Rhode Island unintentionally decriminalized indoor prostitution in 2003

http://www.vox.com/2014/7/15/5898187/prostitution-rhode-island-decriminalized

by adventured • 12 years ago

95 130 12 years ago

jdreaver• 12 years ago

Prostitution is a victimless crime. Why is it that two people can't agree to exchange sex for money? You can't legislate morals into existence (not saying prostitution is immoral, but people who want to outlaw it probably do). The world's oldest profession will probably be outlawed for some time to come because adding support for prostitution to your platform is political suicide.

EDIT: Since I don't want to reply to everyone individually:

I am not condoning prostitution as a career. I am saying that criminalizing prostitution hurts all parties involved. There is a common misconception that wanting to repeal a law means you support whatever that law outlawed. I don't think prostitution should be illegal.

The rule of law is not a place to push morality. There is no reason for the government to interfere in a consensual transaction between two people. If a pimp is forcing a prostitute to sell themselves, that's called slavery, and it is illegal. Selling a prostitute to someone else against their will is illegal, and it is called human trafficking. Simply selling your body harms no third party against their will.

tedks4• 12 years ago

The world's oldest profession is farming.

While harm reduction is a great thing, legalizing prostitution would have a hugely detrimental effect on the fight against human trafficking and the status of women in general. The idea that women's bodies can be commodified and sold to men is the foundation of patriarchy, and as long as prostitution exists we'll never have a free society.

It's also laughable to say that prostitution is ever some fantasy rational economic exchange. Women are forced into prostitution, either by being literally enslaved, or by economics.

thaumasiotes4• 12 years ago

The world's oldest profession is farming.

Where in the world did you get this idea? Farming postdates the human species. Prostitution predates it by a long, long way.

jrockway• 12 years ago

What about men that pay for sex with other men? The whole patriarchy dynamic is gone then.

throwawayornot2• 12 years ago

pretty sure folks were trading sex before agriculture...

no_wave• 12 years ago

By putting restrictions on what women can use their bodies for, aren't you (we) claiming ownership over them?

lisper2• 12 years ago

legalizing prostitution would have a hugely detrimental effect on the fight against human trafficking

That is just ridiculous. The fact that prostitution is illegal is the reason there is a trade in human sex slaves. Legalizing prostitution doesn't result in human sex-worker trafficking any more than legalizing professional sports results in athlete trafficking.

throwawayornot2• 12 years ago

we are all of us "forced into [call it] prostitution, either by being literally enslaved, or by economics." choose your poison!

jedberg• 12 years ago

Women are forced into prostitution, either by being literally enslaved, or by economics.

But some women want to engage in that profession and can't due to (mostly male) lawmakers preventing them. So it really swings both ways.

And further, prostitution isn't just women. It's mostly women, but not only women.

Mz8• 12 years ago

The reality is that since women make, on average, 2/3 of what men make and most people are heterosexual, most sexually active women are sleeping with someone who makes quite a lot more money than they do. Because if you flip that around, it means men make on average 1.5 times what women make. For that and a very long list of other reasons, most women are de facto trading their bodies for money in some sense, to some degree, almost every time they have sex.

So I have kind of a big problem with your idea that prostitution is per se some big moral problem here.

icebraining4• 12 years ago

While harm reduction is a great thing, legalizing prostitution would have a hugely detrimental effect on the fight against human trafficking and the status of women in general.

Based on what evidence are you claiming this?

Women are forced into prostitution, either by being literally enslaved, or by economics.

Sure. But they are enslaved whether prostitution is illegal or not. To claim that the criminalization solves that problem would be laughable; all it does it sweep it under the rug, by forcing prostitutes to hide and avoid help, with fear of being imprisoned.

Here in Portugal we decriminalized all drug use. And you know what? It seems that when people can ask for help without fearing they'll end up behind bars, they actually do it more!

If we want to end prostitution, we must attack the root of the problem, which you so well pointed out: the literal enslavement of women, and the economic situations that lead them to it. Criminalizing it solves nothing, it's just one more case of a policy that makes people feel good about themselves while they screw those they wanted to help.

SomeCallMeTim• 12 years ago

legalizing prostitution would have a hugely detrimental effect on the fight against human trafficking

The opposite is potentially true, because if it's decriminalized, it will also be regulated. Which means that everyone involved could be required to have their IDs on file, and could also require medical exams where doctors could ask whether they are there against their will.

