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The Opinion of
the
United States Supreme Court
delivered by Justice Kennedy
June 26, 2003: Lawrence v. Texas
“Liberty
presumes an autonomy of self that includes freedom of thought,
belief, expression, and certain intimate conduct. . . The State
cannot demean (their) existence or control (their) destiny by
making (their) private sexual conduct a crime. . . ‘It is a
promise of the Constitution that there is a realm of personal
liberty which the government may not enter.’ . . . times can
blind us to certain truths and later generations can see that
laws once thought necessary and proper in fact serve only to
oppress. As the Constitution endures, persons in every
generation can invoke its principles in their own search for
greater freedom.
[Summary: laws that criminalize private, consensual sex between
adults of the same or opposite sex violate the fundamental right
to privacy in the Constitution.]
Dr.
Rita Brock
Former Harvard fellow
Theologian
Author of Casting Stones
“Prohibition
gives cover to traffickers. It allows them to use the laws
against prostitution to intimidate, especially when it comes to
children. Women and girls being held against their will are
afraid to go to police because they will be treated as
criminals”
ifeminists.com
Individualist or Libertarian feminism website
“Just laws are
those that protect the person and property of peaceful
individuals -- for example, laws against rape. Unjust laws are
those that infringe upon the freedom of peaceful individuals --
for example, laws against consensual adult sex acts.”
Veronica
Monet
Former Prostitute
Current Sex Educator
Lifetime Whore
“All of us
share a common goal – that of improving the lives of women. We
only disagree on how to accomplish that common goal.
Some would argue that women who work in prostitution must be
rescued and that sex workers are victims with no real ability to
consent or make empowered choices. But as a sex worker I will
fight to my death for the right of all women to be respected as
adults capable of making choices and decisions pertaining to
their lives, personal safety and working conditions.
The original feminist movement began in response to many
oppressions not the least of which was patriarchal patronizing
and protection for our own good. Any so-called feminist movement
that resorts to these very same patriarchal techniques such as
silencing and censoring the voices of sex workers or enforcing
laws that penalize sex workers in the name of protecting them is
neither feminist nor empowering.
As a feminist I will never settle for anything short of complete
empowerment, autonomy, civil rights, human rights and dignity
for all women – especially prostitutes. Laws against
prostitution only hurt women who work in prostitution.
Legalizing prostitution only empowers men to function as pimps
and johns.
But decriminalizing prostitution removes all laws that attempt
to control and contain the dreaded whore. Only decriminalization
will give prostitutes equal access to protection under the law
as well as the rights accorded other citizens.” |
Former San Jose
Chief of Police
Joseph McNamara
“. . . [T]rying
to stop [prostitution] through the use of criminal law has
proven to be an enormous failure that has led to corruption and
has led to violence and certainly has not lessened prostitution
. . . [current] law is based upon religious mores and while
people certainly are free to believe in any religious belief and
practice that they wish, at the same time I don’t think it’s
right to start putting people in jail who don’t share that
wish and I think that’s the essence of what we call the
separation clause of the first amendment, that we shall separate
the government from any official religion. And when it comes to
prostitution it’s pretty clear that the objections to
prostitution came from religious groups and they succeeded in
getting their version of sin put into the penal code and ever
since then we’ve been paying a terrible price for it. . . Most
police officers who are candid about this will tell you that
what we do is kind of a token enforcement. No one in their right
mind believes that law enforcement can stamp out
prostitution.”
The Green River
Killer,
Gary Leon Ridgeway
-- confessed to the murders of
48 prostitute women
“I wanted to
kill as many women I thought were prostitutes as I possibly
could. I picked prostitutes as victims because they were easy to
pick up without being noticed. I knew they would not be reported
missing right away, and might never be reported. I picked
prostitutes because I thought I could kill as many of them as I
wanted without getting caught.”
Elizabeth
Sy
Women’s Program Coordinator
Asian Pacific Islander Wellness Center
“The existing
law leads to isolation of women. This is especially true for
those that have language barriers. It prevents them from seeking
police protection for themselves or others that are in trouble.
Decriminalizing prostitution doesn’t mean decriminalizing
trafficking. The purpose of halting trafficking is to protect
the women who are the victims of it, but until we decriminalize
prostitution we will not achieve that goal.” |
