PROSTITUTION

Recently there was a news item about some local motel managers getting arrested for their involvement in the prostitution business. Seems some of them were offering discounts to the prostitutes for using their establishments and thus (so it was argued) supporting and encouraging such enterprise.

Whenever I hear about things like this I get a tad upset. Prostitution should be a perfectly legal activity requiring licensure and subject to the same scrutiny that all other businesses are subject to. We should not be wasting taxpayer dollars in the form of expensive police time to entrap citizens who choose to engage in this business, or arrest motel owners/managers who may happen to support it. Prostitution is a victimless crime. People make the choice, as they have for thousands of years, to indulge in it.

I haven't heard any good arguments to the contrary either.

Disease? Irrelevant. People succumb to diseases (and die at the rate of 400,000 per year) because of cigarettes. Are they illegal?

Crime? Irrelevant. It exists virtually because the prostitution is itself turned into a crime by a group of fickle politicians who are never as interested in the public welfare as garnering votes. And there is - unfortunately - one surefire way to gather such votes: appeal to the stodgy and paranoid puritan ethic that seems forever running as a strong undercurrent in the dynamic of American society.

The only thing that is relevant is that this is supposed to be a free country. It should be a woman's right to sell her body if she chooses. Isn't this what the abortion rights activists are always going around spouting off about, that it's the woman's body and that she should therefore have the choice to do pretty much what she pleases with it? Why should prostituting it be an exception?

It should also be a man's right to purchase her services if he chooses.

I agree one-hundred percent with Bukowski on this issue. The main reason that women hate the prostitution business so much is because they feel threatened by it. It's all connected to the fact that women essentially control the mating game. If prostitution were made legal, the women who are not prostitutes would lose considerable leverage in the matrimonial marketplace.