When it's underground, it's less visible, and therefore easier for human trafficking to go undetected. [1] Human trafficking is clearly not a victimless crime, and all attempts should be made to stop it, but keeping prostitution illegal doesn't help, and probably instead hurts, that cause.

Women are forced into prostitution, either by being literally enslaved, or by economics.

"Forced" means they had no other options. You'd rather they or their families starved, then?

Work on fixing the underlying economic realities that are "forcing" people into a profession against their will. Don't try to outlaw something that will continue exist no matter what laws are passed.

It's as futile as the War on Drugs.

[1] It's also worth noting that human trafficking doesn't always involve sex work. There was a case in Boulder, Colorado a few years back where people were lured to the US under false pretenses and they were forced to work in a chain of Thai restaurants without pay.

ameister143• 12 years ago

I disagree; perhaps the idea that women's bodies can be commodified and sold to men BY MEN is a foundation of patriarchy, but the simple sale of sexual physical services isn't.

I can sell you my labor, the product of my labor, or actions I can take upon your body (massage, for example). Why is sex different?

I'm not talking operations-wise, I'm saying that excluding the slavery and pimping, what exactly is inherently wrong with the act itself? What separates sexual activity from other activity as something that 'is the foundation of the patriarchy?'

baddox10• 12 years ago

legalizing prostitution would have a hugely detrimental effect on the fight against human trafficking and the status of women in general.

Why? There's no need to traffic humans for prostitution if prostitution is legal.

The idea that women's bodies can be commodified and sold to men is the foundation of patriarchy

What about the idea that men can pass laws forbidding women to do certain things with their own bodies? If a woman can choose to have an abortion, why can't she choose to have sex for money?

jusben13692• 12 years ago

I find prostitution to be a very sad thing. I believe that many women are forced into it. Either overtly, by physically violent boyfriends/pimps who threaten to beat them, or more subtly by being raised in an environment with few options and/or becoming addicted to drugs. I would like for it to be non existent but it's pretty apparent that it's always going to be part of our society for the foreseeable future. I therefore want it legalized and regulated. The majority of the problems around prostitution are because it's run by criminal elements and not the State. Do you want to ensure basic physical protections for prostitutes? Create well managed brothels where they are safe. Next step up. Want to ensure they have reasonable health and nutrition? Pull them out of the shadows and let brothel's or the state offer benefits and look after their ladies around nutrition, rehab, keeping more of what they earn (economic interests align!) Final step - want to offer them a way out? It's hard when they're hiding in the shadows. Decriminalize it and you can target the industry with new skills/training/work opps etc.

If you're against prostitution I think the worse thing you can do is want it outlawed.

hnriot2• 12 years ago

This is total crap. You can't possibly say that women are forced in prostitution. For some it's a choice between making $x or making $100x, that's not enslaving, but just a personal choice by the woman.

"as prostitution exists we'll never have a free society." The whole idea of a free society is total bullshit anyway. While I totally agree with you that human trafficking is despicable, it doesn't change the equation, if the end product is legally sold (or rented by the hour more accurately) or illegally doesn't change the demand or the supply.

We will never have a free society because it's an impossibility, humans are not evolved enough, nor are we devoid of vices like greed. A free society of automatons maybe, but not humans.

And as for your comment about farming, that's also wrong. Farming is a relatively recent profession, no older than 10k years. You think women didn't exchange protein for sex before that? If you do then you're dead wrong.

yxhuvud2• 12 years ago

[citation needed]

Exactly how would it affect the fight against any of those? Why would trafficking in sex workers be more exposed to trafficking than any other kind of slavery, except because it is illegal in most places? If legal, why would trafficking be able to compete with legal alternatives?

As for the idea of selling bodies, why are you equalizing the women with their bodies and thereby making them into objects instead of seeing them as people that perform services? I thought the whole point of feminism was to see and treat women as agents with the same self determination as men have - so why are you reducing sex workers to simply their body and gender?

And yes, some women are forced into prostitution. But some are not - some choose it because they like it and some choose it because it is a lot better than any of their available alternatives. Why do you think that it is ok to deemancipate those women?

DoubleMalt3• 12 years ago

There is the troubling fact that many prostitutes are not in the business of their own free will. Of course if you analyze the incentives and option of everybody involved, it is clear that the criminalization of it compounds the problem.

