The Deacon's Bench
Sex work would be broadly legalized in New York state under a first-of-its-kind bill introduced by state legislators on Monday.
A group of lawmakers first called for legislation in February, but on Monday they finally came forward with a 13-page bill that would bring dramatic changes to the sex trade in the state.
The bill, written with advocacy group DecrimNY, would make it legal to both buy and sell sex under certain circumstances and modifies laws around facilities that are used as places of prostitution.
“For us, this is a bodily autonomy issue — our bodies, our choice — but more than that, it’s an economic issue. And it’s personal,” Jessica Raven, one of Decrim NY’s organizers, wrote in a Daily News op-ed Monday.
Two of the bill’s sponsors, state senators Jessica Ramos and Julia Salazar, have said that 9 out of 10 people arrested in sex-work-related massage parlor raids are immigrants, with most being undocumented Asians.
Ramos made clear her position a few weeks back:
“This is about the oldest profession, and understanding that we haven’t been able to deter or end it, in millennia,” said Senator Jessica Ramos, a Democrat from Queens who is one of the plan’s backers. “So I think it’s time to confront reality.”
Following that logic: since we haven’t been able to deter or end murder, we might as well legalize that, too.
Meanwhile, there’s this point of view:
A former sex-trade survivor who says she was victimized everywhere from New York City strip clubs to Nevada’s legal brothels is now at the forefront of the national battle against legalization, telling The Post that it only encourages “horrific’’ trafficking.
“A lot of people are under the misconception that just because it’s legal [in Nevada], then it’s safe and it’s clean and that all the people there are consenting, and that’s just not the truth,” said Rebekah Charleston, who appears in a blistering new anti-trafficking video put out by opponents of legalization.
“I think a lot of people have this happy hooker mindset like, ‘Oh well, she looks happy, and she’s an adult, so she should be able to do what she wants,’ when that’s just not reality. The realities of prostitution and sex trafficking are horrific.”
“Forty-eight years ago, prostitution was legalized in Nevada. It was a social experiment. That experiment has failed,” Charleston says in the video.
Nevada has a 63 percent higher rate of illegal sex-trade activity than any other state in the country and ranks in the top 10 for trafficked and exploited youth, according to the video, which adds that only 10 percent of prostitution in Nevada is legal.
Nevada also is ranked sixth in the country for rapes and sexual assaults against women, according to Awaken, an anti-sex trafficking non-profit based in Reno.
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