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Bureaucracies have an uncanny knack for finding and severely punishing victimless crimes. Of all the things the US government manages, the war on consenting adu

• rayiner 3y ago
  These are “victimless crimes” only under a highly individualistic mindset that doesn’t consider that bystanders and society as a whole can be harmed by conduct between consenting adults.
  • _uhtu 3y ago
    What externalities does conesual sex involve? Are these couples spewing CO2?
    • tgv 3y ago
      Apart from supporting human trafficking (a non-negligible amount of sex workers has been brought from other countries under false pretenses and is held against their will), it coaxes consenting (young) women into a harmful lifestyle. Prostitution harms mental health, hinders relationships, and breaks career paths in the bud. Or putting it simple: I definitely do not want my daughter to become a prostitute.
      • justsomehnguy 3y ago
        There are a lot of young girls (which are definitely someone's daughters) who knowingly start to perform escorting because it's easy and provides a lot of money. Without all that human trafficking argument.
        • Manuel_D 3y ago
          And plenty more become mistresses of wealthy men, or "sugar babies" or whatever other terms we have for compensated relationships. But society doesn't regard this as prostitution because it's done under the guise of a relationship.
          • yieldcrv 3y ago
            society does, it is impossible to prosecute and win that’s all
      • kmbfjr 3y ago
        Try visiting Amsterdam with street art honoring sex workers.
        • tgv 3y ago
          I live nearby. It's a pretty sad affair. I'm not judging them. It's good that it's legal, it's a hard profression, but street honoring them is BS.
      • no_wizard 3y ago
        How much of this is due to the fact it’s illegal in thr first place? Look at how much safer for instance buying and consuming marijuana became after legalization
      • JambalayaJim 3y ago
        There are a lot of things I wouldn't want my (hypothetical) daughter doing. That would be a long list of things to make illegal.
        • tgv 3y ago
          It doesn't have to made illegal, but if it is openly encouraged and made to look cool, it reaches everyone.
      • roenxi 3y ago
        I don't want anyone to be homeless, daughter or otherwise. Nevertheless, criminalising homelessness is unlikely to help. How long have there been attempts to stamp out prostitution? Centuries? Millennia? At some point, and that point is passed, the retrogrades would do everyone a favour by working to providing alternatives and get better outcomes than trying to send in the police. Arresting these 3 septegenarians: * Is a waste of taxpayer money. * Will have no impact on the ability of prostitutes to sell their bodies. * If it does have an impact, will probably make the lives of prostitutes even worse, somehow. * Will save no failing marriages. Something can simultaneously be horrible and legal. Sex work should be in that category. If human trafficing is a problem concentrate on that - but this article is (and I repeat myself) the US government at its most petty and ineffective.
      • phpisthebest 3y ago
        The sad part of this line of thinking is anti-human trafficking efforts are infact made WORSE when you have a blanket prohibition. It drives the entire market underground, wastes resources that could be used to find and rescue victims and makes it where market customers have no real venue to know if a provider is "trafficked" or not. Where a legal market would have such things built in. Blanket prohibitions on anything, sex, drugs, etc do not curb or prevent abusive actions it infact masks it, hides it, and makes such abuse MORE PREVALENT, if you want to reduce human trafficking, legalize Prostitution
        • plagiarist 3y ago
          We should decriminalize the sex worker so they can report abuse and seek medical attention without fear of imprisonment. It's hard to say it should be completely legal because that does seem to incentivize some trafficking that might not otherwise happen. Maybe I should see some statistics instead of blindly guessing what the situation is. I think we somewhat agree. But what I am going for is: we still want to be prosecuting the sale of drugs while decriminalizing drug use. Society doesn't benefit if heroin is readily available, but it does benefit if heroin users are able to get help. I don't know the analogous situation with sex work. Even taking part may be harming a third party.
          • phpisthebest 3y ago
            >> But what I am going for is: we still want to be prosecuting the sale of drugs while decriminalizing drug use. We do not agree then, I should be able to walk in a CVS and buy Cocaine or any other drug (provided CVS wants to sell it) It is no business of the government (or you) what I consume, be it a High Fat diet or cocaine or something else No different than who I sleep with and the reasons why be it for a "relationship", for a dinner or for $XXX money exchange The government should prevent person X from Abusing Person Y, so in the context of Drugs that would preventing someone selling Weed that was laced with something, or that was some other substance. in the context of Sex, just like any other work, that would be to ensure the seller is selling their labor voluntarily I dont care if they are selling their labor for sex or to work in a meat packing plant, sex work is no different than factory work, I would want people prosecuted for operating Sweat Shops and I would want people prosecuted forcings someone into sex work
      • yieldcrv 3y ago
        the employment market supports labor trafficking, guess what, labor trafficking is still illegal. there is no reason for sex work and sex trafficking to be conflated, as sex trafficking is labor trafficking. in both a decriminalized or legalized world, trafficking is still illegal. everything else you wrote is a labor rights issue as well. those particular harms of prostitution are specifically because the government perpetuates it being more dangerous than it is. you not wanting your daughter to become a prostitute is not a government problem. in another comment you wrote you're worried about government endorsement: the government getting out of the way in a decriminalized framework, or providing consumer protection in a legalized framework, is not endorsement. if you want to reinforce a deterrent, that comes from your community.
