03.12.08 11:41 AM CDT
• Pop Culture
• Tim Mohr
One thing to ponder as Eliot Spitzer resigns following revelations he availed himself of the services of an escort service: How can prostitution possibly be illegal in this country? Think about it. You can have sex for money as long as a video camera is rolling, but for some reason you can’t have sex for money without a camera present. You can sell all sorts of other body-touching services like massage, and even bodily fluids such as sperm. Groups fight for the right to self-determination when it comes to other aspects of the body—abortion rights, for instance, the right to use birth control or the right to refuse medical treatment. You can get tattoos, plastic surgery and other permanent alterations made to your own body. And prostitution is legal in parts of the U.S., famously in Nevada.
Why federal agents spend time and money thwarting sexual acts between consenting adults is something we as a society should revisit—particularly given the current rhetoric about the resources necessary to fight would-be terrorists. Prostitution should be decriminalized just as sodomy laws and the like have been struck from the books.
The Mann Act, the law under which Spitzer would be tried, is also an embarrassing relic with dodgy racist origins. The first person prosecuted under the Mann Act was Jack Johnson, the first black heavyweight boxing champ, whose crime was essentially having a white girlfriend. For more on this, check out this piece on the Root.
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Comments on this entry:
How can prostitution possibly be illegal in this country?
I honestly do not know. Current laws and attitudes certainly seem to be undemocratic. And they run right up against the establishment clause of the United States Constitution, in the first ten words of the very first amendment, where it says: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion” (see http://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/constitution.billofrights.html ).
I couldn't get my own thoughts in before Eliot Spitzer had already pulled the plug. Still, I thought about what should be said, and I would like to share that right here, right in this Web log:
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The greatest challenge you face is in standing up to the bullies who would drag matters of greatest personal privacy into the realm of public judgment. And that promises to be a special challenge to you insofar as you have already offered aid and comfort to the likes of bullies such as these, if not by filling their ranks outright when others' issues of personal privacy were previously singled and officially punished under existing statutes.
May I suggest that you start with a public statement reviewing my first paragraph, only changing every expression of the second person into the first person? In other words, “you” becomes either “I” or “me”, depending on the subjective or objective case.
Continuing in that vein, what we are seeing now, the processes that are unfolding as this controversy plays itself out, run counter to the establishment clause of the United States. They are diametrically opposed. And they cannot be justified by means any more firmly rooted than subjective faith itself--in this case, faith that is imposed against chosen adversaries, against their better interests.
That, in and of itself, is a point worth bringing to the public debate. Alas, the entire nation is awash in the anguish of such vicious moral posturing. It knows no end. And far too few have the courage and the insight to stand up to it properly.
You have already made an expression of personal regret; and that should be good enough to satisfy most of the critics. At the same time, it would surely seem timely to make apologies and make all possible amends to any and all who may have suffered under your own lash when roles were reversed.
I wish you the best in this time of trial.
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So that is what I would have sent if I could only have gotten it out in time.
Alas, Governor Spitzer has blathered along with the following words: “Over the course of my public life, I have insisted — I believe correctly — that people regardless of their position or power take responsibility for their conduct,” he added. “I can and will ask no less of myself. For this reason, I am resigning from the office of governor.” (see http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/12/nyregion/12cnd-resign.html ).
The poor man doesn't even have a clue! And the damage underway to any constructive understanding of this issue is positively daunting.
It grieves me profoundly, and yet I still see a role to be played by the rest of us. I see a role for Hugh Hefner in particular. Mr. Hefner has been a true champion of these concerns for as long as I can remember and indeed, since two months before I was born, in February of 1954.
Mr. Hefner, we need you one more time.
I would even embrace the similar causes exemplified by the sorry fates of Senator Larry Craig of Idaho and of Congressman Mark Foley of Florida's 16th District. I embrace such concerns notwithstanding the divergence of our orientations.
Freedom is still freedom; and the various ways of ferreting out various private matters to parade them unbidden into the realm of public scorn is an assault on all our freedoms.
And it is true that all these men have acted against our interests. They have acted against our interests just as surely as they have acted against their own.
But to wait until all governance is cleansed of all reactionary forces is to miss the boat entirely. These various people need our support and our guidance right at the very moments that their hearts are ripe for change.
And that is where I would enjoin this community to place its efforts in the trail of this dance of destruction. Let's join hands to salvage the very souls that the bullies who meddle in all our lives insist to be irredeemable.
Mayors also are entitled to a break...