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Underage girls are much more likely to start being prostitutes if they know there is no legal penalty for themselves for doing so.
It's a truly horrible law.
Underage girls are much more likely to start being prostitutes if they know there is no legal penalty for themselves for doing so.
It's a truly horrible law.
The only ones to benefit are the pimps.
Underage girls are much more likely to start being prostitutes if they know there is no legal penalty for themselves for doing so.
So to discourage behavior that shouldn't be illegal in the first place, your plan is to inflict suffering and the fear of suffering on anyone who dares engages in that behavior. This seems like neither a wise nor a moral policy. It's like threatening to shoot someone who thinks about jay walking and then carrying out the threat if he still decides to do it. It's highly counter-productive.
It also does not answer the question as to why the state should have the power to use violence and the threat of violence to force its will unto people in this matter. Placing a person in a cage at gunpoint is an inherently violent act. It should not be taken lightly.
Underage girls are much more likely to start being prostitutes if they know there is no legal penalty for themselves for doing so.
It's a truly horrible law.
I think thats a really naive point of view.
Most underage prositutes(and California just happens to have six of the major "circuit" cities in SF, Sacramento, Fresno, Long Beach, Los Angeles, and San Diego) are foster children who a pimp lures away or runaway kids. Very very few come from middle class or better homes, though in the 90's there was more of a prevalence of this as laws against pimping were weak enough that many pimps felt empowered to recruit at malls in middle class neighborhood.
Anywho, I'd probably be against this law, but Kamela Harris really went hard after human sex trafficking. Its hard for me ever to give a Democrat politician credit, but its very due here. https://www.facebook.com/notes/kamala-harris/attorney-general-kamala-d-harris-bill-to-combat-human-trafficking-unanimously-pa/10151681221270663/
So because she so aggressively went after pimps, I'm ok with the California legislature essentially decriminalizing the acts underage prostitutes engage in for purposes of attempting to turn their lives around.
I do agree that prostitution(and drugs) should be legalized, but I also recognize thats unlikely to happen. I do want to see law enforcement continue to target and harshly punish those who coordinate prostitution activities, esp those that traffic minors.
Underage girls are much more likely to start being prostitutes if they know there is no legal penalty for themselves for doing so.
It's a truly horrible law.
I think thats a really naive point of view.
Yeah, someone who is going to engage in prostitution isn't going to be deterred by the law. I didn't mention this because I didn't want to distract from the core points though.
1. Why should it be illegal?
2. Why should the state have the right to inflict suffering on prostitutes who are in no way harming anyone?
3. How is arresting, caging, and ruining the reputation and career prospects of a minor for life going to help that minor?
I do want to see law enforcement continue to target and harshly punish those who coordinate prostitution activities, esp those that traffic minors.
Of course that's drastically different from targeting the prostitutes themselves.
The net effect of the law will be a new way to criminalize (and blackmail) men. Under-18 women will be prowling the street and the internet looking for their next blackmail victim.
Bullshit.
A certain percentage? Yes.
Certainly not a blanket statement.
Yeah, someone who is going to engage in prostitution isn't going to be deterred by the law.
They are the highest carriers of STDs.
They physically harm their customers, probably most unknowingly.
Why should the state have the right to inflict suffering on prostitutes who are in no way harming anyone?
Not the point.
It will help the future health prospects of all the johns she didn't service who then gave up looking.
How is arresting, caging, and ruining the reputation and career prospects of a minor for life going to help that minor?
Underage girls are much more likely to start being prostitutes if they know there is no legal penalty for themselves for doing so.
There is a danger for this, but I think it's more like a hungry person stealing a loaf of bread. Putting them in jail is not the best solution, especially if they are a kid.
Not the point.
MrEd claims this comment is ad hominem:
What is the point mr ed? The truth is an ad hominem? Why don't you let patrick stand up for himself? He's the one that pimped out fake news.
Why are you so interested in the health of men so depraved they pick up children for sex? Why do you have zero concern about the welfare of the children who are victims of these scum? Don't even try to pull the adhom bullshit copout. Answer the questions.
The johns could just keep their dick in their pants and they wouldn't have any health concerns from any prostitute. But no, they get in their cars, go get cash, drive to the seediest neighbourhoods, and hunt down women to pay for sex because what the heck, they are the victims. Perfect, you can't make this shit up.
