Should Prostitution Be Legal? - Legal Prostitution Works Well in Many Countries Today

Prostitution is often said to be the oldest profession, and there's a lot of evidence this is true. The earliest texts we have reference prostitutes, either sacred ones working for a temple or street prostitutes. Throughout the Bible, prostitutes played greater or lesser roles in many stories, from Delilah to Mary Magdalene. In ancient Greece, the hetaera, high-class prostitutes, were seen as essential members of society, and sought out for their conversation more than their bodies.

Only when prostitution began to be associated with slavery - an association that lasts til this day - did prostitution become stigmatized. Abandoned girl children, criminal women, and captured slaves all became prostitutes in ancient Rome, and unlike earlier whores, there was no escape for them into marriage or ordinary life. With the advent of Christianity, prostitution slid even further down the social scale, becoming equated with terrible sin; ultimately, in the late Middle Ages, prostitution started to become criminalized, with women first forbidden to ply their trade except outside cities and burghs, and later not allowed to have sex for money outside an established and licensed brothel.

By the time the Americas were settled by Europeans, prostitution was often viewed as a serious crime, and those who engaged in it considered not just sinners but criminals. When the temperance societies outlawed opium dens, marijuana, and alcohol because they threatened society and family stability, prostitution was also outlawed. Only in certain counties of Nevada did it stay legal in the United States.

Criminal Prostitution

Today, prostitution is used to describe a wide variety of sexual activities. The primary test for whether something is prostitution is whether it involves genital contact between the parties. There are a number of sex jobs that are not defined as prostitution, such as exotic dancing or BDSM without genital contact, though these are often associated with prostitution, sort of gateway professions.

Women can even act in porn movies involving the most explicit sex acts; they are being paid to have sex. The finesse here is that they are paid by a third party, not the person they have sex with, and sex is secondary to the "art." But still, the woman is selling her body, and the man is doing the same - why should this be legal while ordinary prostitution is not?

Should prostitution of any sort be a crime?

Arguments For Legalized Prostitution

1. Sex tourism is a major cause of the exploitation of women and girls in third-world countries; with legalized prostitution, there would be less reason for sex tourists or for sexual slavery within our borders.

2. If prostitution were legal, all prostitutes could be licensed and required to have physicals on a regular basis, cutting down on STDs and unplanned pregnancies. In addition, licensed prostitutes would be able to go to legal authorities to get protection in cases where they are attacked by either their customers or their pimps.

3. Legal prostitution would eliminate a good percentage of women in jail, and possibly in prison. In addition, the unfairness inherent in that more prostitutes than their customers go to jail for the crime would be eliminated.

4. Brothels and areas of legal prostitution could be easily separated from residential neighborhoods, just as strip clubs are today. There would also be no reason for organized crime to take an interest in prostitution; instead of needing a criminal to get protection, prostitutes could go to the cops.

5. The high homicide rate of female prostitutes in the US (about 200 per 100,000) would probably decrease dramatically as women are empowered to seek protection from legal authorities.

6. Legal prostitution will lead to more equity for women's wages; instead of working at a substandard job for low wages, women will have the option of working as private sex contractors making much more money.

In Australia, prostitution is mostly legal. The many problems we see with illegal prostitution do not exist there; prostitutes have been well educated about STDs and safe sex, and those prostitutes who do not use intravenous drugs are among the lowest HIV-positive communities in that country.

Arguments Against Legal Prostitution

1. The UN and other international agencies are more or less against legalized prostitution because they do not believe it is compatible with human dignity.

2. Decriminalizing and licensing prostitution puts government in the position of being accessories to the act, an idea that many governments are uncomfortable with. However, decriminalizing and not regulating prostitution can lead to an uprise in disease and crime. (If the industry self-regulated the way the medical fields do, however, it might be a workable compromise.)

3. Poor, economically vulnerable women are most likely to turn to prostitution not because it is a choice, but because it is the best way to make a living.

4. Women who have been sexually abused or otherwise harmed are more likely to turn to prostitution, and it is not good for their psychological well-being.

Prostitution is one of the few issues that both the extreme left and the extreme right come together on, albeit for different reasons: both ends believe it should remain illegal.

But is this a rational decision, or is it one based on moral standards and feminist theory, rather than the realities of the world faced by prostitutes and potential prostitutes? More importantly, is the humane answer to continue with illegal prostitution - or to allow women the choice of whether to participate in the sex trade or not? These are not questions with easy answers, but perhaps it is time for them to be debated in public.