Coloradans are currently debating SB26-097, a bill that would remove all penalties for consensual commercial sex work.
Oh, my. Republican pearls are being clutched. The Democrats who sponsored SB26-097, meanwhile, are anxiously citing boring and ambiguous studies from foreign countries that have legalized prostitution.
The legalization of sex work is generally unpopular in the USA. Conservatives don’t like it because it involves sex. Progressives don’t like it because it involves free enterprise.
Many men and women—of both political persuasions—don’t like the idea of turning sex into something mundane and fungible…because that could upset innumerable social hierarchies. There is inherent and potent social power in the asymmetry of sexual opportunity, for certain men and women alike.
What about me? As I note in the video below, I assess consensual adult sex work through the same lens that I apply to marijuana legalization. (In my view, recreational marijuana is far more harmful, because marijuana use is more widespread and unhealthy than nookie-for-cash will ever be.)
Commercial sex work, like recreational marijuana use, should be discouraged but tolerated within reasonable limits.
That means no brothels in shopping malls, no sex workers speaking at your local high school on Career Day.
But if a man and a woman want to have sex, why should it automatically become a crime if one of them (almost always the man) forks over some money? What can be freely given can be freely sold, is the way I see it.
But I’m not a resident of the Centennial State. If the news stories are any indication, Coloradans disagree on the measure. To be sure, this would be a radical change; and reasonable people can disagree about its justifications and impact.
But there is one line of argument that is particularly weak: a generic appeal to the sensibilities of families and children.
We all love families. But if a particular family can be destroyed by someone else having family-unfriendly sex, then maybe there’s a problem with the family in question. Are families also threatened by consenting adults having non-commercial sex outside of marriage? (Some Colorado Republicans are already looking into that question, no doubt.)
And while the protection of children is a laudable concern, there is an important distinction between an imminent and unavoidable threat to children, and a hypothetical threat.
Otherwise, adults should never be able to do anything unsuitable for children, or anything potentially harmful to them.
That means no bars, no bow hunting, no alcohol sales, and no cigarettes or vaping. I can think of any number of ways such indulgences might bring harm to children.
Oh, yeah…and of course: no private gun ownership, either.
While we’re at it: maybe adults should stop driving cars, too. During my childhood, three kids I knew were killed by adults driving cars, after all. If “protect the children” is the primary consideration, then I can make a strong case for banning all non-essential use of the automobile, based on empirical evidence from my own tender years.
On the subject of drivers, people who drive while talking on their phones are an imminent threat to all of us—including the children among us.
Drivers who use hands-free bluetooth connections are dangerous, too. I’ve met very few people who can adequately pay attention to traffic conditions while yapping on the phone—usually about inconsequential nonsense. And the vehicle next to such a driver might very well be a minivan full of children.
So how about a nationwide ban on any and all non-emergency cell phone use in moving vehicles?
What? You mean you like having the freedom to catch up on meaningless gossip while you run your errands? And here I thought that you wanted to minimize the dangers to children…?
-ET