We’ve heard the argument a bazillion times: Consensual sex is legal. Exchanging money for goods and services is legal. Why then, when we combine these two legally sanctioned activities, do they become illegal?

The reasons for this are many and complex. Some branches of feminism view prostitution as a form of sexual slavery. The scriptures of the Abrahamites declare it a sin and they lobby for its illegality from a theocratic standpoint. Others object to the presence of prostitutes, which are perceived as bringing down property values. Still others object to prostitutes as lowlifes and disease-spreaders.

If prostitutes are low-lifes, then it is because their profession is illegal. If the act brings down property values, that is because it is not legitimized. Strip clubs bring fantastic amounts of money into communities, as do adult shops and pornography. Sex sells, and if the community isn’t receiving tax income from prostitution, then it is because no one pays taxes on illegal income. Want to raise property values in your neighborhood? Open a brothel next to the 7-11.

The risk of disease can be managed the same way it is managed in other professions. Massage therapy has endless restrictions, certifications, and procedures to prevent the transfer of pathogens between clients and practitioners. Tattoo parlors and acupuncture clinics also undergo stringent requirements to do business. VD Testing and mandatory condom use are just two measures legalized prostitution could use to keep both clients and practitioners safe.

There is one victim of prostitution, the prostitutes. They put themselves in danger walking the streets. Abusive clients victimize them, refusing to wear condoms or pay them. They are raped and robbed. They are scorned and persecuted.

All of these abuses are the result of the illegality of their profession. Prostitutes are victimized precisely because the government pushes their activities underground. They cannot seek police protection, like every other business in America does. Predatory elements attack them in the shadows because of their vulnerability, while law enforcement preys on them in the open. Prostitution would be a victimless crime if society would stop victimizing prostitutes.

With prostitution legalized, it would move out of poorly lit streets and alleyways and into respectable establishments. It would be more out of sight than it is presently. The scantily-clad women would be in a safe place, off the streets, with managerial oversight, bouncers, and panic buttons for clients that break the rules. Any rape that occurred would result in the rapist going to prison, unlike the present situation where the rapist continues to victimize in crimes that may go unreported.

When you look at it this way, people who believe Prostitution should be illegal are actually pretty misogynistic, supporting a social architecture that victimizes women by stripping them of their authority over their sexuality. The rare “feminist” who opposes prostitution actually works against feminism. The Christian fundamentalist works against grace. The homeowner works against their community’s welfare.

So legalize prostitution. Provide bouncers at the brothel to protect the women. Test clients and employees regularly for STDs. Require sanitary conditions, proper contraceptive use. Protect the anonymity of the women. Apply “sin” taxes to the establishments.

If we can’t eradicate prostitution, then we might as well cultivate a culture that benefits from the practice. Regulate, Regulate, Regulate is so much better than Criminalize, Criminalize, Criminalize.

---

Comments:

Apparently this article kicked off a pretty thoughtful discussion elsewhere on the net, if you’d like to hear others discuss the issue.

The biggest reason I like Evolutionary Theory over Creationism/Intelligent Design is that evolution explains the world around us. It’s a field that contains volumes of data on why things are the way they are today, following a path over millions of years to figure out how we got here. When we know where we come from, we know where we’re going.

Let’s look at some of the oddities of our shared existence and see what evolution and creationism have to say about them:

Teeth Problems

Human beings have incredible problems with their teeth. Tooth abscesses were a leading cause of death during and after the Renaissance. Dentists must regularly remove wisdom teeth, because our mouths do not have sufficient room to accommodate them. Braces are a common solution to the human race’s epidemic of misaligned teeth.

Other species in the animal kingdom do not have these problems. Cats, dogs, cows, rabbits, horses, foxes, beavers, snakes, buffalo, hippopotami, zebras, lions, kangaroos, and other animals aren’t keeling over dead all over the Earth for lack of dental surgery, just humans. Our mouths are simply too small for the large number of teeth our bodies try to cram into them.

