Serious Question: Why does prostitution need to be illegal?<p><pre><code> In the U.S. it is *legal* to:
Have random, unprotected sex with anyone you want
Have sex with someone only if they take you out to dinner or give you a nice gift, as long as it's not a direct cash payment
Pay someone to have sex as long as its videotaped and records are kept (pornography)
Etc.
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But it is <i>illegal</i> for one consenting adult to pay another consenting adult directly for sex?<p>Why is this illegal? Especially since as the "services" get more expensive there is less and less actual sex happening. Multiple studies have shown that prostitution is less about the sex than about the john paying to have a responsibility and stress free relationship.<p>I may be missing something and be completely wrong but thats my $.02.
What is shortsighted about this is anybody who believes this has anything to do with sex. Thats about as ridiculous as to think the war on terror has anything to do with terror or that any politician really cares about the mosque in Manhattan.<p>You are being played.
For the record, I disagree with some parts of the analysis. In this case, Craigslist was more than a common carrier: it created a special section just for adult advertisements and charged money only for those advertisements. You could post a couch for sale for free, but you had to pay Craigslist if you wanted to post in the "Adult Services" section. The decision to charge for ads for that category intertwined Craigslist into profiting directly and intentionally from those ads.
The argument boils down to "we should let them break the law because then all the criminals are in one place". Which is absurd. Craigslist was profiting from prostitution, which is both illegal and morally repugnant.