Dan wrote:
In short, I'd consider prostitutes women who are in a bad place in their lives, not women who should be considered criminal.
This is a more reasonable argument, but still does not deal with all aspects of the problem. As long as there is a demand for prostitutes and women willing to satiate that demand then we will have prostitution. So the question should be how do we deal with prostitution in a more intelligent way. The present method of bludgeoning the problem with the law does very little to address the causes of the problem and damned little to deal with the effects.
It's similar in many ways to other prohibition efforts - drugs for instance. I think the way we are dealing with smoking is in many ways a model on how to deal with this kind of thing. We have stigmatized tobacco use and used tobacco taxes to educate potential addicts and treat those that have become addicts. Essentially we face the problem sqare on and deal with it in a sensative, realistic manner.
Incidentally, I was wondering about what some of our U.K. members thought about the smoking ban that has been discussed in the news recently. In California we have had smoking banned in restaurants for many years now and it was banned in bars about 5 years ago.
-- Doug _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
