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From: mmt@dciem.UUCP (Martin Taylor)
Newsgroups: net.flame
Subject: Re: RE: Sin in NY State plus.....
Message-ID: <641@dciem.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 19-Jan-84 16:50:21 EST
Article-I.D.: dciem.641
Posted: Thu Jan 19 16:50:21 1984
Date-Received: Thu, 19-Jan-84 20:53:35 EST
References: <533@eosp1.UUCP>
Organization: D.C.I.E.M., Toronto, Canada
Lines: 32

===============
State certified prostitutes , and other legal sins have of course been
common in Europe.  There are many pros and cons but I would like to
describe one moral argument against state involvement which has
tremendous force when one takes the time to think about it.

Much of the activity that the prostitutes engage in will be the sort
of thing that we like to think of as adult consensual activity.
However some of it will be of a very different nature.  Some of the
clients are rabid psychotics who kill or seriously injure their
companions.  Some of the prostitutes live in fact in a state of
involuntary slavery, against which the state makes no real attempt to
protect them.  The result is that the state is condoning a process
which which destroys and tortures some of its citizens.
===============
The first part of the above is quite true, but rather than increasing
the risk to the citizens (prostitutes), it makes them safer.  It is much
easier for a prostitute to call for help when necessary if she is doing
something that is accepted as normal practice than if she is liable to
prosecution.  The violent customer can be dealt with by a brothel security
man, and if that is insufficient by the local police.  When prostitution
is legal and normally accepted, no-one is a slave to any kind of pimp.
Prostitution becomes the same kind of job as office work or assembly-line
work, with the same options for union protection and work-place standards.
Only if you insist on calling it "vice" and "immoral" is there a problem
with state-run prostitution. (In Europe, it is private-enterprise but
state checked, and anyone can get into the game without worrying about
the Mafia, so the same considerations apply.)
-- 

Martin Taylor
{allegra,linus,ihnp4,uw-beaver,floyd,ubc-vision}!utzoo!dciem!mmt