So... how is this different from any other commercial venture?

Simple: it can occur without a business license or inspectable location.

As the Twitstream notes, porn production is legal in two states - CA and NH (!) - and in CA at least the production company has to have their ducks in a row, including health certs for the performers. Ref

You can do that right in the comfort of your own home (I suspect you work hard enough there already, AA).

Court cases are noted. When and if the public decides the legislature is too decent for them, the public can tell the cops not to jail prostitutes again. Instant solutions aren't ready.

There are a quite a few people that will have trouble distinguishing this targeted activity from a traditional marriage when one party is the primary breadwinner.

When a woman says "I'm cutting you off!", everyone knows she's talking about sex.

When a man says "I'm cutting you off!", everyone knows he's talking about money.

This doesn't mean the relationship is prostitution. As ruralcounsel notes, some fools will confuse this, and only people with advanced degrees are likely to be this foolish--the very people we can expect to become judges and journalists.

Men don't prostitutes to stay, they pay them to leave. If a man is supporting a woman he is in a sexual relationship with, that is not prostitution. If either says, "you cut me off, then I cut you off", that is not sex for money either, it's expecting relationships to be mutual.

Seems our quantity of knowledge correlates to a deficit in wisdom.

“Whether you personally agree with sex for pay, freedom to use drugs, or the right to own a gun, whenever rights and freedoms are taken from us by the government, there's more at stake than the particular rights and freedoms.”

There are a lot of freedoms I am personally in favor of, until they are doing it in the street in front of my house.

That includes prostitution, drugs, marching bands, leaf blowers, camping, political protests, shooting competitions, and commercial barbecue operations.

Aww, why do you have to diss marching band?

(Drummer, ages ago: audible at two miles!)

Aww, why do you have to diss marching band?

(Drummer, ages ago: audible at two miles!)

Radwaste at June 23, 2021 7:41 AM

I always felt sorry for the people who lived close to the route where our high school marching band practiced.

Back in the day, it was pretty much every morning at 9:00 during football season.

Before I was part of it, I could easily hear it from my house and I lived half a mile away. Our drum line was quite good.

When a woman says "I'm cutting you off!", everyone knows she's talking about sex.

Unless the woman is Lorena Bobbitt.

"Unless the woman is Lorena Bobbitt. "

Still about sex, technically.

"Aww, why do you have to diss marching band?"

You answered your own question: "audible at two miles"

Wondering with this new law if it is targeting the old traditional porn or the new and growing porn (Only Fans)

Notice how only the person who pays (almost always the man) is a felon. The person paid (almost always the woman) is not.

Business as usual. Nothing to see here, move along.

"This doesn't mean the relationship is prostitution. As ruralcounsel notes, some fools will confuse this, and only people with advanced degrees are likely to be this foolish--the very people we can expect to become judges and journalists." @Trust

No confusion. Actually, the only real distinction is time. People who want to overlook that troublesome little fact are in denial. They really want there to be some kind of moral difference. They are positively desperate to pretend there's some higher difference. It tends to make them want to insult the people who see that the difference is "how long." I think the difference is temporal, not moral.

> When a man says "I'm cutting
> you off!", everyone knows he's
> talking about money.

I say it every day, because I'm pissy in traffic.

Totes surprising, right? Impatient. Judgmental.

I say it every day, because I'm pissy in traffic.

Totes surprising, right? Impatient. Judgmental.
____

That's funny and true, and better than the Lorena Bobbitt style cutoff

If you give it away, legal. Even if 3 times/day to different people. Charge for it? felony. How about the women who go on dates to nice restaurants and then have sex purely for the nice dinner? If it is your girlfriend and you give her lots of gifts or even money, legal (I guess you need to take the hooker out to dinner first or use the same girl for multiple visits--presto "girlfriend").

Because the horror of prostitution doesn't get people worked up enough anymore, those opposing prostitution keep calling it "trafficking" as if all these girls are being kept in chains or are 14 yrs old. In some famous recent cases they finally admitted that there was no trafficking (after they got their headlines, of course).

