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Edited by Mrph1 on Nov 30th 2023 at 11:03:59 AM
In my case, no. I'm talking more about general societal welfare issues.
Either/or?
California recently passed a decriminalization law that basically says minors who engage in prostitution are to be treated as victims, not criminals. It's a great step towards getting exploited young girls off the streets and into care.
It's ballooned into a discussion of whether or not prostitution in general should be decriminalized, of which there are basically two viewpoints:
- Criminalization of prostitution hurts women by creating an environment that encourages exploitation, trafficking, and abuse.
- Decriminalization of prostitution hurts women by creating an environment that encourages exploitation, trafficking, and abuse.
Am I being patronizing when I don't respect people who choose to get drunk? Am I being patronizing when I don't respect people who choose to abuse drugs? Am I being patronizing when I don't respect people who choose to gamble? I think all of those are bad choices, and all of them are sleazy things to do. If that makes me patronizing, so be it.
The key though, as I said, is that I don't have to respect something to think it should be legal. I do not have to respect your choices to think you have the right to make them. What you do may churn my stomach, but so long as it only effects yourself, so be it.
A possible response to this—and keep in mind I'm playing Devil's advocate here, not necessarily stating my own beliefs; I'm on the fence with this—would be that when a typist's boss says "I need you to work an extra shift", with the implication that getting future shifts is dependent on it, that's not rape. If a prostitute's boss does that, there are some serious unfortunate implications. The notion of a business where trying to get someone to cover a shift requires getting that person to consent to sex is inherently problematic to some.
Hai, guyz? The thread was warned just recently for veering off into apocalyptic despair. It has previously been warned for derailing into other areas as well. A derail into the moral status of prostitution is also a derail. I participate here a bunch and I would prefer it not be locked down for a week, or forever.
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"Yes, I had just hit the "send" button when I realized that it meant this.
Also, since it got drowned out by the prostitution discussion and I am not overly keen at hearing another rant about how Trump is evil - there needs to be some kind of positive stuff to discuss here - I'll ask again about the points and questions I made here
(that's a list of recently enacted California bills):
- "Redskins" rename: No personal feeling, but then my opinion on it is not really relevant. Approve.
- Welfare payment: Good.
- Minimum wage: See, if memory serves the Golden State has such a nuanced economy that making several minimum wages per region may make sense, rather than one across the board.
- Assault weapons: Not sold on this. I still think it's more symbolism than anything.
- Park name: Dunno what that means.
- Contractors: I'd like to see a definition of " that could affect their work".
- Gun loans: Reserving judgment; not sure if that is an effective measure to avoid "straw purchasing".
- Prostitution sentencing: I'd like if they went a bit further with decriminalizing prostitution but that needs a lot of by-work to work. I am also a bit unclear on what "repeat prostitution offenders" is.
- Sexual assault: While replacing California's age of consent law with a Germany-like one is not likely to be acceptable (but I don't know about practical consequences it would have, and suspect it won't), I'd go even further by picking their definition of "rape of a minor" - any sexual encounter where consent is not given by a free decision should be illegal.
- Rape sentencing: Good. May be worth going further.
- Distracted driving: Questionable whether it will work, but good.
- Car seats: Dunno.
- Public financing: I wonder what way that spending will be used. Pity that it's got a good chance of being struck down by courts.
- Mail ballots: Seems like it's not as broad as the Swiss one, but good.
- Voter registration: Good, although I don't know if one can go even further.
- Epi-pens: Somehow that sounds more like ad hoc legislation - what specifically are the effects?
- State travel: "Screw you!" legislation. Not sure about how useful it is but then I am so utterly over the bigots.
- Asset forfeiture: See, if memory serves, that is a major abusive policing technique and has been discussed as such in the Law Enforcement thread. I'd go even further, but good.
- Felons voting: What is a "low level felony"? I thought that felon voting is always a "yes-no" matter with a few states in New England allowing it.
- Hot dogs: I distinctly remember seeing a shield about such animals in soldering cars here in Switzerland a few days ago. Good.
- Date rape drugs: What I said above about "sexual assault". Good, although I wonder about the listing of drugs.
- Ballot sharing: That is an odd bird. No opinion.
- Boycott, divestment and sanctions: Seems like a good way to go about this.
- Right-to-try: Seems fine. "Must be effective at killing" is not something that the FDA wants from a drug, anyhow.
Seems like it's mostly stuff that I approve. Although the "bad joke" point in my earlier post still stands.
eta: Struck out the bit that was so misleading to people.
edited 18th Dec '16 3:37:02 AM by SeptimusHeap
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard FeynmanIn regards to everything California's doing, think they should have "No pasaran (They shall not pass) as a secondary slogan?
@ the Epi-Pen thing: A lot of colleges and government offices have an emergency supply of epi-pens, just in case something happens. This bill allows private businesses to request a stock for their use. It'll hurt the company that makes epi-pens (and recently put the price up way too high) because there's a special government rate that hasn't changed, and private businesses would get the pens through the government. The other thing is that the pens are useless except for their intended purpose (you can't get a high or anything from the contents) so allowing private businesses to keep them around just in case is a good idea.
The Washington Post is working on it
Link description: article in the Washington Post explaining a Chrome extension they've created to fact-check twits made by the Trumpenfhurer.
1 2 We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be. -KV

What California is doing is essentially the Swedish system, albeit for minors only. It's illegal to be a pimp, it's illegal to hire a prostitute, but the sex worker herself is presumed to be a victim rather than a criminal.
While this reasoning has nothing to do with traditional prostitution bans (which are based on a combination of sex-negativism and misogyny), the Swedish argument for banning prostitution is that it is exploitative of vulnerable women and encourages, and that legalized prostitution legitimizes prostitution using unwilling workers (such as human trafficking victims - that's a huge, huge problem in Europe). Under such reasoning, it makes no sense to lock up the exploited vulnerable woman.
Now, if you're running a prostitution ban out of simple paternalism or misogyny (traditionally, the two have gone hand in hand), obviously the "fallen woman" is the one you want to arrest and punish. But while that attitude informed most of the laws when they were written, it's becoming increasingly archaic in the eyes of the mainstream (though we still have plenty of people who reflexively oppose legalizing prostitution because they don't approve of it). Hence we have the US still hard-banning it outside of Nevada (where there's a massive amount of NIMBY on the subject) while Europe has a widely-varied patchwork of experiments in dealing with it.
@Lance: It may not be immoral, but there are still solid reasons to ban it. In particular, you don't want to legalize it in a way that makes it easier on the purveyors of involuntary prostitution.
edited 17th Dec '16 5:55:10 PM by Ramidel