Legalize It?

Since the Eliot Spitzer case back in March, the question of whether to legalize prostitution creeps up in the news from time to time. I'm pretty torn about it. The moralistic side of me says, Get those ho's off the street!, then my humanistic side says, They are consenting adults who live in an allegedly free world. They should be free to do whatever it is they want. However, looking at this age old profession, how really, can a government crackdown on prostitution?

Advocates believe this country would benefit by making prostitution legal. But what effects have we seen prohibition have in the past? Well... we learned that the crackdown on alcohol in the 1920s had no baring. In fact, it actually hurt the nation. We saw the birth of the bootleg trade of making whiskey and bathtub gin, which put many people in jail, cost the government (the society) money, and put citizens at risk due to its unhygienic form of production. Despite prohibitive laws, people found ways to indulge in alcoholic intake. The same is such for drugs and abortion. Activists who want prostitution prohibited, want to protect young women who have yet to develop those survival skills to combat pimps and drug lords, which breed violent, misogynistic, and oppressive behavior patterns.

I'm still stuck on the how are they going to govern this occupation? Will prospective hookers need to take a course to qualify? What will be the parameters? How will their income be monitored? What about putting some income tax on that arse?! That money might help the national deficit. Would the government become the pimp in this? How can this really be done? From what we see through the media, or even firsthand through acquaintances, these women are there for a reason, which usually is to escape something or they genuinely enjoy what they do. Policing them is moot. Mary Madeline was the first prostitute written about. And guess what happened to her? She was stoned, beaten, ostracized, and still, Jesus saw her worth. Nothing has changed. I am in no way saying that it's right, but prostitution has been around since the beginning of time. For those with the "Pay to Play" mentality, the government will have great difficulty stopping their transactions as they are completely "off the books" and often times, in private.

If the government tries to regulate prostitution, it will only cause it to form in other mediums, as we have seen through the Internet. Sex sells. Literally. We will always see help wanted/needed classified ads, Internet hook up sites, and those 900 number chat lines. Mankind is a visual and tactile one and prostitution fulfils a need for some.

So my verdict. There's that saying, "If it ain't broke, don't fix it." It's so broken, it's unrepairable. Due to the increase of people being diagnosed with STDs, HIV and AIDS, Hepatitis, and Tuberculosis, maybe with the government's intervention, medical checkups can become mandatory. But wait, that's moot too! Who actually admits to being a prostitute? Strippers don't call themselves "strippers," they call themselves "dancers." A prostitute probably calls herself a Human Resource/Personnel Manager. With that said, tax payers hard earned cash will continue to be funneled into arresting pimps and ho's and housing them in county jails only for them to return over and over again.