This Friday on 20/20 Ashley Alexandra Dupre, the prostitute involved in the Elliot Spitzer scandal is going talk about her life as an escort. Dupre will explain how an “upper middle-class, girl next door got into the profession and the psychological journey she continues to experience.” Should be an interesting interview for sure.

Hmmm, I wonder if Spitzer got his Safe Sex License? Edcuate yourself on safe sex, takepart and check out http://www.avert.org/std.htm

San Francisco voters will consider the decriminalization of prostitution on a ballot proposal during the upcoming November election. Proposition K on the San Francisco ballot will allow voters to decide whether the California State prostitution laws should continue to be enforced in their city, although technically the offense will still be illegal as the measure does not have the jurisdiction to overturn the law. Proponents of the measure say that the law does little to help women working in sex trades by locking them up and that the money spent on enforcement is better used elsewhere in the city.

I love San Francisco. I also love that there is a place like this in America where basic questions about Democracy and Society are routinely questioned and put to the test through the election process. However this is a horrible idea. Perhaps to some the issue of consenting adults being afforded the right to sell sex like any other service makes sense on an abstract level. But anyone who has ever traveled to an area where prostitution is either legal or decriminalized - such as Amsterdam’s Red Light District, the Reeperbahn in Hamburg, Germany, or certain cities in Thailand - knows what a degrading effect allowing the practice has on communities. If you want to turn your neighborhood overnight into some place where nobody in their right mind would want to raise a family, you probably couldn’t find a better a way to do it than legalizing prostitution. This is simply not something any community wants to mess with.

Read the rest of this entry »

Rebecca Dickinson is a Navy officer and “Lt. Cmdr.” who also moonlighted as a call girl for Deborah Jeane Palfrey’s escort service. Dickinson was forced to testify as a witness in the case against “D.C. Madam” Deborah Jeane Palfrey. Dickinson quit because she She is now a lieutenant commander six months from retirement, but she has been put on leave and could lose her job and pension. Again, I’m wondering why someone like Dickinson should be punished for providing a service (yes, it’s sex) which will never go out of style or demand. Interestingly enough, another woman who worked for Palfrey is a retired occupational therapist with a doctorate in higher education! But what I think we should be scandalized by is another story involving sex and the military.For example, did you know that rape in the military has become so rampant, and so condoned, that women serving in the U.S. military are more likely to be raped by a fellow soldier than killed by enemy fire in Iraq? You probably didn’t. Because unlike “Rebecca Dickinson” “Jane Harmon” the congresswoman who wrote an oped about this frightening fact, never got to be on google trends top 10 hot trends.

Read the rest of this entry »

A dozen Randolph College students toured the Chicken Ranch, a legal bordello in the desert 60 miles outside Las Vegas. Nevada is the only state where prostitution is legal. Brothels are allowed in 10 Nevada counties, though not in Las Vegas. The class trip, included seminars from the working girls, capped a course on American consumption and “the ideas that consume us.” The course also included reading “The Beauty Myth,” by feminist author Naomi Wolf, “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas,” by Hunter S. Thompson, and viewing a “20/20″ episode on prostitution with Diane Sawyer.

Academic and media inquiries are daily occurrences at many of Nevada’s 27 legal brothels. Some shy away from the scrutiny, others, like the Chicken Ranch, welcome the publicity.

Read the rest of this entry »

Spitzer’s prostitution scandal and the outing of “call girl” ashley alexandra dupre, have provoked quite a reaction and much debate. Yet, the debate about legalizing prostitution has yet to surface. Is it time for the United States to decriminalize the world’s oldest? If we acknowledge that prostitution will never go away, wouldn’t we, as a society, be better off if prostitution were legal? Prostitutes would be less stigmatized and victimized. Prostitutes would have protection from the violence which haunts them, and more access to safe sex education, resources, and testing. The debate over whether prostitution is “moral” or “immoral,” liberating of exploitative strikes me as academic. What we do know is that the “problem isn’t going away.” So the question is, do we live in a state of denial and hypocrisy? Or do we think rationally and act compassionately?

Read the rest of this entry »

Quixotic, or just idiotic? Ecorazzi reports that former Hollywood madam Heidi Fleiss “plans to open the world’s first legal, wind-powered brothel for women” on 60 acres she owns near a Nevada town called Pahrump. Why wind power? Because “there’s a need for it,” and she doesn’t want “anything polluting.” Fleiss is evidently banking that hordes of horny treehuggers will make the trek to her yet-to-be-built sustainable stud farm. Call it her own field of dreams: if she builds it, they will come.