----- Original Message ----- From: "Doug Pensinger" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "Killer Bs Discussion" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Wednesday, November 24, 2004 12:02 PM Subject: Re: More hypocrisy on display than skin
> 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. That is a good argument for legalization. At the minimum, that should be done. Decriminalizing prostitution for the practitioners also seems very realistic. I'd like to see some of the results for total legalization in other countries before rendering my opinion on full legalization. But, I'm not really interested in arguing against legalization because I am not really opposed to it. Further, I fully admit that I haven't considered all aspects of the problem. I've been rather busy, though, fighting for the proposition that there is an intrinsic problem with prostitution that won't go away simply by changing societies attitudes towards the activity. Dan M. _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