Look, there was a safe and responsible way to ensure that teenaged trafficked girls would avoid prosecution for forced prostitution. Just add an exception for women who have been victims of sex trafficking! Say, if their arrest leads to a pimp being charged, they get out of any charges.
But instead, the idiot Democrats create a market for teen prostitution.
Brilliant! You fucktards!
Bullshit.
A certain percentage? Yes.
Certainly not a blanket statement.Yeah, someone who is going to engage in prostitution isn't going to be deterred by the law.
Prostitution has rarely been legal, yet has existed in every single society not only since the Stone Age but even since before our ancestors were human. You are going to say that the state can effectively fight at least ten million years of primate evolution? Yeah, good luck with that.
The burden of proof, of course, is on the person proposing to outlaw something to show that the laws against it are effective in preventing the behavior.
Even more importantly, the negative consequences and ethical ramifications of outlawing prostitution must be considered and weighed against any benefits.
[stupid comment limit]
Is it ethical to inflict considerable suffering on a good person (a prostitute) who is harming no one simply to prevent other people from engaging in a non-harmful business (prostitution, not sex trafficking)? Hell no. Is it ethical to inflict considerable suffering on people engaging in one activity (prostitution) to decrease the amount of activity by other people (pimps) in a different activity (sex trafficking)? Again, hell no. It's like arguing we should arrest anyone who drinks beer because they enable a beer industry to exist, and some minors will use fake IDs to buy beer. So we have to destroy the entire beer industry to prevent that.
There are also practical consequences to making something illegal. As soon as you make something illegal, you remove ALL protection of the law for anyone who engages in that activity. People who overdose on illegal drugs don't seek medical attention because they risk arrest. People who engage in prostitution are subjected to abuse and violence and cannot seek protection from law enforcement because their activity is illegal (and wrongfully illegal at that).
Inflicting punishment on prostitutes, especially minors, actually greatly endangers them because they have no protection of the law, no means of redress in the courts, no way of forming collective bargaining power, no way of improving their conditions. Make no mistake, making prostitution illegal harms and endangers prostitutes especially the minors you claim to want to protect.
It makes no sense to attack a person you are trying to help.
They are the highest carriers of STDs.
They physically harm their customers, probably most unknowingly.Why should the state have the right to inflict suffering on prostitutes who are in no way harming anyone?
Following this philosophy, all sex should be illegal beyond having a single partner for life.
If we want the state to end all STDs there is a simple and highly effective way to do so, and it does not involve making or keeping prostitution illegal. The solution is to force everyone for the next 100 years to wear a chastity belt and to divide the population into two groups: those born before Jan 1, 2017 and those born after. No member in either group can mate with a member of the other group, ever. Anyone in either group can mate with unlimited willing partners in the same group.
This will prevent the transmission of STDs. Would you be willing to let the state force you and everyone else to wear a chastity belt and follow this policy? Unless the answer is a resounding yes, your stance is pure hypocrisy.
By the way, I'm all for this solution. I'm willing to make that sacrifice. It would be the greatest gift we can give countless future generations, an end to all these STDs.
Nonetheless, making prostitution illegal actually increases STD transmission as the field cannot be regulated. Under legal prostitution, the state can enforce condom usage, prevent prostitutes from being coerced not to use condoms, regularly test prostitutes, provide needle exchange programs to prevent disease transmissions, and treat prostitutes for STDs that can be cured to prevent transmission.
If you really want to lower STD transmissions, then you most certainly should be for legalizing prostitution.
Not the point.
It will help the future health prospects of all the johns she didn't service who then gave up looking.How is arresting, caging, and ruining the reputation and career prospects of a minor for life going to help that minor?
It most certainly is one of the central points of this discussion.
Furthermore, I doubt you actually care for the johns. If you did, you would be advocating legalizing their participation as well. How does arresting, caging, and ruining the reputation and career prospects of a customer for life going to help that customer?
Making prostitution illegal does not help any of the participants in the field.
If a 14 year old can not consent to sex, I don't see how they can consent to sex for money.
Why would you think that a 14-year-old cannot consent to sex? I was 14 years old once, and I was not only willing to have sex, but desperate to do so.
Is it rape when a 14-year-old has sex with another 14-year-old? Both parties would have to be rapists, by definition, if 14-year-olds cannot consent to sex. This is a ridiculous conclusion that demonstrates the ludicrousness of the premise.
