Selling’s legal. Fucking’s legal. Why isn’t selling fucking legal?”
---George Carlin
I find it stunning that this nation still regards prostitution as a crime. It’s sad that we waste our cops and courts, trying to stamp it out, as if a good spin through the justice system will instill miscreants with the morals necessary to fly right. In this case, law enforcement is ineffective to the point of absurdity. Prostitution is the world’s oldest profession for a reason: it will always occur.
Denial, however, is powerful. It prevents us from viewing it as a social necessity. Consider how well prohibition is working when the very people who make and enforce the laws to ban it, also patronize it, including attorneys general, governors, and U.S. Senators!
As someone who pleaded guilty in a plea bargain for promoting prostitution, I freely acknowledge that I violated state law and for that I am both guilty and sorry. It is certainly not behavior I will engage in again. I’m out of the biz.
But it doesn’t have to be this way.
It is time to discard our moral misgivings and legalize prostitution for the benefit of society. I point to the murders stemming from Craigslist as evidence enough that our current approach fails us all. We cannot prevent girls with little knowledge or protection from hooking on line and getting murdered in hotel rooms. This is a shame and a tragedy. And we assuredly cannot prevent the operation of supply and demand: men will always be willing to pay for action; ladies will always be willing to sell it.
Once we recognize these simple truths, we can release our law enforcers from the utterly useless game of catch-and-release that they now play. We can obviate another black market. We can protect the public health and fill the public coffers.
As a former madam of New York City’s most successful prostitution ring, I can tell you that prostitution will always flourish, that men of every profession and stripe will patronize it, and our failure to legitimize it only creates criminals. I say we create fewer criminals.
Consider the drastic economic picture in the Empire State and consider the effect of decriminalization. Consider emptying a jail cell in exchange for some tax revenue.
I say legalize, regulate, and tax prostitution before you cut social services or raise taxes on New Yorkers, the nation’s highest taxed citizenry.
