"The criminalization of sex work is based in nothing more than petty moral outrage."--Chris Sosa[nonworking link]
I opened up my friend Maggie McNeill's blog, "The Honest Courtesan," the other day, and discovered that one of the oldest escort sites on the Web, Rentboy.com, had been raided by state and federal law enforcement[nonworking link] (including the Department of Homeland Security...WTFO?) on August 25th.
In her August 28th article, "Now They Notice[nonworking link]," Maggie noted:
"While sex workers were celebrating the growing recognition among decent people that sex work prohibition is nothing less than the violent suppression of consensual sexual behavior, the most rabidly-prohibitionist government on the planet [the Government of the United States of America--RJG] was scheming to prove the pro-decriminalization forces correct by unleashing yet another act of violence against peaceful businesspeople."
Okay, technically, the government was within its authority (but not its rights, government has no rights; see my 28 February 2009 OpEdNews article "The Tao of Government," for more on this subject) to bust this website and its employees. But it had existed for years[nonworking link], and had caused no significant problems to the public. The timing is somewhat suspect, with the whole Ashley Madison "scandal," and Amnesty International coming out in favor of the decriminalization of sex work[nonworking link], but Maggie says this is too quick to be a reaction to that, and I agree. I suspect the real reason behind this is that this is a reaction by the most hard-core crypto-fascists in the federal government's law enforcement arm to the recognition of "gay marriage" as a right by the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court's decision has been rumored for months in the press and on the street. I don't believe in coincidences. As Robert Heinlein pointed out, "coincidence" is a question-begging term.
Maggie continued pointing out the differences in this particular bust:
"The usual 'sex trafficking' rhetoric used to cram these pogroms down
the credulous public gullet was notably (and tellingly) absent here; it was all
talk of sin crime and chastisement prosecution rather than
'rescue' and 'exploitation.' Because while women are delicate, chaste little
fluffy-bunnies who could never ever ever conceive of a pragmatic motivation for
sex, men are perverted abusers who are never more than an errant thought away
from criminality (unless they're government actors, of course, in which case
they're totally incapable of evil)." Maggie was dipping her pen deep in her
sarcasm well when she wrote this.
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