According to evolutionary theory, we can blame our ancestors’ peculiar habit of cooking their food for this development. Soft, mushy, but yummy food does not require big macetors and a thick jawbone. So our jaws atrophied over the last few hundred thousand years. Our teeth have yet to catch up. Without dental surgery, people with teeth that are too big and too many to fit inside their jaws, ie. most of us, would eventually die out, replaced with people carrying the genes for more suitable teeth. Luckily, our neocortexes have found away to avoid nature’s way of fixing our designs and we can pull the excess molars.

According to intelligent design theory, a Creator made us with this flaw, probably for one of those great big “mysterious plan” things, which is another way of saying, “Who knows?”

The Appendix

“Its major importance would appear to be financial support of the surgical profession.”


– Alfred Sherwood Romer and Thomas S. Parsons.

The appendix serves absolutely no purpose in the scheme of human biology except to occasionally get infected, pop, and kill us, before we were capable of removing them through what is now a pretty routine surgical procedure.

According to evolutionary theory, the vermiform appendix is a vestigial caecum. Our herbivore ancestors required the organ to break down plant cellulose. Grass and leaves would gather in the caecum, which harbored bacteria and enzymes for fermenting the plants and breaking them down into a digestible form. When primates started getting their protein from more easily digestible sources, the organ fell into disuse, and atrophied to the pinky-sized organ now doing absolutely nothing in our digestive track.

For a deeper understanding of the matter, click here.

What’s the Intelligent Design theorists explanation for the appendix? It’s all part of the creator’s grand mysterious plan. So take solace in knowing that which designed you and your loved ones included this life-threatening flaw, because the creator loves you so much.

Menopause

The reproductive systems in female homo sapiens shuts down at a later point in their lives, preventing them from further baring offspring. This is a profoundly life-changing event for the majority of women, which affects their physical and psychological health.

According to evolutionary theory, Menopause prevents a female from baring offspring at a time in her life when she would most likely not live to raise them to maturity. Instead, the older female may now devote her energies to raising her existing offspring’s offspring, her grandchildren. The evolutionary adaptation known as the “Grandmother” was a very important development in homo sapiens’ culture adaptation and our success as a species.

I haven’t found any ID hypotheses on menopause, or anything else quirky about our apparent “designs.” This is because ID proponents are too busy attacking Evolutionary Theory to tackle the monumental task of explaining the world around them.

---

These are just a tiny sample of what’s wrong with the human body. There are the back problems we have because we haven’t fully adapted to walking upright. There are the infections we are prone to because our reproductive organs share space with our waste elimination organs. There’s the oxidation of tissues as we grow older, rendering them useless. There’s our knees and rotator-cuffs, which were not designed to last as long as medical science has extended our lifespans.

Why are we cursed with so many design flaws?

Because we weren’t designed.

---

I might be unfairly misrepresenting Creationism here, and if there are any Intelligent Design proponents who would like to take a stab at improving on my explanations, I’ll be happy to post them. I think that the biggest problem with ID is that it fails to explain the way our world works and any explanations it might provide are not provable through empirical evidence.

Prove me wrong?

I’ve been forced to listen to Rush Limbaugh many times over the last decade. Recently I was in a situation where I was exposed to three hours of his radio show a day for two solid weeks. The Limbaugh fans around me perpetually challenged me with their favorite pundit’s logic(?). It was an interesting experience, and my observations of these Parrotheads helped me to understand how many unthinking sheep come to their conclusions about politics… through deception and irrationality.

Here are some of my responses to what I’ve witnessed:

---

“Why Do People Care What Celebrities Think?”

This is a great question and one I’d like an answer to myself. Rush was reviewing Barbara Streisand’s comments on global warming, wondering why people respected her opinion. I checked out CNN, but there was no mention of Streisand’s commentary. Fox News apparently didn’t feel the need to cover them either. My Google and Yahoo news sources were completely devoid of Streisand’s statements as well. Even NPR, that evil bastion of liberalism, was left out of the loop on Streisand.