What puzzles me immensely is that in progressive countries like Sweden the push against prostitution is almost worse (although with the angle that the buyers are criminalized), and that feminist women don't see that decriminalization would have a mostly empowering fact for the prostitutes (who are mostly female).

I can see that it is an icky subject for many and how people who fight against the objectification of women might fall in the trap of thinking that selling your time for a fee might contribute to that.

However pimping out my brain for trying to make people spend their money on ingame purchases is way ickier to me.

quantized2• 12 years ago

many prostitutes are not in the business of their own free will

How many? What percentage? Citation needed.

Weasel words will get you nowhere.

bostik3• 12 years ago

There is the troubling fact that many prostitutes are not in the business of their own free will.

Others have already waved the wikipedia card, but I feel that there is one aspect which deserves clarification.

Above all, we should divide prostitutes into two groups: sex workers (who have, for whatever reason, chosen the profession); and the victims of human trafficking. In my mind, trafficking is no different from slavery. It's a vile thing. A sex worker, on the other hand, can choose to have a pimp -- but one is not required.

I have absolutely no problem with law enforcement cracking down on trafficking. Those people are not selling their services out of their own will. But trying to mandate morality by law makes my hair stand out.

I happen to believe that indiscriminately cracking down on all forms of prostitution is simply a waste of resources. The similarity between aggressive pro-lifers (who want to impose their own views on how women can use their bodies) and anti-prostitution zealots is not that big. Control in the name of morality ... or just in the name of their personal delusion.

Makes little practical difference.

onewaystreet• 12 years ago

Not all feminists are against the decriminalization of prostitution. The new generation of feminists (mostly those under 30) are very much for sex workers' rights.

mseebach3• 12 years ago

There is the troubling fact that many prostitutes are not in the business of their own free will.

That phrasing usually refers to trafficking. Let's do some numbers.

In 2000-07, there were 1,500 identified victims of trafficking in the USA - total, not a year, and including both sex and labor trafficking.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/09...

Arrests alone for sex work is on the order of 100,000 a year (confirmed). An estimate puts the number of prostitutes at 1-2 million.

http://prostitution.procon.org/view.answers.php?questionID=0...

No doubt trafficking is a big problem in many places - there just isn't any evidence that the US is one of them.

If there mere fact that there exists sex workers who are in the trade not out of their own free will is sufficient to outlaw the trade entirely, there are quite a few trades that would need to be outlawed.

doctorKrieger• 12 years ago

many slave workers in china aint either.

rayiner10• 12 years ago

Prostitution is a victimless crime.

Only in the same sense as selling organs or babies (or conspiring to fix prices) is a victimless crime. There are instances where society legitimately chooses to make certain consensual interactions illegal because of the implications that conduct has for everyone else. As 'tedks points out below, turning sex into a commodity has real implications for the status of women in society as a whole. Moreover, as with selling organs or selling babies, there's a strong belief that such transactions are usually only technically voluntary, and are driven by economic duress more than anything else.

quantized2• 12 years ago

All employment is driven by economic duress.

Few would work if they didn't have to.

jiggy20113• 12 years ago

Doesn't that depend on how you define economic duress? If we are talking about voluntary prostitution in a country with a welfare state then does it count as coercion if the person chooses prostitution over a minimum wage job because it pays better?

DoubleMalt3• 12 years ago

turning sex into a commodity has real implications for the status of women in society as a whole

In a society in which a hefty part of the male population thinks that buying a woman drinks or even dinner entitles them to have a happy ending, this statement is very cynical.

Au contraire, I think that allowing people to pay for sex might actually de-blur some lines here. If you want quick sex for money go to a prostitute. If you want companionship that at some point get intimate enough to end in sex, date someone. If you buy someone dinner do that because you want to and not with an implicit expectation of getting something in return. Jeez.

baddox10• 12 years ago

Selling organs is absolutely a victimless crime. Selling babies, depending on exactly what you mean by the phrase, sounds to me like the baby is the victim.

As 'tedks points out below, turning sex into a commodity has real implications for the status of women in society as a whole.

The real implications would be that prostitutes would most likely be safer and more wealthy.

Moreover, as with selling organs or selling babies, there's a strong belief that such transactions are usually only technically voluntary, and are driven by economic duress more than anything else.

