Only men who have access to NO women can be coerced into monogamy - having access to ONE woman - with the promise of existent sex. A man who has access to two or more women quite rightly perceives that one woman would be fewer women, and is not tempted.

Legal prostitution gives all men access to many women. This naturally and normally requires that a woman who desires to have access to a man must compete with prostitutes, and is unable to coerce the man into monogamy with existent sex. She must instead coerce him either with other qualities, or with preferable sex - sex that is better than he gets from prostitutes.

Who are professionals, and therefore experts.

Legal prostitution requires women to have more than just a vagina to secure the attentions of men. They must have - horror of horrors - other redeeming qualities.

I suggest that this would be an advance.

Does anyone really think that there are millions of women and children just sitting around looking for a job who decide to sell themselves? Worldwide prostitution is a $100+ billion industry servicing millions and millions of clients. Even at $5000 per hour look at the trouble the Emperors Club went through to find a women who was not addled on drugs.

The working life of a female prostitute is from around 9 years old to tops 30 years old. Once over 25 their value is significantly diminished. They might be acceptable for some of the more sever fetish services. Where then do all these women and children come from? Someone mentioned the wonderful brothel in NYC. As a resident of NYC I can pick up the Village Voice, the local alternative paper and within one hour bring you to a “brothel” that is staffed by sensual Asians or sultry “barely legal” East European girls. Most of these girls (and that’s what they are barely women) will not speak English and will probably not even now where they are. They are slaves. Right here in NYC!!! For the right amount of money anything goes. You want a 13 year old? No problem. How about a girl to beat and burn with cigars? OK $10,000. This scenario can be repeated all over the country. Pick up the alternative paper and find a slave within minutes.

There are simply not enough of the “high class” happy hookers to meet demand. Someone is going to procure and supply this flesh. How will that be regulated?

Recently I was passing a legal brothel in Amsterdam. I was approached on the street and asked if I saw anything I liked. When I replied not really I was pointed to two windows in a building across the street. In one window was a blue flag in another a pink. I did not understand and the pimp laughed. The blue was for little boy, the pink for little girl.

It was actually in the Civil War that brothels were shut down in our city, since for lack of latex protection against it, debilitating STDs were pulling Northern soldiers off the battlefield, often based on a visit to one of Manhattan's many legal brothels in what is now Chinatown ("The Bowery").

As one commenter noted, prostitution is one of Nevada's largest industries. Well, if you flip through the Yellow Pages of any big city like NYC, there are two huge sections of full-color full-page ads, one for law suit lawyers, the other for escorts (officially hired dinner companions, which in fact many actually merely are!).

Now imagine you are a politician:

(1) You understand that taxes should be low, since high taxes inhibit the economy after they pass around 35% (figure pulled out of the sky since the actual value is obviously the subject of highly politicized debate). Look up the Laffer curve:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laffer_curve

Would you want your term in federal or state office to be so libertarian that 50+% of the economy was suddenly taxed at the usual income tax rate? (such as California's No.1 cash crop being pot) which is based on the consensual crimes of drugs and prostitution and a little non-state-sponsored gambling thrown in. Where does all this laundered money go? To political kickbacks (campaign donations, bribes to prosecutors, judges and police etc. either as cash or as freebies, it being much more likely for a police officer to have sex with a prostitute than to arrest one).

(2) You want to reduce the stress in your highly public life by having a variety of nubile sex partners.

What is less risky? Getting frisky with an intern or going to a very discrete, high class escort service, one used to dealing with high profile clients, one known to not be in the blackmail business like some dumb girl on Craigslist. Note that few escort services turn in their own clients, little more than do drug dealers, since then they'd lose that client. But an intern or an "independent" prostitute? Much bigger risk. A few hidden camera images, and all the porn magazines start offering her a million bucks for a single photo shoot.

So if you are a politician (or priest for that matter, or rich with kids, etc.), do you want prostitution legalized and thus no longer extremely discrete?

For a real-world view of the largest brothel in NYC, and highest rated at the review sites (sites that allowed brothels or individual "sex workers" to garner enough reviews for customers to figure out they were not a police sting), see the recently busted, jailed and released blog of Julie herself, the owner:
http://www.julienyc.com

She tells stories of each of her prostitutes, and indeed (often because it is illegal and thus involves drugs and competing pimps etc.), there are stories of really screwed up (pun intended) girls, but also a story or two of those who finished school and now work normal jobs, or even one who married a rich client and is now monogamous.

The reason there are prostitution laws is because politicians need issues to run on. Going after sinners is always a winner with the religious voter.

Prostitution reduces a person to functional parts - making them a non-person.

That says more about how you look at call girls vs. how they are actually treated by those that know them.

It’s about what they can do, rather than seeing them as a whole person, immeasurably valuable and loved for who they are.

Yes, arresting them I guess is one way to show your love.

In other words prostitution strikes at the equality of that person under the law, which protects all of us.

So the law must protect people from themselves.

Spitzer’s daughters did not engage in the act, but I would hardly argue they were not harmed. That holds true for many others as well.

Whatever "harm" Spitzer's daughters suffered was due his infidelity. Maybe we should make adultery punishable with time in prison.