Charles II, hearing of a high character of a preacher in the country, attended one of his sermons. On expressing his dissatisfaction, one of the courtiers replied that the preacher was applauded to the skies by his congregation. "Aye", observed the king, "I suppose his nonsense suits their nonsense".

- - - - -

In threads like these the absolutist libertarian nonsense mirrors the absolutist "believe all women" neo-puritanical feminist nonsense.

Exploitation and trafficking do occur.

This is not just another "transaction" - to believe so one must be either disingenuous or a virgin.

So laws like this must be on the books.
And mature good sense must be used in drafting and adjuticating them.

Now go to bed children.

> Now go to bed children.

Condescension of this purity affirms to a thoughtful libertarian that critics are presumptuously authoritarian, typically for some unfulfilled social neediness.

> Now go to bed children.

…He says.

Considering dating / sex apps are all the rage with leftist thinkers, (her body her choice)so ever meeting before hand or likely after becomes old fashioned. What is the difference between that and prostitution, $. So $ is evil.

Oh. Does this mean a lot of Texans are going to have to do without?

Exploitation and trafficking do occur.

This is not just another "transaction" - to believe so one must be either disingenuous or a virgin.

So laws like this must be on the books.

First, nobody was saying that exploitation and trafficking don't exist. But where it doesn't, it is just another transaction. Marriage is a transaction too. To believe otherwise, well, I don't know it is worth my time debating with someone who can't recognize reality. And those laws on the books actually put most voluntary sex workers in greater danger of exploitation.

If you want to make exploitation and trafficking illegal, go for it. I'll back you all the way. But making prostitution illegal is an indirect and ineffective, nay, counterproductive way of doing so. No matter how morally superior it makes you feel.

This is one of those things that sounds great in theory, but in practice is less so. The whole Leeds experiment was a complete disaster.

I agree it's a tough one because in theory, it's nobody else's business. But in practice legalized prostitution creates more of a demand, and increases underaged prostitution and human trafficking and other things that stay illegal... they still happen.

It also raises questions such as, if one is offered brothel work and turns it down, is one illegible for unemployment? Also, OSHA has strict guidelines about how employees must deal with body fluids... do we suspend them for prostitution? If so how do we justify keeping them for health care workers, janitors, etc?

There are a quite a few people that will have trouble distinguishing this targeted activity from a traditional marriage when one party is the primary breadwinner.

ruralcounsel at June 23, 2021 5:34 AM

You have a point here. Might I suggest that marriage became more like a paid sexual relationship when modern society romanticized marriage as being between two people with no apparent purpose other than bonking each other?

As opposed to forming a family, to support both children, and extended aged family members? Socially and financially?

So maybe we could all recognize that there is a big difference between prostitution and marriage if marriage hadn’t been dumbed down into this empty skin suit version of a deeply meaningful relationship that serves a very important social purpose?

> society romanticized marriage
> as being between two people
> with no apparent purpose other
> than bonking

Made a great living in Hollywood, so I ought not speak bluntly, but it was culture that offered the romanticization before society took it to heart.

The point is that people made money from telling idiots to "Trust your feelings, ____!"



It's difficult to admire, or trust, ninnies who whine all the time about "mainstream media," even as they watch 63 hours Tucker Beck on their teevee set, the *color* one, each and every week of the year.

Because by that very atrocity, it's impossible to deny that insipid moguls on both coasts have been directing the American mind, through formulaic, flattering messaging, for well over a century.

Balaji is correct in his suspicion of media incentives.

Everyone pretends to be cynical and wary of these forces, even as they fellate whichever one flatters their priors.

But the people who diminished marriage into something which could be passed off to gays with such transparent denigration didn't do so out of courage.

The felony threat may be a response to immigrant sex workers taking advantage of the free-for-all border policy to set up knocking shops on U.S. soil. More cachet and closer to wealthy customers (Bob Kraft, to name just one).
Molly Ivins used to write about about the Texas legislature. This new law could be racism, protectionism, or both.

While I agree society's view of marriage has changed drastically... I'm unclear which laws specifically people think have hurt marriage? No fault divorce?