A choice made out of economic interest is still "voluntary" under the definition used in this context. Your claim seems to be that if the only two choices are selling your kidney or starving to death, then selling the kidney is not "voluntary." But if those were really the only two choices, and you ban selling the kidney, then the only scenario remaining is that the person starves to death.

x1798DE• 12 years ago

Only in the same sense as selling organs or babies (or conspiring to fix prices) is a victimless crime.

Selling your own organs is definitely a victimless crime. Arguably the baby you are selling is the victim of a baby-selling scheme. The victim of a price-fixing conspiracy is the consumer (though every member of the conspiracy has an incentive to defect and sell at a lower price, so presumably the individual members of the conspiracy are also in some ways victims of the scheme, to the extent that the scheme is actually enforced upon them somehow).

ameister143• 12 years ago

I don't think your analogy is particularly accurate.

If I was to sell one of my organs, it would A. have an immediate detrimental effect on my health and B. be permanent. Further, the state has a very high probability of paying for some or all of my medical care post-op.

If I sell a baby, I am selling something that is not my property. If I am the parent, I have some claim to the baby, but not one of direct ownership. So in truth I am selling something that is not mine. In reality, what you would be selling is your lack of action in defense of your paternal rights. That is, in fact, a victimless crime. However, the administration of those rights is not yours alone, but also your community's. You can't sell that, so you'd be lying to whoever you gave the child to if you implied that you could.

Lots of decisions and transactions are only technically voluntary and are driven by economic duress more than anything else. Working a dead end job, working a dangerous job, being a roofer or garbage man or flagger. Joining the military. Being a lumberjack. Hell, being a fisherman in many cases.

A lot of these jobs are dangerous. They're accepted, though. If I work as a lumberjack, it's not because I have a choice. It's because otherwise I would be homeless and this is a skill I can employ to feed and house myself.

mseebach3• 12 years ago

turning sex into a commodity

But prostitution doesn't do this. A commodity has full or near full fungibility, i.e. "one sex" is (almost) substitutable by any other "one sex". Obviously this isn't true for sex.

sliverstorm3• 12 years ago

It's outlawed because, while it may be a victimless crime, it's not a victimless industry.

icebraining4• 12 years ago

Well, criminalizing the victims surely helps /s

yxhuvud2• 12 years ago

Other industries that have had a lot of victims have been made safe with workplace safety standards and unions. Why would that be a worse solution?

heylefty10• 12 years ago

If each instance of the supposed crime is victimless, where do the supposed victims come from?

IanCal4• 12 years ago

Why is it that two people can't agree to exchange sex for money?

It depends very heavily on the balance of power. You're talking about it like two people with equal bargaining power coming to a agreement they're both happy with. If that's the case then great, that's fine. I don't think that's universal though, or even particularly common.

However we have a large number of rules to stop exploitative working environments across all industries, and something as physical and emotional as sex should have similar or stronger guarantees around.

There should be ways of creating safe environments and regulations that allow prostitution, but saying that "prostitution is a victimless crime" seems very off. We can probably create situations where it is, at worst, no more objectionable than someone working an office job they hate. However, I hardly think that's a good explanation of the current situation in many countries.

heylefty10• 12 years ago

There is never a balance of power between the employer and the employee.

If there were, the employee wouldn't have to work for the employer, since he'd have just as much money and influence in the first place.

Your argument condemns all employment.

IgorPartola• 12 years ago

You can't legislate morals into existence

Oh, but you can and it has been done. The repeal of DOMA was the first time the US Supreme Court has actually addressed this issue and said that laws cannot be based solely on morality. However, as long as you have morality + something else, you can have laws that would criminalize prostitution. I am mostly with you on this issue, but the details of all of this are much more complex than "let's just make it all legal".

btian• 12 years ago

Yeah, just like selling alcoholic beverages on Sunday morning is a victimless crime.

I think governments can be pretty illogical at times.

tluyben2• 12 years ago

Not from the US; what does this refer to?

vanderZwan• 12 years ago

The authors say they aren't sure, as if this was a unique experiment making it hard to drw conclusions from. However, there have been other places where prostitution has been decriminalised. The Netherlands, for example. Surely there has been research on the effects there, the results of which can be compared to this situation?

cobrausn• 12 years ago

You don't even have to go that far - Nevada decriminalized prostitution a while ago, IIRC.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prostitution_in_Nevada#Legal_si...

eCa• 12 years ago

The graph in the article is really bad. The heading says "Reported rape offenses per capita" while the vertical axis says "Rape offenses per capita".