In fact, if there were no Mann Act and no laws at the state level against prostitution, we wouldn't know about the ex-gov.'s trysts with call girls, and his daughters would be in the dark too.

If you cannot see this then your love for others has grown cold.

Still on your cross I see. Of course, the current illegality is much worse for all involved, where hookers existing outside the law can take abuse from pimps, johns, vice cops, etc. IOW, the "love" you're showing them by having vice laws in the first place makes their lives immeasurably worse.

If we don’t stop it, we actively condone it.

Yeah, right. My parents weren't drinkers and thought alcohol problematic in many ways. It woudln't occur to them to lock people up for it though.

Don’t get so clinical that you forget to see real humans in humanity.

Don't get so holy that you forget to see real humans in humnanity. Fixed it for you.

I understand how many view prostitution from a Judeo-Christian perspective. But the bottom line is that there's nothing criminal about the act. To say otherwise is to bear false witness against the prostitute and her customer. For my money, that's the greater crime.

I find this a strained weak argument. A moments reflection should remind us that prostitutes are said to service their clients. This is not a spurious point. Take the commonly requested fellatio. It is an act performed on the client. The prostitute is not renting out her mouth. The John can't stop her and begin performing dental hygiene on the theory he paid for the mouth per se. She is paid to manipulate the client to a pleasing outcome just as is a masseuse or a chiropractor.

And if you accept this line of reasoning, then it is just a matter of simple generalization to include her other commonly employed orifices when used to perform similar services. Johns do not pay for a leg or a mouth or a head, they pay for specific actions on the part of the prostitute with specific goals in mind.

It should be seen then that in all these examples, prostitutes, masseuses, carpenters, no ownership of bodies is ever conferred. But payment for actions and services, deliverables if you will, is.

it’s not clear how prostitution per se creates harm to anyone not choosing to take that risk.

Go read some of the work that Donna Hughes has done on prostitution and sexual exploitation.

It seems that the reasoning on why laws are established in the first place is disappearing. Prostitution reduces a person to functional parts - making them a non-person. It's about what they can do, rather than seeing them as a whole person, immeasurably valuable and loved for who they are.

In other words prostitution strikes at the equality of that person under the law, which protects all of us. Spitzer's daughters did not engage in the act, but I would hardly argue they were not harmed. That holds true for many others as well.

If you cannot see this then your love for others has grown cold.

If we don't stop it, we actively condone it. Don't get so clinical that you forget to see real humans in humanity.

They weren't beaten because if they were, a member of the Gambino family would pay said assailant a visit.

Obviously In marriages where one partner works and the other stays at home this is tantamount to prostitution. There should be laws against things like marriage that mix cash, property and sexual relations.

When men cheat on their wives, a sexless marriage is often the reason. I ask which is worse, a man going to a prostitute to get that need taken care of, or forming a relationship which exists in true parallel to the marriage? Any reasonable person would say that in the greater scheme of things, for the majority of cases, our society would clearly be better off with men being able to easily pay for sex, rather than having to form emotional bonds with a woman who they otherwise wouldn't have one with.

There is a high-minded policy approach to this, which is to rely on pure principle, but that doesn't work in practice. Men will seek out sex, and will do what they have to in order to get it. The question is then, is society better off with them having to form relationships in order to get it from a woman they don't want to be attached to, or to just pay for it?

We've had a woman arrested recently here in Omaha for running a brothel out of her suburban house. I wasn't worried about my husband spending time there. I was worried that my children might be exposed to the idea that sex is a fine job, that sex is nothing more than a job. I want to raise my children with the idea that sex is something sacred, something to wait for. I have a hunch that they won't wait until marriage, but by raising them with the idea that sex is something special, something sacred between husband and wife, they will delay sex until they are grown up enough to handle the complex emotions around sex.

Kids are already exposed to sex as recreation through music and clothing. I don't want that lesson reinforced by the cute chick down the street who dresses cool and has plenty of "boyfriends" and money.

When you pay a prostitute, there is an implicit granting of rights to you over her body.

Maybe you need a little experience before you say this. The women I've known in this line of work are not giving up much, they control the whole thing. Just try getting out of line.

But beyond that, a robot could do it, and I'm sure will do it, down the road. Like anything else. And I am paying for the result of the interaction, not the interaction itself. When that's completed, I will have a very difficult time using your argument that I have paid for access to her body anymore, even if there's time on the meter, so to speak.

None of this matters-- the laws in place make the situation, if anything, WORSE for women in this line of work. The laws are NOT traditional, they are new. As with drug laws. There is no moral coarsening going on, there is a reflexive response to authoritarianism.

One thing I totally don't understand-- if porn is legal, how is there not an operation to pornify the prostitution experience? I mean sign a film waiver and shoot a throwaway scene in order to lose the legal problems? I'd be in.

I see no mention of human trafficking, pimps and violence, or the abused woman in the trade.

Those things are almost universally declaimed. They're just not necessarily part of prostitution. The $5000 an hour hookers in Spitzer's call girl ring were volunteers, had a female, white collar boss, and weren't beaten.

The concerns of abuse, then, could be dealt with by legalizing prostitution and regulating it to deal with excesses.