I can't remember a time when prostitution was illegal in Australia. It's hard to understand countries where it's not legal. Funny even that's it's an interesting topic.
There's a small brothel just around the corner from my house... along with several restaurants and cafes, a pet store, two small grocery stores, a hairdresser, a bakery, a post office, a pharmacy, and a tram stop. It's all very unremarkable.
Just one? I was really oblivious for a while. Then several years ago it just clicked in my head what all these unmarked doors with comparatively prominent door numbers were. In the normal course of the week I pass at least 5 small brothels.
Just one that I can describe as "around the corner from my house"! :) Though I know of another two that are visible from the front door of my wife's workplace, and a third around the corner from there.
There's even a directory site, www.melbourne-brothels.com, though it seems to be down at the moment.
You really can't understand why it would be illegal? Even if you are radically opposed it should be pretty damn easy to come up with a long list of reasons as to why someone else might wish it to be illegal.
And then you compare those reasons to the reality of the situation, and the arguments for legality and you "(find it) hard to understand countries where it's not legal".
He didn't say "I can't think of a list of reasons for it to be illegal".
"Sex trafficking statistics are frustratingly incomplete, but a recent report estimated the number of victims in Europe at 270,000."
We accept this form of modern slavery?
"Denmark, which decriminalised prostitution in 1999 – the same year Sweden made the purchase of sex illegal - has four times the number of trafficking victims than its neighbour despite having around half the population."
> "Sex trafficking statistics are frustratingly incomplete, but a recent report estimated the number of victims in Europe at 270,000."
> We accept this form of modern slavery?
I don't, but prohibiting prostitution is a certain way to ensure that sex-trafficking will remain an issue, due to the huge demand for sex workers.
Much like we can't stop the cartels in Mexico until we decouple them from their hundreds of billions a year in funding from US drug users, we can't attack the problem of human trafficking in earnest until we are willing to remove the demand in markets for illegally obtained people - which requires that we provide those markets some other way to find people.
> "Denmark, which decriminalised prostitution in 1999 – the same year Sweden made the purchase of sex illegal - has four times the number of trafficking victims than its neighbour despite having around half the population."
> There's a good argument against legalization.
This doesn't address the topic under discussion, both because we're missing appropriate stats for those countries pre-change, but also because the change cited isn't the one we're talking about.
Fundamentally, decriminalization is different than legalization, because it leaves control in the hands of black market actors while simply removing some of their penalties for operating (perhaps only at certain tiers).
If you think that's a "good" argument against legalization, I'd say that we should legalize tomorrow.
> "Denmark, which decriminalised prostitution in 1999 – the same year Sweden made the purchase of sex illegal - has four times the number of trafficking victims than its neighbour despite having around half the population."
That's not very strong evidence. It could easily be that the sex industry in Denmark was thriving pre-1999 and floundering in Sweden (with policy choices & trafficking as results).
Better proof would be comparing the growth rates in trafficking between two countries with similar base rates, where one legalized and one didn't.
Intuitively, I hope you can understand why many people think legalization can be a great tool for combatting trafficking. By doing so, you move the sex trade out into the open and away from gangs/criminal syndicates and allow for regulations which can serve public health & anti-slavery purposes.
Indeed, I do think there are better approaches than driving prostitution underground. My goal was just to point out that there are other arguments than "sex is bad" against legalized prostitution.
It is one of the top destinations because of all the tourists that want to come to the country where prostitution is legal.
If you walk through the red light district of Amsterdam at any given time of day there will be tourists packed wall-to-wall and relatively few locals (they are mostly on the 'supply side').
If every country would legalize prostitution the draw of this would be greatly reduced and Amsterdam would lose some tourist income (I'd be more than happy with that).
Drugs same thing. I don't know any dutch people that consume on a regular basis but almost all the tourists that I know and meet going to Amsterdam can't wait to get stoned.