Two things:

* Those are not the same thing.

* 40 rapes per capita? (Yes, the article says per 100,000 but the graph should stand on its own.)

coder23• 12 years ago

Selling is legal, fucking is legal, why isn't selling fucking legal!? Why should it be illegal to sell something that is perfectly legal to give away?

- George Carlin

seszett• 12 years ago

a third, uncomfortable hypothesis: it's possible that violent males consider prostitution and rape as "substitutes". With prostitution legally acceptable and cheaper than when it was a criminal offense, would-be rapists might shift away from violence toward women, opting to purchase sex instead.

I'm really not sure how one could consider "uncomfortable" the idea that some people who would otherwise commit a crime, would instead opt to pay for a legal service?

When prostitution is legal, isn't this situation just the same as someone buying a car instead of stealing it, or streaming a movie on Netflix instead of torrenting it? The only difference I see is that the rape prevented would have been worse than stealing or copying, so it's even more important to prevent it.

edit: I can see people saying that I'm comparing a crime against people with crimes against objects. So here's another situation: someone paying an employee instead of enslaving him.

rayiner10• 12 years ago

Studies show that rapists are not, in general, men who can't get sex another way, but rather men who want to exert power over women. The uncomfortable hypothesis is that prostitution fulfills the same urge to exercise power.[1] It's uncomfortable because of what it implies about the nature of prostitution.

[1] The quote, usually attributed to Charlie Sheen, that "you don't pay a prostitute for sex, you pay her to leave afterward" is illustrative of this hypothesis as well.

trhway• 12 years ago

The uncomfortable hypothesis is that prostitution fulfills the same urge to exercise power.

one can also see that for many being a manager (or a state senator, or a police, etc... ) fullfills the same urge to exercise power.

It's uncomfortable because of what it implies about the nature of prostitution.

and about the nature of any situation where people exercise power. Some people definitely do it for power, some - for other reasons.

thaumasiotes4• 12 years ago

Charlie Sheen was a man who didn't have problems getting a woman to agree to sleep with him. That doesn't mean he had sex out of a love of exercising power instead of the normal sexual drive; the quote is telling you that he considered a prostitute's monetary cost to be a lower price than paying nothing to a girl who would then brag to all her friends and the National Enquirer that she was Charlie Sheen's girlfriend, flip out when she saw him kissing an actress, show up crying at his house in the middle of the night, etc etc etc.

Torgo• 12 years ago

"you don't pay a prostitute for sex, you pay her to leave afterward"

How is that about power? It plainly reads as "I want sex, but I don't want to maintain a relationship with a woman to get it." If anything that confirms that prostitution is about sex.

heylefty10• 12 years ago

Studies show that rapists are not, in general, men who can't get sex another way, but rather men who want to exert power over women.

No, they don't.

This is not and cannot be the result of any study.

This is just baseless feminist dogma.

You have been lying all over this thread. Stop lying.

Mz8• 12 years ago

The definition of rape hinges upon the detail of consent. So the reality is that many rapes are not particularly violent. I realize people don't like hearing that but men are typically bigger than women and the socially expected thing is for men to be the pursuers. So in cases of, for example, date rape, men often do not realize they committed rape unless they are charged with it. There is often alcohol and miscommunication involved.

So it really doesn't help to understand the problem space to characterize rape as a "violent" crime and rapists as "violent criminals." That is often not how it happened at all.

mattdw• 12 years ago

Yes and no. Yes, violent stranger rape is a tiny percentage of rapes, but the communication thing is (according to a study by Lisak) largely a post-hoc rationalisation; at the time communication is actually quite clear, but because of this myth, pretending to misunderstand etc proves an effective form of plausible deniability. Alcohol, yes, definitely, as again it's just another cloak of plausible deniability and 'social license'.

thaumasiotes4• 12 years ago

contra rayiner, the reason that hypothesis is described as "uncomfortable" is that it implies people commit rape because they desire sex. Rayiner has made a good statement of the feminist-cultish alternative belief, usually summarized as "rape is not about sex".

jusben13692• 12 years ago

Am I the only one who thought, given it's now 2014 and that the law was changed nearly 5 years ago, that we also now have an even more complete set of data with which to support the hypothesis? But they don't seem to go there at all?! The chart appears to show crimes rising again once it was outlawed but for the most part the article is written as though it's 2010.

mlinksva• 12 years ago

No, that was my first thought upon skimming the article. Here are some numbers from http://www.risp.ri.gov/documents/UCR/2013.pdf

State 11A SEX OFFENSE, FORCE: RAPE

Providence (where article said sex work is concentrated) 11A SEX OFFENSE, FORCE: RAPE

Don't know why this doc does haven't statewide numbers for 2007 (some locations also have 2006, Providence doesn't).

