Update: Ottawa To Appeal Ho Ruling -Hi Ho! Hi Ho! Brothels Pay Taxes Too Ya Know...
That dominatrix looks like an Oompa Loompa! - from the comments;)
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Red Light District Here We Come.
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Barbara Kay: It’s the end of prostitution laws as we know them
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Prostitution decision sends the wrong signal, says Catholic Civil Rights League
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Barney and Friends sing about a prostitute! Great fun for the whole family!
Oh good lord, now I suppose they'll qualify for unemployment if their pimp kicks them to the curb.
Well, if it's legal now, they can be audited by Revenue Canada.
At least our Judges won't have to hang around street corners anymore.
"And in the 4th quarter of 2010, the economy began to rise."
Investors plowed their resources into the local economy.
New job penetration improved.
Prosperity began coming back.
The oil drillers spudded new holes.
Cheers
Mark my words - some poor bystander will be up for a human rights complaint for rejecting some whore's importuning. There's already a lawyer combing the books for a precedent right now.
This is great news!
Toronto needs legalized prostitution, real bad.
It is effectively legal right now (just hang out in the right, er, left spots) and a bedbug partner or syphilis friend can be had easily, especially if you have some dope to share with.
Most of our class of whores are products of the Toronto District educational system. They are knowledgeable about condoms, fo'shizzle dizzle!
FREE ENTERPRISE! Now watch the liberals and socialists regulate it to boner boredom.
Oh that'll be next along with Hooker Sensitivity Week starting kindergarten.
This is why there is a movement for Western Separation.
PS I absolutely Loath this deranged Dino.
This is cruelty to Children.
Lefty Porn.
Barney was always a little scary to me.
Where's the right wing support for FREE ENTERPRISE. A valuable service is being provided. Sex is used to sell cars, etc, so why not sell sex itself?
You hysterical people sound like supporters of Big Brother's Anti-Sex League in 1984 "A hideous ecstasy of fear and vindictiveness, a desire to kill, to torture, to smash faces in with a sledge hammer, seemed to flow through the whole group of people like an electric current, turning one even against one's will into a grimacing, screaming lunatic. And yet the rage that one felt was an abstract, undirected emotion which could be switched from one object to another like the flame of a blowlamp"
Any "free enterprise" ideology that is blind to the need to balance our consuming desires with the need for productivity (including the reproduction of society) isn't worth much. Human beings are more than capable of consuming themselves to death, whether by rutting, eating, buying, etc. Remaining (re)productive is the real challenge that many of us are presently failing. One cannot maximize freedom without taking into account the paradox that one maximizes freedom by limiting it in some respects. That's how you remain productive, and hence free in the long run. A society that turns sex and people into a commodity - which is what ours does widely in ways that most people do not consider prostitution (e.g. the dating market) - is a society committing suicide, even if some people make an "honest" living doing it (as a whole, it's destructive). Have fun while it lasts Wally.
BTW, it's not a question of being anti-sex; it's a question of how we best respect and exchange the sacredness of human (i.e. feminine) beauty and sexuality. Not everything is suited to transactions in a free market. We also still widely rely, for various reasons, on gift exchange and ritual division of goods.
Sex trade workers will always be there, it's a profession that is in high demand. Remember, even people like Wilbur Keon, the founder of the Ottawa Heart Institute was detained as a John. And for my money, them hoors is people, as needful of protection from violence as any other member of society.
The ruling comes [double entendre?] at just the right time, giving employment opportunities for soon to be defeated mayoralty candidates and at least one self-described rain maker. As the old saying goes, once a........
truepeers wrote: "A society that turns sex and people into a commodity ... is a society committing suicide"
Bullshit. My father committed suicide sucking off the tailpipe of a 1949 Chevy. I saw how he sank into an unrelenting remoreless depression. The Great Depression did not come about via sexual licentiousmess. Sex and people have been a commodity since time immemorial.
"Society committing suicide" is the kind of rhetoric I'd expect from Fred Phelps.
No smokin' or drinkin' on the job and all the junkies will have to go through rehab first. Then a six month course at a designated community college to learn all the ins and outs plus everything to do with work rules and keeping good financial records. Like gub'mint marijuana, this could cost a fortune and produce nothing worthwhile. Then the jurisdiction scrap between the SEIU and CAW over which union gets the nod.
Sex and people have been a commodity since time immemorial.
"Society committing suicide" is the kind of rhetoric I'd expect from Fred Phelps.
Wally, I don't know who Fred is, but to be clear what I'm worrying about is the death of a free society, which is ultimately a question of degrees. Yes, people have been bought and sold since the advent of hierarchical societies but it seems to me there has to be a limit to how much slavery a free society can endure. I'm with Lincoln on that. We most all like sex but very few are the men who can convince me they wouldn't mind if a child of theirs was a prostitute.
All of our laws should be made with evidence-based reasoning, using facts.
We're not the first country to struggle with this issue. Let's look at the data available elsewhere to help inform our own legal system.
