Prostitution?

W. Tom Foster of Santa Ana, California, wrote in to the Orange County Register:

So we are paying multiple members of the law-enforcement community upward of $100,000 per year to cruise the Internet hunting down persons who wish to engage in sexual activity for money ["Prostitution fight hits Web," Local, Aug. 17].

Why hasn't Heather Mills, the ex-wife of Paul McCartney, been arrested? I guess charging $50 million for a few years of promised sexual activity doesn't count.

Don’t forget Phil Collins’ third wife. How many songs did she write or perform again? Why does she deserve all of that money? Oh, that’s right. She was clever enough to marry a man without an effective pre-nup.

I can understand why people don't want hookers walking Harbor Boulevard, but two people meeting over the Internet and making arrangements to go to a motel
doesn't seem all that bad to me – especially when we have gangs and illegal drug
users robbing people and desecrating our cities with spray paint.

Well, we can always come up with hierarchy of crime and say that we shouldn’t be committing resources to X, Y, or Z as long as there are murders being committed, But I do find myself leaning to and fro on the fence about prostitution. I defy anyone to present an objective difference between most present-day dating and prostitution. Why is chatting online and agreeing to have sex and that one person will give money to another any different from agreeing to have sex after one pays for dinner for another?

As long as our laws and courts say that sexual activity between consenting adults is a private matter and can’t be criminalized (uh, except if they are related, or work together, or any number of exceptions), then I find it hard to see why this activity should be illegal. Streetwalking is a different story. A public street is owned by the people and the people can collectively decide whether or not to allow that. When a road is private, it should up to the owner of the road.

Again, I believe sex is for marriage and that all sex outside of marriage is wrong. Whether or not it should be illegal is a different matter.