A really odd thing is that PROSTITUTION: ENGAGING seems to have been at by far its highest in 2008. I can't think of a good explanation. Maybe police were pissed off about indoor prostitution being legal, so they cracked down extra hard on outdoor prostitution, but since indoor was re-illegalized, they don't care?

jws• 12 years ago

…compared to similar control states wherein South Dakota, Idaho, and Iowa are the control states‽

For those not up on their US states, Rhode Island (388 people per km^2) is a fly speck of an east coast state. South Dakota (4 people/square mile) and Idaho (7 people per square mile) are large rural western states, Iowa (20 people/km^2) is a giant cornfield with some insurance company headquarters hiding in the middle.

I don't have time to check the FBI databases today†, but it smells like a cherry picking.

␄

† Ok, a little time. The selected states are definitely on the high side for forcible rapes in 2009.

jcrjcr• 12 years ago

If prostitution were legalized then it could be regulated making it more likely that proper healthcare and protection is administered. It also gives a prostitute the ability to report to the police if there is foul play without worrying about getting in trouble for the prostitution itself. Much like the war on drugs, trying to eliminate prostitution by criminalizing it is not an effective way of eliminating the problem (if you see it as a problem).

Mz8• 12 years ago

FYI: Legalized and decriminalized are not the same thing. A professional prostitute and political activist named Dolores French (http://www.amazon.com/Working-My-Life-As-Prostitute/dp/05756...) was for decriminalization and against legalization. She claimed that legalization typically involves regulation of a sort that is often no better for sex workers than the violent pimps that are so frequently decried as the cause of everything that's bad about sex work currently.

They aren't the same thing and the article here specifically uses the term decriminalized.

pigDisgusting• 12 years ago

I'm on the fence about those semantics. I think we're splitting hairs here.

Is there honestly a profound difference between the two? If prostitution were legal, yet regulated, failure to adhere to the proper regulations could still result in the same consequences for the cases that criminal policing targets anyway. Does legalization mean permissible with documentation?

What are the specific results of "decriminalization"? Does it simply mean that it's classified as a lesser misdemeanor, punishable by fines and community service, rather than felonies plea bargained to trespassing, that result in years in county lockup after repeat offenses? Or does it mean ordinance violations for things like disordely conduct, that do not accumulate as serious offenses on an individual's arrest record?

Does decriminalization mean that certain parts of town don't get policed as much on the weekends, and cops look the other way, when it comes to certain hotels and drinking establishments?

Does regulated legalization mean solicitation goes unreproached even in broad daylight on a sunday morning on main street, so long as you carry your laminated photo ID card on your person, while you loiter near the gas station?

Does legalization mean that johns experience zero repercussions for patronizing regulated whores, while decriminalization leaves johns open to petty offenses where they still cannot patronize under any circumstances, but if caught no jail time will result?

jack-r-abbit2• 12 years ago

Situation #1: Person A and Person B have consensual sex together. Person A gets paid by Person C, who films this sex and sells the video. (it is called porn) Legal

Situation #2: Person A and Person B have consensual sex together. Person A gets paid by Person B. (it is called prostitution) Illegal

I don't understand how adding a camera crew and having the money come from someone not involved in the actual sex some how makes it legal.

buckbova• 12 years ago

In scenario 1, both person A and B receive payment from C.

jack-r-abbit2• 12 years ago

Not always. But that even so that shouldn't make any difference.

heylefty10• 12 years ago

Not necessarily. Some producers star in their own porn videos. So they pay someone to have sex with them. Still 100% legal.

The only difference is the existence of a camera. It's kind of insane.

saraid2162• 12 years ago

Same way it does everything else in America: free speech.

Note that sex tapes, where no money changes hands, are legal.

cgcdesigndev• 12 years ago

While this is a serious issue and everyone will have their varying opinions on it...

I really want Seth MacFarlane to make an episode of Family Guy based on this (The show is based in Rhode Island).

Rhode Island unintentionally decriminalized indoor prostitution in 2003

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