if youd asked me last week, I would have answered, of course prostitution should be illegal. i’m not sure I could articulate why, but it was a gut reaction tomy instinct that paying for sex coarsens society. That it is just too “gross” to permit. And that somehow, like the posters who immediately brought concerns for their daughters into it, prostitution somehow made society a less good place for me directly. Not sure how exactly. Maybe in a way similar to people who oppose gay marriage. it just cheapens the whole act.
and now I feel like I was an idiot. I cannot even remember why i felt this way. I’ve never actually been to a prostitute, and I think I might be too shy or sensitive to others’ feeling to actually ever go to a prostitute, or if I did go to a prostitute, i don’t think I could actually get anything going, other than maybe a vigorous discussion on sexworkers’ lifestyles and rights. But that’s beside the point.
I think there may be some connection between being opposed to gay marriage and opposition to prostitution.
It was obvious to mainstream America that homosexuals were deviant, not really able to cnosent, and that they recruited from straight people. Homosexuality was loosely tied to pedophilia in that sense — that they were looking for youth to prey on. Thus, gays were a danger to straight America. it resonates today, in the lingering opposition to gay marriage as somhow threatening the rest of us.
If women have the right to control their own bodies for purposes of abortions, which are not unliekly to have serious emotional effects, and they have the right to have sex with any other consenting adult, it seems arguably reaosnable that women and men should have the right to also have sex with others for money.
I do however still feel that gambling should be illegal. It offends my sensibilities.
