One really good reason not to legalize prostitution
 

I had never even thought of this happening should prostitution be legalized, but this is scary.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main...30/wgerm30.xml

Yikes.

Damn, that's messed up.

Oh my Christ. As I'm on the "it should be legalized" bandwagon (healthcare benefits, std tracking, protection, etc.), I find this REALLY distrubing and upsetting. Where does one even begin to write letters about this. Or something. Oh my Christ, this is awful.

It seems it would be fairly easy to control here. If I remember correctly from my stint on unemployment, the "you must take an offered job" rule only applied to jobs that were within your industry. As long as they don't do something stupid like classify prostitution as simply "service", it shouldn't be an issue. Actually, as I think about it, how do they currently handle "exotic dancer" as a job option here? It doesn't seem to be a problem.

This is beyond messed up, and I can't imagine where the hell their brains are. It's going to be interesting to follow this.

That's horrible!!!!!! The part that really gets me is they were going to exclude brothels but decided they were to hard to distinguish from bars. Yea. Ok. How hard is it to distinguish a brothel from a bar? One serves alcohol and one provides sex.

Were you considering Chippendale's as a career option?

Haha...it's funny, but I'm with GD on this. There has to be a way to make exceptions...as we do with dancers and the like today.

Apparently their government is missing some logical thinkers...

Lets see how hard this would be...

"All persons looking for employment must accept any job offered to them except when that job requires sexual services."

Ooo my brain.... :rolleyes:

It also appears that the brothel can sue the job center for both not accepting their advertisment and not referring people to them.

Ok, I can see that. If the brothels are paying taxes like every other business they should be allowed to advertise like every other business. However an acception should be made to be required to work in one. I think that's right up there with sex slaves and blackmail. You either work in a brothel against your will or you lose all your benifits.

It ocurrs to me that there's a certain logical leap in one of the quotes in the article that I don't quite agree with...

Hmm, no, I'm pretty sure the regulations say that working in the sex industry is not illegal anymore, it says nothing of morality. And that's the way it should be. If it's againts one's own personal morailty, than they should be able to choose not to do it (which is the problem with the way things are set up in this case, it seems things are written poorly and denies the right to personal moral choice), but the government shouldn't dictate morality.

Hear hear GD! :snap: I knew I could count on you to come along and post what I was trying to say (but deleted it since it made no sense). :)

Um, yeah. What really sucks is that people will point to that and say "that's why we shouldn't legalize prostitution." :mad: Fvcking red tape BS. BTD is right, it's enslavement and nothing more.

What's up with "The government had considered making brothels an exception on moral grounds, but decided that it would be too difficult to distinguish them from bars. "

Brothel = sex
Bar = alcohol

Where's the confusion. One involves selling your body - one does not.

I have the solution though. Just classify it to be the same for men too. How many straight men are going to go to work in a gay brothel (is there such a thing?)?

... ... ... ...



I'd say more, but I'm just... speechless.... :confused:


That is horrible.

But by leaving it up to the choice of the individual to decide what is "moral" leaves WAY too large of a loophole.

"I can't take this job as a filing clerk because I feel it is immoral."

I think it'd be pretty easy to decide what may be a moral decision for some. Any job of a sexual nature. It may be immoral to some to take a filing clerk job with a porno company, and they should have the right to not take the job.

What about a job as a waitress?
How about a waitress at hooters?

These questions exist, how are they currently handled? Hooter has existed for quite a while now, can't say I've heard of anyone on unemployment being forced into slave Hooters labor. Or forced to work at a strip club, or forced to be a porn editor. It seems that whatever we have in place right now works perfectly well at allowing people their moral freedom to not be forced into morally contentious professions.

There are way too many directions this can go.

A vegetarian as a butcher.
A hindu as an exterminator.

I'm sure there are many other such examples, but I haven't the time to think of more.

Think of as many as you like, all they do is prove the point that this isn't a concern in terms of legalizing prostitution. These are all dillemas that exist today, and they are all handled.

Have you ever heard of anyone being forced into being a butcher or an exterminator?

No, because they aren't in "the industry/field" of the people who find it immoral.

It gets trickier, I would guess, for a vegetarian or Hindu chef, if they're offered a job at Ruth's Chris. I do wonder how that's handled.

I'm sure they aren't offered a job at Ruth's Chris. Why would they want to hire someone that doesn't cook what they cook? They would obviously have it on their resume.

Fair enough. Too bad this doesn't work as well for brothels, desperate for workers. Especially since some men will *do* just about anyone.

Again, how hard is it to clasify "sex industry" as a separate industry? No one now is being forced to work as a stripper, exotic dancer, Hooters waitress, etc. Heck, I'd be surprised if anyone has been forced to even take a non-stripping job at a strip club.

Actually that's exactly the situation that caused Scaeagles to start this tread. Here is a quote from the article:

"A 25-year-old waitress who turned down a job providing "sexual services'' at a brothel in Berlin faces possible cuts to her unemployment benefit under laws introduced this year."

Notice where that is..it's in Germany. I'm talking about here. They've obviously got something screwed up in Germany, but I've never heard of anyone being forced into stripping here, so if stripping is legal and that's not a concern, than there's no reason it should be a concern when considering the legalization of prostitution.

Ahh, I missed the change of venue so to speak.

Much as I hate to agree with GD, I really don't think it would be an issue stateside. Right now we are still a nation of entitlements. Unemployed slackers only have to apply for jobs. They have no incentive to actually take any jobs offered to them so they can easily stay on the dole for years.

Under that system, no one would be forced into unsavory working conditions.

Well, not really true. Your unemployemnt benefits can be revoked if you refuse a job offer from within your industry. But 1) it has to be in your industry, and 2) you can petition and they will continue your benefits if you give a valid reason for not accepting the offer. For instance, I was offered a job in my industry, however not until the person who would be my manager revoked a verbal offer without telling me, refused to return my phone calls, offered the position to someone else without telling me, and only after that other person declined, gave me an offer in writing. I explained to the EDD that I didn't feel obligated to take a job working for someone who had outright lied to me, and they allowed me to continue receiving benefits. I suspect it would not be particularly difficult for someone to say, "I refuse to be a hooker."

Well, I suppose my thread title was not what I intended. I just thought the story was outrageous - it is - and so I hooked (pun not intended) posters with that as the thread title. In Nevada, prostitution is legal in certain counties. Has been for a long time. I don't recall hearing of any such thing like this happening there.

OK Guys -- I don't know how many of you discussing this article seriously knew this but THIS ARTICLE IS NOT TRUE.

Look on Snopes.com :

http://www.snopes.com/media/notnews/brothel.asp

This news article is an "urban legend". At least, the article written was a hypothetical but never actually occurred. Read the snopes guys!

Hehe, can I give mojo to Snopes?

Snopes gets TONS of mojo.

You won't (or maybe you will) believe the amount of hoaxes and scams that get sent to me (mostly from my parents) via email. If it sounds a bit too strange to be true (i.e. there's a computer virus that's "causing panic in New York" but you haven't heard of it on the news...), then check it out on snopes :)

FYI for those of you that havent been to the site, they have a whole section on Disney urban legends which are fascinating.

I am a Snopes devotee. Nothing better than seeing the face of some paranoid co-worker fall when you bring up a page proving their latest paranoid rumor false :D

D'OH! I can't believe I didn't check Snopes!!!!!!!!

Well, it's brand new. The Snopes entry wasn't made until this weekend.