      • _uhtu 3y ago
        Most of those are consequences of it being illegal. Similar to how legalizing marijuana has drastically cut down on the illegal trade for it in the states where it's legal, you've actually just made a great argument for legalizing prostitution as a way to reduce human trafficking by pulling it out of the illegal ring. The rest of those things are consequences of the economic system we live in, not the job it itself. I don't see people arguing for outlawing of electrician work because it draws in young people and is strongly correlated to physical health issues. The fact that people need to sell their bodies in order to survive is an established part of capitalism. Why then is the target of your banhammer specifically prostitution? Just because sex is icky?
        • mcpackieh 3y ago
          Women aren't plants; there's no such thing as kidnapping a plant and making it a slave. Your analogy is trash.
          • yieldcrv 3y ago
            analogous compare dissimilar things with a common attribute it is a cognitive deficiency if you cannot perceive the common attribute, or you ask for clarification from the person that made the analogy
      • shkkmo 3y ago
        > Apart from supporting human trafficking (a non-negligible amount of sex workers has been brought from other countries under false pretenses and is held against their will) Isn't this primarily an argument for legalizing and regulating prostitution so that less money goes the the black market to create demand for trafficking?
      • deleted 3y ago
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      • JumpinJack_Cash 3y ago
        > > Or putting it simple: I definitely do not want my daughter to become a prostitute. So it's about you and your honor, not her and her life and financial choices. This is patriarchy too. And supports my thesis that people become parents because they want something in return, especially men , they want to be the patriarchs of a family that has a bunch of members in relevant and respected roles in society. If one of the members defaults on the grand vision of the patriarch and pursues immediate financial gain abandoning the "relevant and respected" part then the patriarch becomes irate and resentful because his grand vision has been sabotaged. The point is that the patriarch and young people have different preferences. Young people want stuff and experiences, so they are looking for ways to make money to buy such things, the quicker the better. Unlike the aforementioned patriarchs ,young people have not yet painted themselves in the corner so much that they are only satisfied with people kissing their asses in the local town council because they are a doctor or a lawyer.
        • tgv 3y ago
          You might want to do a bit more careful thinking and empirical verification before jumping to conclusions.
      • brohee 3y ago
        And people are trafficked to work in meatpacking plants. Should we outlaw meat too? (the people that think yes usually base their reasoning on other grounds) Human trafficking is an orthogonal issue, but one that is facilitated by prostitution being illegal.
  • CuriouslyC 3y ago
    Trafficking is a crime. Slavery is a crime. Assault is a crime. Sex is not a crime.
    • cscurmudgeon 3y ago
      What about money laundering? Not in the headline, but they were convicted for that too.
      • Denote6737 3y ago
        Again they were laundering money gained through the fact that sex work is illegal. there wouldn't be any laundering if it wasn't a crime.
  • Manuel_D 3y ago
    > bystanders and society as a whole can be harmed by conduct between consenting adults. You might want to elaborate on how this harm occurs.
    • lucubratory 3y ago
      Women are prostituted because they need money to eat and pay rent, and if they don't "consent" to sex they don't get to eat and live in a house. That's the harm.
      • Manuel_D 3y ago
        This does not address the above commenter's point, " ...bystanders and society as a whole can be harmed by conduct between consenting adults." How doe a sex between two consenting adults harm people besides those two adults and society as a whole? Your comment doesn't explain this, it's focusing on the purported harms experienced by one of the participants, not the bystanders. And regarding your point that paid sex is not consent because they need money to afford necessities: the same can be said about pretty much any job. My plumber probably needs money to eat and pay rent, too. Paying someone who needs money to do a job is not something that society by and large consideration unethical.
