NY may Decriminalize Sex Trade

NY Post:

More than a half-dozen sex-trade survivors and advocates from anti-trafficking and women’s rights groups gathered in Midtown to call on politicians to reject bills put forth in the state Senate and New York City Council that would decriminalize prostitution.

“We have now become a society that looks at the sex trade as an employer like any other, and prostitution as labor like any other type of work,” said Taina Bien-Aime, executive director of the Coalition Against Trafficking in Women. ...

“Every day we see that sex buyers and traffickers indiscriminately rape, kidnap, and torture the people that they’re buying and selling them in the sex trade,” said Ann Matheson, co-director of the Empower Center.

“The majority of sex buyers do not care whether the person they buy is trafficked, has a pimp, identifies as ‘empowered,’ or is a teenager.”

There are good arguments against prostitution (and/or sex work), but these arguments are not convincing. Prostitutes are not abused anymore than any other profession. Sure, customers care about the product, rather than the history of the product, but you could say that about a lot of things.

Everyone is against sex slaves and child prostitutes, but those are just bogeymen, and not relevant to the complaint here about NY City not enforcing laws against the adult consensual sex trade.

I think prostitution will be decriminalized in the USA, as no one is making serious arguments against it. Yes, major religions say it is immoral, and various groups say it is exploitative, but they do not get related to modern legal notions of consent.