A good factual argument can be made that Pickton could not have murdered all those prostitutes had they been networked together safely inside a brothel.
If a Liberal/NDP government legalize prostitution -- and then nationalize the industry into one Crown corporation -- they would name the corporation F___ Canada.
This could raise nationalist hackles, to be sure.
truepeers wrote: "there has to be a limit to how much slavery a free society can endure"
There is no slavery involved, just business, a woman-run business, a business providing a service: sex.
truepeers wrote, "very few are the men who can convince me they wouldn't mind if a child of theirs was a prostitute."
That may well be the case because of centuries of cruel denigration of women for their free choices. The problem is our attitudes, especially the residuals of misogynist attitudes.
I know a few women who had been in the sex trade one way or another. Yes, I know some who used the funds for education or to pay the bills for their kids while a deadbeat father plays on his own.
Females are born with a potential employent agency between their legs. Why should they be dishonoured for making a choice to utilize it?
A society comitting suicide? Think again. These women don't have to contemplate suicide as a result of the righteous prigs in society with their oppressive anti-sex policies.
Just because some fathers feel bad that their daughter may be a sex worker, is not enough to impose draconian measures that serves to drive women into the arms of killers, torturers, and other violence.
A father doesn't have to like it, but what father would want such a violent workplace condition to continue. If I was a father I'd chuck the social suicide spin infavour of harm reduction. Your way of looking at things, truepeers, is the more dangerous.
As the mother of two daughters (no, I don't think they'll become street walkers), I'm disgusted by this ruling. 'Just what our society needs: more encouragement of the sex trade and an incentive to young girls to strut and sell their stuff.
A reprise of a Melanie Phillips article I gave the link to the other day ('not sure if I posted it here), "Mrs. Pankhurst Must be Spinning in Her Grave." She gets it:
http://www.melaniephillips.com/articles-new/?p=768
Thanks BatB that is a good read.
Wally Keeler, I think you're full of **it:
"Females are born with a potential employent agency between their legs. Why should they be dishonoured for making a choice to utilize it?"
"A society comitting suicide? Think again. These women don't have to contemplate suicide as a result of the righteous prigs in society with their oppressive anti-sex policies."
I suspect that there are very few young women who joyfully and gladly sell the physical assets "between their legs," which you so crudely allude to.
What about the lack of consideration and concern for the human person of each of these women on the part of the men who pay them for sex? What about the ever-present potential of contracting a virulent STD, the most devastating being HIV/AIDS? What about the loneliness that has to accompany the selling of their physical assets, unaccompanied by any genuine relationship with their "clients"?
I don't know what kind of space you inhabit, Mr. Keeler, but I find your view of women and the potential entrepreneurial value of "the employment agency between their legs" to be chilling.
BATB wrote, "What about the lack of consideration and concern for the human person of each of these women on the part of the men who pay them for sex?"
Really? this is something that should be legislated? You want to forbid a practice for this sort of reason?
BATB wrote "What about the ever-present potential of contracting a virulent STD, the most devastating being HIV/AIDS?"
Just how does the recently shot-down laws address this?
BATB wrote, "What about the loneliness that has to accompany the selling of their physical assets, unaccompanied by any genuine relationship with their "clients"
It's just business. They don't want a genuine relationship with a client. Allah help us if you think this anti-prostitution is about loneliness. How is loneliness something to be addressed with legislation?
BATB wrotel I don't know what kind of space you inhabit, Mr. Keeler, but I find your view of women ... to be chilling."
Oh spare me the Correct-&-Proper-Way-to-Regard-Women-According-to-a-Woman routine. My personal relationships with women are quite wonderful.
What I find chilling is people thinking that the coercive laws of the state should address such things as loneliness and inconsideration by one gender towards another.
Whether your personal distaste likes it or not, some women make a full and conscious choice to be independent, self-employed, pay their bills & taxes, etc. etc. by using a part of their body, just as men use their biceps and upper body strength to employment advantage.
Yeah, sure, Wally, whatever you say.
Read Melanie Phillips' article and Barbara Kay's:
http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2010/09/28/barbara-kay-its-the-end-of-prostitution-laws-as-we-know-them-%E2%80%94-but-sex-workers-will-never-be-safe-or-respectable/
(Warning: You won't like what either woman says, and you especially won't like Kay's talk about "a healthy society" and community values.
"Read Melanie Phillips' article and Barbara Kay's"
I did. I read Kay's before you suggested it. Although both women articulate ffar better than yourself, they were unconvincing insofar as arguing that the use of coercive law is a poor way to enforce morality, especially when such coercive law causes more harm to society than it absence.
A woman has a totalitarian right to do what she wishes with her body.
"Read Melanie Phillips' article and Barbara Kay's"
I did. I read Kay's before you suggested it. Although both women articulate ffar better than yourself, they were unconvincing insofar as arguing that the use of coercive law is a poor way to enforce morality, especially when such coercive law causes more harm to society than it absence.
A woman has a totalitarian right to do what she wishes with her body.
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