

If you can't sacrifice your creature comforts and personal ambitions while in elected office of public service, then don't make a run for the position.

A perfect example of this is prohibition and all the criminality attendant to that period.

It's most revealing that you ignore the massive and far more onerous current prohibition in favor of going back seventy years to alcohol prohibition.

Possessing and consuming alcohol were not illegal during alcohol prohibition, just the importation, manufacture or sales of alcohol.

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.

Maybe I misunderstood you to be referring to morality in some way. If you are just making a purely "technical" or "ethical" argument that prostitution is a crime, Spitzer's job was to prosecute crimes involving many of the same players as prostitution rings, therefore Spitzer deserves what he gets, that's not what I was addressing and I apologize if I misunderstood.

That does raise other moral/ethical questions, however, which I won't get into right now.

Red meat for people like me who love to think about the intersection of law and morality.

wait for all the feminists to now start ganging up on him for abusing a poor hapless woman and using her body for sex..

I am a woman and a feminist and if she wanted to take his money and give him a good time, then I think that's pretty much between her, him and his wife who, I think, has the legitimate beef (if you'll pardon the expression).

My question has always been why, as Glenn alluded to in his article, the "supply" side of the equation has been considered (for the most part) more prosecutable than the "demand" side.

I don't believe it should be illegal, and don't necessarily think someone should lose a job over it (Vitter hasn't), but really, it takes two to perform this particular tango. Yes, Elliott is guilty of raging hypocrisy. But so is a system that lets the payers go scott free while the payees are put behind bars once they cash the checks.

I'm glad you and Digby caught on to what I think is a much bigger question than the titilating bullshit the press is interested in (who will be the first one to "get" the interview with Spitzer's prostitute as well as digging deeper into his 'troubled' marriage), the question that should arise in everyone's mind when you have a thoroughly discredited and politiczed Justice Department with lawless wiretapping of Americans so widespread that thee top level of the Justice Dept (hardcore rightwingers) threatened to resign because of how heinous the Bush administration's abuses have been: Who is behind this bust and how did the information develop?

It's no secret that Spitzer busted a lot of corrupt Wall Street filth - the sort of people the Bush administration considers their "base" - and it's no secret that the Bush administration misuses the Justice Department, AND illegally wiretaps, for purely partisan reasons. While I know it's laughable to imagine the Bush administration to be using law enforcement to fight Al Qaeda, for a Democratic governor with a history of busting corrupt Republican scum certainly raises a lot of questions. Since it would be too "shrill" for the media to even question the motives of the Bush Administration and the Justice Department in this case, in a time of The Global War of Civilizations, I hope that more than a few people outside the media who've watched the systemic destruction of the Justice Department over the past 8 years will start asking some obvious questions about this case, other than what kind of kinky sex was Spitzer into.