To Legalize Or Not To Legalize: Bill O’Reilly Is Wrong About Prostitution
On last night’s edition of The O’Reilly Factor, Bill O’Reilly claimed that “forces that want to legalize prostitution are using the [Secret Service prostitution] scandal to advance their agenda.” He took the opportunity to show some b-roll of street workers and debate sex workers’ lawyer Sienna Baskin over whether we should legalize the business.
Baskin argued that her clients often have no other viable choice of profession, but O’Reilly pushed back, asking the lawyer: “why can’t [sex workers] get a legitimate job like 99 percent of the population?”
This argument is tiresome.
What is a “legitimate” job? It surely is not O’Reilly’s judgment call to make. When I worked for John Stossel, I produced a segment about the legal brothels in rural Nevada. At the Moonlite BunnyRanch, girl after girl told us they see themselves as “entrepreneurs.” And they would much rather sell sex than flip patties at a McDonald’s or wait tables at a diner.
There’s something called free choice: if you choose to do sex work — i.e., no one forced you into the profession against your will — then why is it anyone else’s business?
Well, O’Reilly contends that sex work is harmful and that legalization “sends a message that this is okay.”
But we allow consenting adults to make money off their body doing plenty of other things we might find harmful: boxers are allowed to beat each other to a bloody pulp; loggers and fishermen engage in some of the most dangerous jobs in the world. People willfully engage in those professions, just as adults willfully engage in prostitution. O’Reilly shouldn’t arbitrarily draw the line at sex just because it’s icky to him.
He even concedes that legalization would reduce the harm done to sex workers by black market forces. In a legal market, sex workers could report crimes and rely on police to protect them from fraud and abusive pimps. In a legal market, sex work wouldn’t be associated with disease and crime. In a legal market, police could focus on going after truly vile things like coercive sex trafficking and child prostitution.
Somehow O’Reilly doesn’t see this as reason enough to consider legalization.
But the facts about legalization cannot be ignored. In the rural counties of Nevada where prostitution is legal, the brothels experience almost no crime; the sex workers are regularly tested for disease; the rooms are outfitted with call boxes; local sheriffs actually respond to distress calls, treating the brothels like any other business.
Contrast that with Las Vegas and Reno, where sex work is still illegal. Prostitution there is intimately linked with coercion and crime. Both cities report millions of dollars worth of property theft every year at the hands of prostitutes, in what is known as “trick-rolling.”
O’Reilly has every right to be disgusted by prostitution. Heck, most Americans feel the same way. But that doesn’t mean policy should turn a blind eye to the facts.
Watch the segment below:
This is an opinion piece. The views expressed in this article are those of just the author.
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