Saturday, February 16, 2008

Thoughts on Prostitution

Let me start this by saying I have no plans to ever pay for sex. I've been watching Boston Legal recently, and this has gotten me thinking about laws and arguments. Thus this post.

My thought process started by looking for a good defense. First, it may be possible to characterize the transaction as paying for time during which sex just happened to occur. Undercover police officers would word things to avoid this possibility, though. Then I wondered if it were legal to hire someone to keep you company (an escort, which seems to be legal) only with the understanding that sex would be a recreational activity. A clever prosecutor could still charge you with sexual discrimination or harassment (do these crimes require the apparent victim to file a complaint?), but at this point you'd be paying for someone's time, rather than paying for sex.

This got me thinking about general hiring restrictions. If I pay a woman to spend time with me and perform sexual acts, I am hiring someone to perform a service, just like any other employer. Where does the restriction on purchasing some services come from, then? It is illegal to hire someone to kill, but killing is already illegal. What other services, that aren't already illegal themselves, are illegal to hire for?

Perhaps I should actually read relevant laws and case studies. That just seems like a large waste of time to devote to something that will have no practical application in my life, though. Oh well.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Or the most obvious answer: our legal system is not free from intrusive Puritanical influences and that there is no justification as gov't should have no role in this in the first place. Don't try to make sense of and understand something like this. More civilized countries recognize that it's just a consensual transaction of time and allow it.

babaBrian said...

I think what's more weird is this: okay, you offer a woman money for sex, and of course it is illegal. But you do the same thing but instead promise to video tape it, then bam you're an entrepreneur.

Anonymous said...

"What other services, that aren't already illegal themselves, are illegal to hire for?"

While not a service, organ donation laws in some countries can be an example. It is legal to donate an organ, but illegal to sell/purchase one. A person can survive on one kidney so it does not necessarily lead to any harm for the donor.