THE FOLLOWING IS AN EXCERPT( WITH NAMES DELETED TO COMPLY WITH TER RULES) OF AN ARTICLE WRITTEN BY A PROMINENT COLUMNIST APPEARING ON PAGE 18 OF THE N.Y. DAILY NEWS OF MARCH 15th, 2012. DYI.
The world’s oldest profession shows no signs of disappearing. On April 10, 1836, a prostitute was murdered in downtown Manhattan. Police charged a rich john with the homicide. The murder, arrest and trial were splashed across page one of The New York Herald, edited, tripling circulation and creating a new popular journalism of sex, money and murder.
Today, 176 years after that murder, prostitution stories still sell newspapers and boost TV news ratings. But maybe the fake outrage created by this latest installment, about the alleged soccer-mom madam, offers the right time for a couple of legislators with a pair of bills to try to legalize or at least regulate prostitution in New York.
But enough with the fake outrage, okay? Enough with the “Stop-the-presses! I'm shocked — shocked! — that there are hookers in New York!”Are we kidding, here in the city that never stops sleeping with everybody else? Anyone who's ever opened the back of a local weekly tabloid or logged onto the numerous internet websites knows hookers are everywhere. They've been here since the Dutch settled the town.
But legalizing prostitution will make the whole business safer for johns, hookers and the citizenry. It will eliminate violent, extortionist pimps, create cleaner, safer work environments, impose mandatory condom laws and STD screening of registered prostitutes by the Department of Health.
In Nevada, where prostitution is legal in nine of its 17 counties, there hasn't been a reported case of HIV amongst registered prostitutes since mandatory screening began in 1982."If I were able to get 1,000 girls working legally in Las Vegas, where prostitution is illegal, I could deliver the city a half-billion dollars every 18 months," says the head lobbyist of the Nevada Brothel Owners Association.He says we could times that by 10 in New York. Cash-strapped New York could rack up a $5-a-head Sack Tax, fees for brothel licensing and work permits, and income taxes from brothel owners and hookers.
Just as the repeal of Prohibition ridded the liquor industry of organized crime, vile hum an traffickers and snakeheads selling young women into sexual slavery would soon disappear because there would be no underground demand. It has been argued that regulating this industry would be much cheaper than arresting, adjudicating and imprisoning hookers, pimps and madams.
C'mon, does anyone actually believe we have a safer republic because convicted prostitutes did jail time? Prostitution is legal in many European countries, including Catholic strongholds like Poland and Ireland. Pimping is not. We've basically decriminalized marijuana use. Gamblers lose $10 million a week to a legal casino in Queens. The right of a man or woman to charge for a harmless service is also on the horizon. Small government conservatives should agree that morality can't be legislated.
But if you want to condemn true immorality watch the recently aired movie about two high-paid political handlers charged with tricking the American public into believing an incompetent Soccer mom nincompoop from Alaska who didn't even know what the Fed was, would be a worthy running mate for a 72-year-old presidential candidate. Their jobs redefined the phrase "whoring yourself."
That's more immoral than any of the charges against the recently indicted alleged upper East Side madam and her lovely co-defendant. Because she allegedly connected high-priced hookers with rich johns we are all supposed to be shocked?
C'mon, its fake outrage. Legalize or regulate prostitution so that law enforcement can focus on serious crimes like terrorism, gangs, guns, rape, the prescription pill epidemic, and murders of vulnerable illegal hookers that haven't stopped since a prostitute was butchered with a hatchet 176 years ago.