        • lucubratory 3y ago
          >This does not address the above commenter's point, " ...bystanders and society as a whole can be harmed by conduct between consenting adults." How doe a sex between two consenting adults harm people besides those two adults and society as a whole? Your comment doesn't explain this, it's focusing on the purported harms experienced by one of the participants, not the bystanders. For one, we are members of society and harm done to us en masse is harm done to society as a whole. For another, if you need some narrow conception of who gets impacted that excludes us, then generally prostituted woman have family or friends who are impacted by us being prostituted and our eventual death. For another, society misses out on the productive labour of a large number of women when instead of being able to pursue education or work to the extent we otherwise could, women are prostituted. >And regarding your point that paid sex is not consent because they need money to afford necessities: the same can be said about pretty much any job. My plumber probably needs money to eat and pay rent, too. Paying someone who needs money to do a job is not something that society by and large consideration unethical. Yes, and if you're unwilling to consider it unjust that people face starvation and homelessness for the crime of losing the unemployment lottery, we can argue about that, sure. But even someone who thinks that's fine for whatever reason should be able to see that similar coercion into sex acts is worse.
  • fnordpiglet 3y ago
    Are bystanders typical in your bedroom? As a part of society I’ve never once been harmed by anyone’s sexual intercourse, even folks who invite bystanders. I think only societies that take great interest in conformity to some norm to the extent they feel the need to be angry about someone else’s nonconformity reap harm from private thought and activity. In that case I think the harm starts with society and ends with the individual rather than the individual harming society.
    • talldatethrow 3y ago
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      • deleted 3y ago
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      • Manuel_D 3y ago
        People taking shits in the street does have a clear and concrete harm: worse sanitation, namely the likelihood of stepping into a pile of feces. How does this analogy map onto prostitution? Higher rates of STDs? People get diseases from non-paid sex too. You don't like seeing prostitutes soliciting on the street? If only they could advertise online... I'm still not seeing an explanation of how prostitution harms "bystanders and society as a whole".
        • rayiner 3y ago
          It all stems from the same culture of permissiveness and individualism. The shit in San Francisco’s streets, the graffiti, the needles, etc., is a physical manifestation of the city’s underlying cultural degeneracy.
          • Manuel_D 3y ago
            Again, I still have yet to see you or any other commenter explain how two people wilfully exchanging money for sex harms people uninvolved in this transaction. Shit on the streets has a clear harm: worse sanitation, increased probability of stepping into shit. What's the harm of sex work? "Cultural degeneracy" is an extremely vague and hand-wavy claim. And for what it's worth non-individualist countries such as much of east Asia actually have substantially higher rates of prostitution than North America. I don't see the link between individualism and prostitution.
  • jalapenos 3y ago
    Maybe the pearl-clutching variety of narcissists specifically are harmed by the fact some strangers are doing something they disapprove of. And that's OK.
  • danielvaughn 3y ago
    If we were to take this on principle, we'd end up with an authoritarian regime not unlike Saudi Arabia. Lots of consensual conduct harms individuals and society, but if we try to use the legal system to prevent it, we're setting ourselves up for an impossible goal. And we'd make ourselves miserable in the process.
  • tptacek 3y ago
    I think people are too quick to dismiss this point of view. I have very little patience for your recent tendency to frame arguments as condemnations of individualism vs. authoritarian communitarianism, but the normalization of prostitution creates a bunch of straightforward externalities that we should be able to talk about, from economic pressure on people disinclined towards sex work to the inevitable screening failures that bring minors into the industry. Of course, you could make this point effectively just by explaining to the preceding commenter what an externality is, since the idea is fundamentally about the damage consenting counterparties can do to the surrounding community.
• gjsman-1000 3y ago
  Well, we’ve had birth control and abortions for, what, 60 years now? Think about the collective experience of humanity before them. If you were a prostitute and got pregnant, it wasn’t about you, it was about that child’s experience as a fatherless individual, being raised by a person that can hardly provide for herself. As well as, what a child raised in that environment, is more inclined to do to other people. Now that has changed if only because the link between sex and children, in most minds, has been broken. In those where it hasn’t… that’s the natural area where restrictions on birth control and abortion come from.
  • phpisthebest 3y ago
    The idea that prohibition on prostitution is to combat fatherless could not be further from the truth. The government in many avenues encourages and subsidizes fatherlessness in society in general, and the laws around prohibition were never contemplated, or even remotely idealized as an effort to combat the issue of fatherless homes.
    • gjsman-1000 3y ago
      I specifically said the collective experience of humanity before now (the average attitude over the last several thousand years). Nothing to do with our current government.
  • appleskeptic 3y ago
    What’s funny is prostitution was legal most of the time and in most places in the western world until recently. Widespread prohibition of it is not as much a holdover from medieval times as a recent sex-negative feminist innovation. Which makes sense when you consider that the people punished are usually horny, kind-of-sleazy guys.
