People (most of whom do not share my view on prostitution being wrong) have said rightly that there are bigger issues like economic recession and kids graduating high school and not knowing how to read or write and better foreign policy.

I think we have to get back to the basic point of what should the government be responsible for? I mean, people are going to be stupid and malicious and selfish, and making something illegal doesn't stop anything. Admittedly I went on a long rant about how I feel about prostitution, but really it's not a question of should people engage in prostitution, it's a question of qhat the government should do about it.

I am a Bible-believing conservative Christian, which unfortunately shuts most people's ears immediately, but during the recent Pesidential primary struggle for Republicans, I was very interested in Ron Paul's point of view. He is not a Christian, and from what I read he doesn't even like Christians, but basically what he said is that it's not the federal government's job to regulate abortion or homosexuality or education. The government is here to protect us and ensure economic stability. It is not the job of the federal government to regulate religion or impose on the rights of individual states to make their own executive decisions. It's just my personal opinion that that's what the founding fathers had in mind when they penned the Constitution. The original 13 colonies were split up largely based on differing beliefs. Catholics in Maryland, Puritans in Pennsylvania, largely atheistic society in the Carolinas more based on economic ideas. I don't want more federal control. It already scares me the amount of power the government has, and we keep asking them to take more control (especially when you vote Democrat, but that's a different discussion).

I say let voters and states decide what they want. If Nevada wants to completely fill itself with gamblers and prostitutes, go ahead, let me move to a place where I feel I have more ability to raise my family and do the things that are important to me. Maybe the federal government should be less focused on abortion and prostitution and other things like that and be more about protecting and stabilizing the country as a whole.

Maybe I'm wrong about this... I mean, you still do have the legislative and judicial branches of the government whose sole purpose is to make and enforce laws.

It would be interesting though, to see what happens in places that legalize everything if we have clear boundaries like state lines. My guess is that in places that promote gambling/prostitution/pron/wha­tever that it wouldn't take long for things to fall apart.

What I get from your post is that people have different views and behaviors and unless these behaviors have a major impact on those around them, society shouldn't try to control said behaviors by using the power of the state. I agree but there is still one major question to address; how does one detremine if behaviors have 'a major impact on those around them'?

For example, take using drinking booze. It is a crime to drink and drive and it should be since it meets the criteria of 'major impact on society'. But it is legal to drink as long as one doesn't harm others by doing so.

The only area I disagree with you one is the last paragraph. Look religion has been around forever and things still 'fall apart'. In other words religion and dogma hasn't been show to work any better than secular education.

YES, I'm one of those secular people BUT I have many of the same values as religious people. e.g. I'm married and would NEVER cheat on the wife or engage in prostitution. Legal or not legal.

In otherwords most people are good people. You need to have more faith in mankind instead of only with Christians like yourself.

Well, as far as religion goes, so many people just use religion as a means for justifying their behavior or to tell other people how wrong they are. To me, religion is dead and worthless. Without going into it too much I don't believe that Jesus taught religion at all, and having a relationship with God is not about having all kinds of rituals and actions, it's having a change of heart to care about people and to care about God.

With that said... religion has always been exploited and will always be exploited. Just take any history class. I would disagree with that one point because if you really read the Bible and adhere to it without twisting it to your own ambitions, you're not going to have a decaying society where people are taken advantage of everywhere. Human nature messes up a lot of things my friend.

As far as "major impact" and prostitution, I don't see that it really affects people who don't choose to participate besides a general degradation of society, which is of course only my personal opinion. I don't have any stats to back it up, and I'm saying this is an area where the government maybe should not have control, so I don't have to back that up :) As far as I see it, people accept the consequences for being idiots when they engage in prostitution, on both ends. That completely excludes the women who are still forced into it, and my heart aches for someone in that desperate situation. But it seems that the majority opinion is that the girls involved choose it.

If it really concerns you that millions and millions of people are contracting STDs and that the practice of prostitution is a factor in that, I guess that puts you on the side of keeping it illegal. I agree with some of my more liberal counterparts that there are bigger battles to fight and the consequences that sometimes come with prostitution are worse than any fine or even jail time.

Making prositution legal would reduce the number of STD. Prositution should be legal with major penalties for forcing someone into it.

Just like booze is legal but it isn't legal to give booze to somone under age.

I'm sorry, but I just don't really believe at this point that increasing the availability and number of potential sex partners would decrease STDs at all. I'm just coming from the standpoint that so many stats are made up. There was a poster eaerlier who was quoting stats that said the murder mortality rate of prostitutes was like 280x that of married women. Almost without exception studies like that have an agenda. I prefer to go off of common sense. Trusting a little piece of rubber that may or may not work (as condom producers will say) just doesn't seem like the greatest defense.

I'm not trying to make this a big issue. I just wouldn't trust some numbers that a group puts together. Our country is too political for objective opinion anymore. To me, it's just common sense. So these 25% of teenage girls with STDs get a little older, some of them to be prostitutes, probably a greater number than now if it is legalized. I doubt very much that condoms will get any "safer" than they are now, and even if absolutely everyone is protected, you still have cases where the condom fails to protect. Now add to that an increased number of kids with STDs as free sex becomes more and more common and the fact that no matter how hard we try, some people will go unprotected, and you have my basis for that claim.