I thought Rush had a point, Streisand was no expert on Global Warming and he spent a full thirty-minutes of his three-hour show reviewing her inexpert commentary (You see where I’m going with this?). Rush dedicated 17% of his program to Barbara Streisand’s comments, which were otherwise completely ignored by the media–well, maybe E! covered them–but the question remains: Why are you parrotheads so obsessed with Celebrity commentary?

The answer to this question will require some introspection on your part, but I have an hypothesis, if you’ll indulge me:

While the rest of the world outside of Limbaugh’s talkshow wasn’t paying any attention to Streisand’s comments, they were paying attention to the Global Warming debate. There were these people called Scientists, who were having a very respectable debate over the issue. They are educated and conduct a great deal of research to find out what’s really going on with our environment. They also admit the uncertainty in their findings and argue for more research so we can get a bigger picture and–

Whoops. Sorry. I said “educated” and you stopped reading. Everyone knows people who go to school are merely elitist liberals with a political agenda to eventually bring about the destruction of Western Civilization… Or maybe Limbaugh is simply trying to “sour grapes” something he was never able to achieve: a college education.

What is Limbaugh anyway? He’s no expert on politics. He doesn’t have a degree in political science. He’s a talkshow host, a radio personality with no more expertise over politics than Oprah Winfrey. Imagine that, your demigod is simply another version of Oprah Winfrey… except she has a college degree. So he’s not even living up to that standard. You obsess over the opinions of a celebrity for three hours a day!

---

Please Respond to the Arguments Put to You.

When someone calls in to Limbaugh’s show and says, “Barak Obama said blah blah blah,” and Rush responds with, “Well Louis Farakhan said blah blah blah!” He’s not actually responding to the caller’s comments.

It’s not particularly clever either. Imagine if I were to do the same thing:

Conservative: You know Ryan, William F. Buckley Jr. believes a premature withdrawal from Iraq could destabilize the region and leave a power vacuum for another dictatorship to occupy.

Me: Oh yeah? Well your homegirl Anne Coulter said, “We should invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity.” You conservatives are really |=\_/(|( ed up!

You see, Rush likes to focus on the fringe elements of the American left and reduce all liberals to that fringe. It helps maintain this caricature of liberalism so crucial to his non-confrontational debate style. In fact, Rush, despite his large audience and millions of dollars, is actually part of the conservative fringe. Louis Farakhan doesn’t get invited to Democratic fundraisers, but Rush Limbaugh gets invited to the Republican ones.

Which raises a question in my mind: Dick Cheney regularly appears on Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity’s shows. This not only legitimizes them, but puts them in the party mainstream. Ann Coulter’s extremist rants have previously hit the New York Times #1 spot in book sales. The lunatics are running the conservative asylum. Is that something to be proud of?

How the hell did that happen anyway? How did Republicans go from Ronald Reagan to Sean Hannity? Barry Goldwater to Rush Limbaugh? William F. Buckley to Michael Savage and Anne Coulter? What the hell happened to all the respectable Republicans?

---

When you rant about the sixteen-year-old kid who gave you the crunchy-taco-supreme when you specifically asked for the soft-taco-supreme as being indicative of how liberalism is destroying America, you might think the silence that follows is your audience being awestruck, rendered speechless by your brilliance.

It’s not. They’re embarrassed for you. It’s an uncomfortable silence.

---

Here’s a funny one. I was listening to Rush bashing an anti-war (his words “Anti-America”) political demonstration in Washington, emphasizing, without citing any sources, the *fact* that there were far more demonstrators supporting the war at an alternate rally. The argument was pretty straightforward: More people were demonstrating in support of the war effort. Fair enough.

A little later he changed tactics. What kind of people are anti-war demonstrators that they can spend a whole day in Washington protesting? These people must be real losers. They can’t be employed and, as Rush often points out, taking part in demonstrations (ie: taking part in politics) is just plain stupid.