Are you going to argue that a person in certain groups is capable of consenting to sex with one group of persons but not another? That is arbitrary and ridiculous. It would be like saying a white woman cannot consent to sex with a black man, but can consent to sex with a white man. It's justify only by bigotry. A person is either capable of consent or not.
There is a danger for this, but I think it's more like a hungry person stealing a loaf of bread. Putting them in jail is not the best solution, especially if they are a kid.
It's more than that. A person stealing a loaf of bread is doing another person harm, even if that harm is justified by preventing a far greater harm. A person engaging in prostitution, not sex trafficking, is not doing harm. Some people will have pseudo-moral or religious objections to the activity, but it is not harming others and it is not violating the rights of others. I would argue that using the state to punish such people is essentially and foremost a violation of the First Amendment by forcing religious beliefs onto people against their will.
Look, there was a safe and responsible way to ensure that teenaged trafficked girls would avoid prosecution for forced prostitution. Just add an exception for women who have been victims of sex trafficking! Say, if their arrest leads to a pimp being charged, they get out of any charges.
That may be appealing in principle, what it would fail miserably in practice. We have a legal system that has no problem convicting and punishing many innocent persons in order to also capture the maximum number of guilty persons. In practice there would be plenty of victims prosecuted as prosecutors will not want to risk letting a guilty person use the loophole as a defense against prostitution. So they will believe the ends justify the means and throwing some innocent victims in prison is worth cleaning up the streets.
Of course, this philosophy completely ignores the ethical objections to criminalizing prostitution. I would say those ethical objections are also damn important.
If you are asking questions like that, you lack moral compass.
Only a fool would consider asking questions about ethics and morality to be indication of "lacking a moral compass". In fact the exact opposite is true. The only way to have a moral compass is to question what constitutes good morality and why. Those who don't question are the ones who are immoral.
I am struck by the similarities between the argument
We need prostitution to be criminally punished in order to discourage minors from engaging in it.
with the argument
Giving teenagers condoms or teaching them about safe sex will encourage them to have sex. We need teenagers to be in fear of getting AIDS in order to discourage them from having sex.
Both are very bad arguments and for exactly the same and plentiful reasons. The proposed solution
- is unethical
- is shortsighted
- does not work
- causes great direct and indirect harm to the persons allegedly being helped
- entails substantial risk of death
Why would you think that a 14-year-old cannot consent to sex? I was 14 years old once, and I was not only willing to have sex, but desperate to do so.
I think we already had this conversation. Marcus brought up some good points regarding mental development. I don't have much of an interest in rehashing. I did want to make the point that IF you think a 14 yr old cannot consent to sex and define an 18 yr old having sex with a 14 yr old as rape, then it hardly makes sense to punish the 14 yr old for it, just because there was money passed along.
As for the example of two 14 yr olds having sex with each other, by definition, it is rape, but the punishment would be dismissed. We already have examples of moderating punishment based on age, even for murder.
A person stealing a loaf of bread is doing another person harm, even if that harm is justified by preventing a far greater harm. A person engaging in prostitution, not sex trafficking, is not doing harm.
There is an argument that prostitution harms society in some ways. For example, it increases the amount of disease and the prevalence of an activity increases the number of other people doing said activity. It also increases health care costs to some degree, and it can increase the amount of disease in society, which can harm people who were not taking part in prostitution. While I believe that this societal harm argument has some merit, and I don't think prostitution is a healthy behavior to take part in, I think that prostitution ought to be legal. There are other things that can harm society at large, and we tend to be pretty lax about legislating around those. Vaccinations would be an example.
Of course, this philosophy completely ignores the ethical objections to criminalizing prostitution. I would say those ethical objections are also damn important.
Legalizing all prostitution would be a vastly more salubrious policy than only legalizing teenage prostitution. I'm sure that most thinking people can figure out why.
Because I don't want to see you perish at an early age.
Why are you so interested in the health of men so depraved they pick up children for sex?
I'm the one against the california law...remember?
Why do you have zero concern about the welfare of the children who are victims of these scum?
You just did.
The johns could just keep their dick in their pants and they wouldn't have any health concerns from any prostitute. But no, they get in their cars, go get cash, drive to the seediest neighbourhoods, and hunt down women to pay for sex because what the heck, they are the victims. Perfect, you can't make this shit up.
What comment?
Not the point.
MrEd claims this comment is ad hominem:
What is the point mr ed? The truth is an ad hominem?
