Maine becomes first state to decriminalize selling sex

Unfortunately, this falls short of respecting bodily autonomy.<p>&gt;Gov. Janet Mills, a Democrat, signed a bill into law this week that will eliminate penalties for those who sell sex while leaving in place laws against the purchase of it.

Well hold on then, why is it still illegal to buy sex from a consenting adult who isn&#x27;t being coerced?<p>What&#x27;s the advantage to keeping that illegal?<p>Demand doesn&#x27;t evaporate because you declare it to be illegal. The sellers will still need to accomodate their buyers who - not wanting to be arrested - will prefer buying in areas where enforcement is lax with all the increased risk that entails.

Why is this a thing in America to begin with? Sex markets do exist no matter what and have been forever.<p>In Order to really get a handle on some bad side effects and improve everyone’s life, the first step is accepting reality and decriminalize it. Then introduce protection laws for sex workers and make them pay taxes, like everyone else. With regulations and getting real data every action can be tremendously more effective than criminalized (= uncontrolled) black markets.<p>Even Al Capone was ultimately arrested for tax issues, everything else was not provable in court

I had a roomate who was dating a former dancer&#x2F;escort. I remember she telling us how the girls in the business were trapped in this drug - sex - money - drug - sex vicious cycle, some owed more money than they could make (which was a lot, at least compared to what I was making as an entry level engineer), so it was virtually impossible for them to quit.

TIL there are legal brothels in Nevada, the IRS briefly operated one (through a Trustee) but failed to obtain a county license, and then was duped into selling it back to the original owner at a fraction of the price.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.m.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Joseph_Conforte#Forfeiture" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.m.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Joseph_Conforte#Forfeiture</a>

The weirdest thing in all this debate is that selling yourself for porn is perfectly legal. How is prostitution different is beyond me.

In a lot of major cities, prostitution is largely ignored. One just have to look at the plethora of sketchy massage parlors. It is rare that someone is arrested for prostitution. It seems as though law-enforcement and society have tacitly agreed that so long as it is behind closed doors and doesn&#x27;t get out of control, people are free to do what they want.

Meanwhile, prostitution is completely legal in the entirety of New Zealand, Germany (since WW2!), the Netherlands, and likely other countries. It isn&#x27;t the proper role of government to interfere with consensual actions between adults.

Consenting adults should be free to do as they please

Read this on another thread. Pretty horrifying on legal brothels.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;nordicmodelnow.org&#x2F;2018&#x2F;07&#x2F;01&#x2F;working-as-a-receptionist-in-a-legal-brothel-prostitution-is-anything-but-a-normal-job&#x2F;" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;nordicmodelnow.org&#x2F;2018&#x2F;07&#x2F;01&#x2F;working-as-a-reception...</a><p>Note, I’m linking the story not the Nordic model. I don’t have an opinion on that yet.

This is what is described in the industry as &quot;legalization&quot; aka the Nordic model, not &quot;decriminalization&quot; aka the New Zealand model.

Prostitution would be legal except for the female vote.. it&#x27;s always the female vote that votes down and votes against the fun of males

people here asking why this is a bad thing.<p>For one, it is pushing people from &quot;low socioeconomical backgrounds&quot; into a life where everyone else, besides those calling prostitution &quot;sex work&quot; (but also many of these hypocrites), is deeply despising them on a very basic level, which no orwellian newspeak will compensate for.<p>Then of course, most of these people will be heavily abused, and it will be ignored since, you know, &quot;papers are ok&quot;..

I feel like this is an upside down black market. In drugs you want to create marketplaces to control the flow of the substance. In sex you want to ban marketplaces, even if you allow purchases and selling because those basically are too close to human trafficking or pimps, though you could create body guard and check in services to ensure sex workers get to an appointment and get back home.

Will this increase or decrease human sex trafficking?

Was&#x2F;is there ever a precedent of punishing both buyers and sellers? How did&#x2F;does it fare?

Logically, complete legal commercialization of selling sex would immediately show up in premarital and marital contracts.

And if you involve a camera, then it&#x27;s legal for everyone.