    • mcpackieh 3y ago
      > What’s funny is prostitution was legal most of the time and in most places in the western world until recently. That attitude towards prostitution closely correlates with those same societies considering women to be property. Anti-prostitution laws and the emancipation of women go hand-in-hand.
• qqtt 3y ago
  I would agree with you if the entire issue really did exist in a vacuum where "consenting adults" were truly the only variables, but as we've demonstrably seen from legalization efforts worldwide - legalizing prostitution is highly correlated with an uptick in sex trafficking. Determining if two parties are actually "freely consenting" is notoriously difficult, given the way that sex trafficking rings operate - and as has been proven over and over again, determining if an individual is "freely consenting" is not at all a simple thing for law enforcement to figure out and making it legal does not make it easier. So while I agree in spirit with "two consenting adults should be able to do what they want if they aren't hurting anyone else" - reducing prostitution to those terms is an overly simplistic way of looking at it and is ignoring mountains of evidence that legalizing it increases the rate of sex trafficking and sexual exploitation for those countries which made it legal already.
  • yieldcrv 3y ago
    these are labor trafficking issues, both forms of trafficking is illegal in all of those countries as well expanding access to labor rights, labor organizations, and the government prosecuting traffickers is a more productive use of resources than the rhetorical solution to the “mountains of evidence” you pointed out > Determining if two parties are actually "freely consenting" is notoriously difficult obsessing over that is odd, if you're not doing that in the rest of the employment market too. yes, people that aren't sex workers behave wildly different regarding boundaries and discernment in who they engage with, while putting the onus on sex workers to prove why they are different, right now, is folly and ineffective uncalled for vicarious interest at best and discrimination at worst a better use of energy to exercise any discomfort around possibly trafficked people is allowing sex workers access to the same labor avenues as the rest of the employment market allows them agency to better navigate everything you’re (ostensibly) worried about. even expanding what those avenues are.
    • qqtt 3y ago
      > expanding access to labor rights, labor organizations, and the government prosecuting traffickers is a more productive use of resources than the rhetorical solution to the “mountains of evidence” you pointed out Except counties that have legalized prostitution have tried this and failed. Again, there is evidence that legalizing prostitution increases the amount and scope of sex trafficking operations in said counties which have legalized. It isn't "Labor trafficking issues" - it is sex trafficking, and a very specific issue with legalizing prostitution. > obsessing over that is odd, if you're not doing that in the rest of the employment market too. Can you expand on why? Sex trafficking is a very specific form of labor exploitation which is tied up with prostitution - and it has been seen to demonstrably get worse after prostitution becomes legal. Why should this evidence be ignored or tied up with the broader umbrella of "labor exploitation"? > a better use of energy to exercise any discomfort around possibly trafficked people is allowing sex workers access to the same labor avenues as the rest of the employment market allows them agency to better navigate everything you’re (ostensibly) worried about. even expanding what those avenues are. I think advocates of legal prostitution like yourself like to say things about legalized prostitution that they wish were true, but reality tells a difference story. If it was better and easier for law enforcement and/or prostitutes to navigate sex trafficking when prostitution is legal, one would think we wouldn't see a marked increase in sex trafficking when prostitution becomes legal. What you keep doing here repeating "it's better for prostitutes to operate in a legal environment" is ignoring reality and sticking your head in the sand regarding the very real consequences for the 150$ billion a year sex trafficking industry which has very brutal and effective ways for suppressing/exploiting/manipulating their victims even in regions where prostitution is perfectly legal. Again, I totally agree that two consenting adults who aren't hurting anyone should have legal recourse to do what they want, as long as that situation exists in a vacuum. If there are huge externalities involved, such as 150 billion a year sex trafficking industries that can capitalize on legalization and which no country in the world has figured out how to suppress after legalization - well, that should at least be considered in any effort to legalize.
• mcpackieh 3y ago
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  • Manuel_D 3y ago
    This comment is engaging in the exact same behavior that caused the first trial to get thrown out: conflating consensual prostitution with sex slavery and human trafficking. > In 2021, an Arizona judge declared a mistrial in the case of Larkin and Lacey after they found that prosecutors’ arguments hinged on the horrors of child sex trafficking even though neither defendant was facing charges related to it. Backpage was never on trial for facilitating sex trafficking. They were proactive in reporting cases to law enforcement.
  • COM9 3y ago
    Losers who need to be business people have an uncanny knack for ignoring the existence of victims in the capitalism system. "Victimless crime" my ass.
• ulizzle 3y ago
  The article says the prosecution argued fervently about child sex trafficking on the site but of course this forum is so sycophanticly politically correct no one read the article itself & just upvoted whatever toes the line