Now put the two arguments together: There were more war-supporters demonstrating that day and demonstrators are stupid losers–but I doubt Rush would word it that way. He’d probably says something like: There were more war-supporters demonstrating that day, and, even if there weren’t, it doesn’t matter because demonstrators are stupid losers. Go on. Have your cake and eat it too.

What kind of loser can waste three hours out of the middle of their day to listen to this silliness?

---

When people asked, “How will we pay for the Iraq War?” or “What’s the post-war plan in Iraq?” or “Won’t a war weaken our military leverage with Iran and North Korea?” You can’t make these questions go away with, “You’re UnAmerican!!!”

In fact, those questions remained and their realities have manifest and you can continue to ignore the 100-Billion Dollars a year its costing us, the troops dying, the civilians dying, and Iran laughing all the way into nuclear armament.

Whoops. Sorry, I triggered the “You’re UnAmerican!” response found in line 250 of your basic programming. If I had mentioned keyword “Bill Clinton” I would have triggered the standard response in line 124 of your code: “His only legacy will be a stained dress!” Keyword “Hillary Clinton” would trigger response #95, “She’s a feminazi!”

What’s with these talking-points? Non-Parrotheads have often speculated on the strange phenomenon of conservative talking-heads always making the same exact talking points on the same day using the exact same language. Recently it was the “Criminalization of Politics” meme all conservative parrotheads started squawking on the same day. We already know you have memos and e-mails to keep the parrot-heads on topic, but if you aren’t thinking about what your saying we can’t discuss it.

This creates real problems when I debate one of you. I get this **DOES NOT COMPUTE** look when I phrase things in terms outside of Limbaugh’s narrow scope. I’m trying to make you think. When, for example, I used the phone company as an example of how a monopoly suppressed market innovation, one parrothead just smiled vacuously, shrugged, and said, “Well Ryan, I simply must love freedom, God, and apple-pie more than you.”

---

Rush Limbaugh has not won the “Excellence in Broadcasting” award each year for I don’t know how many years. Yes, I know he has “EIB” all over his website and there are all sorts of distinguished awards given out each year by various reputable institutions for “Excellence in Broadcasting,” which recognizes factual integrity and public service, but Limbaugh has never actually won any of those.

The “EIB” on Limbaugh’s website refers to an imaginary institution called “Excellence in Broadcasting,” invented by… you guessed it: Rush Limbaugh. It’s his way of fabricating integrity for his show. The only legitimate awards Limbaugh has won are for his radio personality, which I agree is impressive, but irrelevant to his factual integrity.

---

You know everyone’s laughing at you behind your back when you proudly proclaim you are a “dittohead.” It’s like you’re proud that an overweight celebrity who couldn’t get a college degree is telling you what to think. It’s like you’re saying, “Hey everybody, I’m a sheep! Baaaa! Baaaa!”

I can assure you, we’re all impressed… just not in a flattering way.

---

Despite all of my criticism of Rush, I actually appreciate his contributions to American politics. He got people who were otherwise uninterested in politics to start grappling with our common issues. He spread political awareness, and that is always a good thing.

But Rush is the beginner level of political awareness, kinda like a preschool for people interested in politics. At some point you have to drop the training wheels and face the world on your own instead of letting Rush describe it to you. Unfortunately, far too many of his listeners go the other direction, towards more extreme and even less intelligent commentators like Savage and Coulter.

If you find it difficult moving on from his talk show, it’s because you’re addicted to the feeling of Self-Righteous Indignation you get from it. You know what’s a great cure for this? Try listening to Air America Radio for a week without listening to Rush. Listen to how unfairly they treat conservative callers. Watch how they completely misrepresent your opinion. Thrill as they only allow those facts on the air that support their claims.

Then go back and listen to one episode of Rush. Then you’ll see just how incredibly stupid he sounds. Free your mind of this nonsense and start constructively contributing to the American political dialogue.

Peace,

ry