I agree with you that we should all be leary of 'stats'. Good point.

I'm just using common sense here; Anytime an activity is pushed underground there is more crime and more victims. The most known example is when the USA outlawed booze.

Ok, I have to play devil's advocate here. Why shouldn't everything be legal then? In many European countries, kids are allowed to drink, why not here?

In Amsterdam you can do whatever you want. It may be a cesspool in some people's opinion, but people seem to be happy. Why not here?

You said that whether or not we have laws should depend on the affect on society, well what about people who are constantly strung out on a variety of illegal drugs. I've never been affected by them and as far as I know the only crime that comes of it is the act itself and the violent actions addicts take sometimes to ffed their addiction because of the high price due to it being illegal, a.k.a. the black market phenomenon.

Still playing devil's advocate here to try and get to the heart of where you're coming from... But why not legalize durnk driving? Because it places people in danger who are not drunk? Well I don't know what the stats are, but I bet a heck of a lot of prostitutes have STDs. Doesn't that affect their clients, who in turn may or may not go home to a family where they transmit it to their wife and possibly future children?

In your argument you ahve to assume some boundaries... 1) The people it affects and their consent in whatever activity produces the consequences. Is a wife or future child less innocent than a kid in a carseat? What about the other drunk people in the car? 2) The number of people affected. Drunk driving kills way too many people every year, while the number of wives (or husbands) who contract an STD from their partner's participation in prostitution is far smaller, but it still happens. How many non-consenting people have to be affected before it's serious? 3) The severity of consequences. Does the innocent person affected have to die? Does it have to be bad enough to affect their quality of life for the rest of their life? How many STDs have serious physical affects?

You have to draw at least 3 distinct lines in order to differentiate drunk driving from prostitution. Now what qualifies you or anyone to draw those lines?

Ok, back to the pushing activities underground point I started on... sorry...

I just don't think the answer is to make everything legal. It's not a solution at all IMO. If you don't have some kind of MORAL basis for laws, then how do you draw those lines I was talking about?

All that said I'm really not sure if I think the government should continue to ban prostitution. I am absolutely fundamentally against it, but I don't know where the government should step in.

lol... I don't even know if I addressed what you were talking about.

It isn't black and white of making everything legal. Booze is NOT legal 'any place \ at any time'. There are restrictions and I support MOST of them for the safety of society reason I gave.

It is my understanding that legal prositutes in Nevada have less STD then ones that have to opererate underground.

Well, to my mind the larger issues relating to prostitution are basically the fact that it is largely run (whether or not it is legal) by organized crime in many, many countries. This and the general issues of violence relating to prostitution.

The key thing is that we need a real discussion as to what needs to be done about the problems. Legislating sexual morality is not a legitimate goal of the state (see Lawrence v. Texas). The larger issues around prostitution are fair game, though.

To my mind this means:

1) Define what social harms come from prostitution and catalog them.

2) Look at the mechanisms these social harms arise from.

3) Come up with a rational and multi-leveled approach to these harms. This may or may not include legalizing prostitution, but we won't know until we go through steps 1 and 2.

4) Measure progress and if necessary change course.

Isn't the goal of the state government to protect against the real social harms in these cases? Shouldn't this be the basis for public policy?

Steps 1 & 2 have been done and re-done over and over again.

And, the ultra-rational people of such 1st world nations as Switzerland, Germany, New Zealand, and the Netherlands have determined that society is better off with legal, safe prostitution. And these are not liberal people by and large, mind you.

This is borne out by simply comparing the negative effects of prostitution between the US and these nations. I'll give you a clue: the Swiss have less rape, less STDs, and nearly no violence against prostitutes.

Simple fact. Legalizing an activity always A> diminishes criminality and violence associated with it B> increases the safety of the activity C> re-integrates the sub-cultures and alienated individuals who practice said activity into society and D> rarely increases the practice of said activity, and often decreases it (as in the soft drug use in the Netherlands.)

For people to act as if we don't know what would happen, or that our civilization would go to the dogs... tell me honestly which American cities are safer and nicer than Zürich, Geneva, Berlin, The Hague etc. etc. (all of which have legal prostitution, and varying degrees of drug tolerance) You think Amsterdam is a cesspool? It is a beautiful, cultured city with far less social problems than any US city (even those in Utah)... and this is despite the fact that the majority of people there are tourists on drug & sex tourism binges. Basically all the cities in the Kingdom of the Netherlands have legal drugs and prostitution. Have coffeshops and brothels ruined Utrecht, Arnhem, Leeuwarden, Harlem (the original one) or any of the other cities with huge numbers of brothels and coffeeshops per capita? Obviously not. These cities make Connecticut look like a cesspool.

Wanna see what happens when the government lets people have their relatively victimless vices? Buy a Eurailpass.