Right now, the line between legal and illegal proves absurd:

LEGAL:

Voluntary, one night hookups where no money is exchanged for the sex, but the girl gets drinks and an extravagant night out on the town.

A woman who lives in a nice beach front apartment paid for by a very rich man, drives a car provided by the very rich man, receives jewelry from the very rich man, and makes herself available to have sex with the very rich man at his convenience.

A marriage where the husband verbally and psychologically abuses the wife and demands that the wife have sex with him whenever he feels like it, and she doesn't leave because she likes the money and lifestyle he offers.

An affair where the girl gets gifts, rent, etc., and the guy gets sex.

ILLEGAL

The guy and girl arrange in advance for voluntary sex in exchange for money.

Anyone care to explain why the legal situations are somehow better for women or less exploitive than the illegal?

Lapdance...many men have been known to 'complete' right there and then, using it as a safe, relatively inexpensive and legal form of prostitution.

"Kristen" also, like so many other young women who "choose" to engage in prostitution, has been abused, homeless and drug-addicted.

Note to the abused, homeless, and/or drug-addicted: you hereby relinquish your free will to people who know better than you, like "Alecsmom."

Maybe the name should instead be "Everyonesmom."

If we are going to keep prostitution illegal, then we need to at least stop being hypocrites about its involvement in the sexual misuse of minors.

AKA, nobody suggests that minors should be able to be prostitutes, or strippers, or porn stars, or drink in bars, or gamble. In fact, GG explicitly points out that forced prostitution and child prostitution should be illegal.

Because prostitution IS illegal, there aren't any regulations. There is no one they can complain to if you are abused, because they are criminals there is little sympathy afforded them.

Whether the woman is in a hotel room or on a side street in someone’s car, whether she’s trafficked from New York to Washington or from Mexico to Florida or from the city to the suburbs, the experience of being prostituted causes her immense psychological and physical harm. And it all starts with the buyer.

-- jayackroyd

As my friend Mona would say: "Women are free agents." They can say "no" and they know it.

You are saying all women are sexually subservient airheads. Leave the economic exploitation that happens in the lower classes out of this. That happens at Walmart. Join the Women's Christian Temperance Union. They accept men now as honoray members. Progress.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Woman's_Christian_Temperance_Union

Here is the "sex ring" Spitzer busted. While the differences are glaring and obvious to me, and should be to some of you, others, ideological descendants of the WCTU, will probably see no difference.

April 8, 2004

18 Arrested in Lucrative Prostitution Ring Out of Staten Island

By WILLIAM K. RASHBAUM

Eighteen men and women were arrested yesterday on charges that they helped run a sophisticated prostitution ring that masked its operation behind a series of corporate fronts and escort services with names like Gentlemen's Delight, Day Dreams and Personal Touch, officials said.

Records that were seized in a search at the home of one of the ring leaders indicated that the operation brought in $1.6 million in nine months, a law enforcement official said.

Prosecutors from the State Organized Crime Task Force, working with the New York Police Department and the F.B.I., charged 16 people with enterprise corruption and two others with falsifying business records and promoting prostitution and money laundering.

About eight midlevel managers ran the ring, which operated 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, using about 15 to 20 drivers to dispatch 30 to 40 prostitutes each day, officials said. In most instances, customers paid $250 for sex, sometimes using credit cards. The transactions, officials said, were processed through merchant accounts held by escort services or limousine companies, and in one instance a company that hired musical bands for weddings.

''This was a sophisticated and lucrative operation with a multitiered management structure,'' the state attorney general, Eliot Spitzer, who oversees the task force, said in a statement. ''It was, however, nothing more than a prostitution ring, and now its owners and operators will be held accountable.''

Investigators with the task force came across the ring while looking into the activities of a Gambino crime family gambling operation, the law enforcement official said. They had wiretapped a Gambino-linked social club on Fingerboard Road in Staten Island as part of that inquiry and saw the prostitution ring's leader, Frank Farella, 44, of Staten Island, visiting at the club, the official said.

An indictment charging Mr. Farella and others with enterprise corruption identifies him as the owner and leader of the illegal enterprise, and John Pioppo, 42, of Staten Island, and Mario Galbo, 58, of Brooklyn, as senior managers responsible for day-to-day operations and overseeing the midlevel office supervisors.

Most of the defendants were arraigned yesterday in State Supreme Court on Staten Island before Justice Leonard P. Rienzi, who set bail for Mr. Farella at $400,000. He set bail for Mr. Pioppo at $80,000 and for Mr. Galbo at $40,000.

Mr. Farella's lawyer, Vincent J. Romano, said he and his client knew about the investigation since the first search warrant in the investigation of the prostitution ring was executed in October 2002. But Mr. Romano insisted that his client's businesses were lawful and that he was unaware that anyone who worked for him was exchanging sex for money. ''It was a business,'' Mr. Romano said. ''It was a legitimate business.'' He said his client ''didn't authorize, force or coerce'' anyone to take part in any illegal activity. ''If it happened, my client didn't know it happened,'' the lawyer added.

The women were dispatched from storefront offices in Staten Island and from a Brooklyn apartment and would be dropped off by the limousine drivers, mostly in Brooklyn, Queens and Staten Island, the law enforcement official said. Two women would ride with each driver, and they would work 12-hour shifts, the official said. They carried a device inside the car to make an imprint of customers' credit cards, the official said.

At the end of the night, most of the drivers and the women would come together to settle up at a Dunkin' Donuts shop or a diner in Brooklyn, with as many as six of the cars parked outside as the credit-card receipts and cash were counted and the women were given their share of roughly one-third of the proceeds, the official said.

This is a mobbed up major operation. Like a franchise operation - Starbucks or Safeway. Walmart. The one the feds just caught Spitzer up in was like Heidi Fleiss' operation - think neighborhood coffee shop or mom and pop store.