If we want the state to end all STDs there is a simple and highly effective way to do so, and it does not involve making or keeping prostitution illegal. The solution is to force everyone for the next 100 years to wear a chastity belt and to divide the population into two groups: those born before Jan 1, 2017 and those born after. No member in either group can mate with a member of the other group, ever. Anyone in either group can mate with unlimited willing partners in the same group.
This will prevent the transmission of STDs. Would you be willing to let the state force you and everyone else to wear a chastity belt and follow this policy? Unless the answer is a resounding yes, your stance is pure hypocrisy.
By the way, I'm all for this solution
Wow, policy is a bit more complicated than that.
First, if you want to end all STDs, the best and simplest solution would be to invest in medical research, which could end all of them in less than a third of the timeline you've described, and at lower cost than what we're currently spending to monetize them via Obamneycare. Both major parties use STDs, which is why they continue to exist. Democrats monetize them via mandatory subsidized insurance to capture constituencies and centralize power. Republicans use them to scare their base into following their preachers, thus consolidating power. Neither major faction wants to invest in ending STDs, because then they would have less power.
The chastity belt policy would not work because the same diseases spread other ways. HSV spreads via kissing, HIV via needles, hepatitis via not washing hands after using the bathroom, etc. People would still get disease, plus maybe injuries or even infections from all those belts.
@patrick
Do you know what is horrible? The fact that Patrick seems to think that decriminalizing an unfortunate social problem is the same as legalizing prostitution. Does it seem fair to you that these minors must have a permanent criminal file because of the life circumstances that led them into prostitution ??
Nice way to dramatize facts and lead people into believing your point by playing with words and facts.
@ddshutlz Should it be legal in California for children to go into prostitution?
The abomination is that this was even considered as a law.
Children are very impressionable and need to know for a fact that they are not allowed to go into prostitution, and if the do, then they have done something wrong.
If you're worried about their criminal file, simply seal their records. Why is that not a sufficient law? Why actually legalize children sucking dicks for money? It's sick.
So do you really think that by marking them as criminals and jailing them they are suddenly going realize that they had it wrong all along?
They would only be treated worse by a criminal justice system that does not care for them. These kids have most likely already been through what you and I have never experienced and you think they deserve to be locked up?
Instead of making illogical laws aimed at punishing and creating fear, why not use our resources to improve the society that creates these kids??
I'm the one against the california law...remember?
Hey Mr Ed, placing your response in front of the quote is considered bad form. Please add your reply AFTER the quote. What you are doing is akin to putting you cart before your horse, if you catch my drift.
So do you really think that by marking them as criminals and jailing them they are suddenly going realize that they had it wrong all along?
So do you really think that by telling them that they have done nothing wrong they are suddenly going to realize they have done something wrong?
They need to know that:
1. it's illegal for them to do it, and their pimp is lying to them if he says it's legal (sadly, the pimps are currently telling the truth)
2. there will be some consequence that they do not like, not necessarily juvie
Without those, you're aiding and abetting child prostitution.
why not use our resources to improve the society
Who ever argued against improving society? Not I.
@ddshutlz Should it be legal in California for children to go into prostitution?
The abomination is that this was even considered as a law.
Children are very impressionable and need to know for a fact that they are not allowed to go into prostitution, and if the do, then they have done something wrong.
If you're worried about their criminal file, simply seal their records. Why is that not a sufficient law? Why actually legalize children sucking dicks for money? It's sick.
WTF? The cops don't drive by, say oh that one's under 18 let's wave and say have a nice night. They take them in. The change in the law takes them out of the criminal court system and puts them in the social court system. Which is a lot more appropriate place for a kid that has gotten so screwed up they are involved in prostitution. What don't you get about that?
What is your obsession with a criminal record? The goal, at least most peoples goal you may be an exception, is to help them get out of trouble.
So do you really think that by telling them that they have done nothing wrong they are suddenly going to realize they have done something wrong?
A teenager turning tricks on the street damn well knows they have done something wrong. What they don't know is what to do about it and how to get out of it.
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http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/california-democrats-legalize-child-prostitution/article/2610540
I found this hard to believe, so I looked it up and it appears to be true:
https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billNavClient.xhtml?bill_id=201520160SB1322
It does not make it legal for customers to pay children for prostitution, but does legalize the act of prostitution by children. They cannot be charged with any crime for it, and this will be used to encourage children to become prostitutes.
#politics