| By Dr. Michael Shively and Dr. Stephany Powell The movement to legalize prostitution, or "sex work," gained traction last year and is likely to continue in 2023. Proponents of eliminating laws against prostitution argue that doing so promotes the health and safety of all involved, reduces abuses against those in the trade by destigmatizing it and removing barriers to reporting assaults to police, and frees up scarce police resources to focus on the more serious problem of sex trafficking. It all sounds good, even sensible, when well presented. But none of it is true. How do we know? Because legalization has been tried many times, in many places, in many forms, over many decades, and failed every time. |
|
 | | We’d like to introduce you to an important class of criminals. Thousands of them engage in this criminal activity each day. They seek to engage in it from their offices, homes, while on business trips, or even from the convenience of their cell phones. It doesn’t matter much whether they live in big cities, small towns, or rural communities, how much education they have, or their political ideology. These are the people responsible for incalculable amounts of harm and for fueling the global criminal enterprises that use and exploit the vulnerable among us. We’d like you to meet the male sex buyer—a class of men who buy people for sex and who are ultimately responsible for the commercial sex trade and the sex trafficking necessary to sustain it. |
| |
|
|
