What don't you think the government should be involved in?All three of the issues in the OP are things I think the government must be involved in.
I won't post it as a voting poll, but just list the issues that you would rather seen handled by state governments than the Federal government. Here are mine:
- marijuana (for medicinal or recreational use)
- the sale of sexual services (often derisively known as prostitution)
- marriage, especially gay marriage
the sale of sexual services (often derisively known as prostitution)
Pretty much everything on the list is authorized by the Constitution.I'd rather list the areas where the federal government should have a role (in random order).
1. Education
2. Public health, safety, defense (including healthcare, anti-terrorism and environmental law)
3. Foreign affairs (military and diplomacy)
4. Civil Rights
5. Interstate economics
The state can legislate on top of all these areas. Everything else can be handled solely by the states.
That is one I think I've changed my mind on recently. I agree, in theory, with the idea that if somebody wants to sell sex that isn't the government's business. But we had a speaker at my law school last year that had worked for a women's shelter for 35 years, largely doing outreach to prostitutes that gave a pretty compelling counter argument. Her take is that prostitution is largely slavery. Not in some hippie dippie sense of treating women's bodies like property, but literal slavery. The vast majority of prostitutes started before they reached 15. The ran away from home and a predatory pimp found them, maybe they were even kidnapped or shipped here from another country where their family was threatened if they didn't comply. The pimp systematically gained control over them through violence, drugs, threats and manipulation to the point where they at least believe that they really have no choice.
So, the obvious response is that statutory rape and slavery are illegal, so we could just prosecute them for that without having to make prostitution illegal. But practically speaking that doesn't really work. A woman who is, for example, severely addicted to heroin and whose only source is her pimp, whose pimp has her kids while she's out, and whose pimp regularly beats her and her kids just is not realistically going to go to the police to report it and even if somebody else reports it, she isn't going to testify in court against him. Or, with statutory rape, it is much harder to prove. Police can't solicit statutory rape because the john is the perpetrator. Neither the john nor the victim are ever going to report it. Even if somebody does report it, that just allows the police to go after the john, it doesn't empower them to do anything to help the girl out of her situation. So, from a practical point of view, the only real way to fight it is to make the whole profession illegal.
I'm not 100% convinced, but that definitely gave me a lot to think about on the topic.
I'm completely against sexual slavery too. However, what you describe is really the result of illegal prostitution. It doesn't describe the legal brothels in Nevada. When it's legal and regulated, we avoid almost all the problems that happen with illegal prostitution. In the legal brothels, you don't have sex workers beholden to a pimp and forced to work.
Hmm that may be true. But I'm not so sure. Even in strip clubs, a large percentage of the women are actually there working off some kind of debt that they have been told they owe to an organization that brought them over. Often times those arrangements are backed up by threats to their families back home. I would bet the same is true of legal brothels. And drugs still likely play a role. I don't know. That's a good argument, but in my opinion, it would require some serious empirical research to see whether legal brothels really solve those issues or not.
What don't you think the government should be involved in?
…but just list the issues that you would rather seen handled by state governments than the Federal government.
I'd rather list the areas where the federal government should have a role (in random order).
1. Education
2. Public health, safety, defense (including healthcare, anti-terrorism and environmental law)
3. Foreign affairs (military and diplomacy)
4. Civil Rights
5. Interstate economics
The state can legislate on top of all these areas. Everything else can be handled solely by the states.
- the sale of sexual services (often derisively known as prostitution)
Just to let you know, the federal government hasn't criminalized prostitution. Prostitution laws are regulated by the states. This is why Nevada has legal prostitution in some areas. I believe that Nevada further decentralized prostitution laws to the county level.
Also, prostitution in Rhode Island was legal until 2009, when the state legislature criminalized it. Previously, RI had criminalized many things relating to prostitution - brothels, solicitation, and the like - but not prostitution itself.
So the federal has, indeed, butted out of the sale of sexual services, but the state and local governments have not.
However, there is no federal protection to the freedom of sexual services, which is why state and local governments can regulate or criminalize it.
Likewise, there is no constitutional protection to the freedom of sexual services, so the federal government could, if they wanted to, criminalize prostitution nationwide as per the Commerce Clause if they chose to. They just haven't yet.
The main thing is to do what is effective, what makes for a better society. The old fashioned laws be damned !That is one I think I've changed my mind on recently. I agree, in theory, with the idea that if somebody wants to sell sex that isn't the government's business. But we had a speaker at my law school last year that had worked for a women's shelter for 35 years, largely doing outreach to prostitutes that gave a pretty compelling counter argument. Her take is that prostitution is largely slavery. Not in some hippie dippie sense of treating women's bodies like property, but literal slavery. The vast majority of prostitutes started before they reached 15. The ran away from home and a predatory pimp found them, maybe they were even kidnapped or shipped here from another country where their family was threatened if they didn't comply. The pimp systematically gained control over them through violence, drugs, threats and manipulation to the point where they at least believe that they really have no choice.
So, the obvious response is that statutory rape and slavery are illegal, so we could just prosecute them for that without having to make prostitution illegal. But practically speaking that doesn't really work. A woman who is, for example, severely addicted to heroin and whose only source is her pimp, whose pimp has her kids while she's out, and whose pimp regularly beats her and her kids just is not realistically going to go to the police to report it and even if somebody else reports it, she isn't going to testify in court against him. Or, with statutory rape, it is much harder to prove. Police can't solicit statutory rape because the john is the perpetrator. Neither the john nor the victim are ever going to report it. Even if somebody does report it, that just allows the police to go after the john, it doesn't empower them to do anything to help the girl out of her situation. So, from a practical point of view, the only real way to fight it is to make the whole profession illegal.
I'm not 100% convinced, but that definitely gave me a lot to think about on the topic.
Marijuana should be legal, controlled and taxed, the same with alcohol.I won't post it as a voting poll, but just list the issues that you would rather seen handled by state governments than the Federal government. Here are mine:
- marijuana (for medicinal or recreational use)
- the sale of sexual services (often derisively known as prostitution)
- marriage, especially gay marriage
I think it would be easier for me to post some issues I think the state should not be able to decide on.I won't post it as a voting poll, but just list the issues that you would rather seen handled by state governments than the Federal government. Here are mine:
- marijuana (for medicinal or recreational use)
- the sale of sexual services (often derisively known as prostitution)
- marriage, especially gay marriage
I'm glad they haven't criminalized prostitution. What they have done is to criminalize sexual tourism, which is going to another country for the purpose of participating in prostitution. IMO they've overreached their authority. What happens in another country falls under the jurisdiction of that country, not of the Federal government.
Except those countries where people go for sexual tourism are in countries in which child prostitution takes place.
Criminalizing sexual tourism is an attempt to prevent international child prostitution, international sex trafficking, and international human trafficking. So I have no problem with them doing that.
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