Many people are aware that Argentina has become the first nation in Latin America, the second in the Americas, and the ninth in the world, to legalize gay marriage.
We all applaud Argentina's stunning rise from a socially conservative nation under a fascist regime as recently as 30 years ago to a level of tolerance that the US should strive for. The US is being shown to be even more of a retrograde backwater, and we need to legalize gay marriage as soon as possible.
However, the "it" I am referring to in this particular diary is not gay marriage. It isn't drugs either.
It is, however, another realm where the US needs to extend rights to consenting adults to live their lives as they see fit. It is, like gay marriage, also a realm in which many other nations have become much more enlightened than us. It is prostitution.
Freedom
There can hardly be an instance of greater government interference and meddling in the personal, private lives of its adult citizens than a ban on a consenting adult paying another consenting adult for sex.
The origin and justification for these prohibitions is nothing other than the desire to control the private sex lives of citizens, to mold them to be more in conformity with other peoples' preferences. They are the same motivations as for laws against consensual homosexual acts among adults (which were fortunately struck down by the US Supreme Court in Lawrence vs. Texas in 2001), and, indeed, for laws against gay marriage.
If we believe in the same human freedom that allows individuals to marry whom they choose (or to choose not to marry anyone!), then we also believe in the freedom of consenting adults to have sex in private under whatever circumstances they choose. Period.
The costs of prohibition
Like all prohibitions, the prohibition on prostitution does not stop it, but rather drives what would otherwise be a regulated and supervised industry into the underworld. The tremendous social fallout from this is unmistakable.
Most of the worries that good intentioned people have about legalizing prostitution center around the very real concerns of human trafficking, pimping, the spread of diseases, and the potential for abuse of minors. But these are precisely the effects that can continue, in part, because it is illegal. The exploitation and violence is allowed to flourish because it is an underworld industry.
When something is consigned to the underworld, the participants must separate themselves from the mainstream of society. They cannot rely on the police, seek justice through the courts, participate in the healthcare system, or participate in the mainstream monetary system. This is what allows all of the tragedies above that people associate with prostitution to continue in the shadows.
If consensual prostitution were legal, then exploited persons, such as minors and foreigners, could seek refuge with law enforcement. Customers or others could freely report if minors or foreigners are being employed, in violation of laws. People who choose to sell sex, whether occasionally or regularly, and those who buy it, would have the usual access to testing and medical care. Without the threat of police and the underworld, there would be no place for the 'protection' rackets provided by pimping. With sexual acts arranged freely and openly, whether on the internet or in person, and carried out in private residences without fear, there would be no role for "street walking", seedy motels, and other symptoms of blight currently associated with prostitution.
Many nations
Indeed, a great number of nations around the world have recognized the harm done by prohibition, and the absurdity of the government controlling the sex lives of its adult citizens, and allow for some form of legalized prostitution.
Prostitution is legal in some of the most 'advanced' western countries in the world, including almost all of Western and Central Europe, Canada, Israel, New Zealand, and several states in Australia. But in addition, as seems to be turning out with gay marriage, the US is even falling behind many less developed countries in extending freedom to its people. These include all of the countries of Latin America, plus nations like Turkey, Lebanon, Senegal, India, and Ethiopia.
A thorough case for legalization could be made simply given the harms of prohibition. However, it is even more tragic that in the "home of the free" adult citizens have less freedom to run their private lives than they do in almost every other country in the Americas.