Ex-owners of sex work site Backpage convicted of prostitution scheme

Re:Ex-owners of sex work site Backpage convicted of prostitu... by fnordpiglet on Friday November 24, 2023 @09:01AM (#38404022)

Are bystanders typical in your bedroom? As a part of society I’ve never once been harmed by anyone’s sexual intercourse, even folks who invite bystanders. I think only societies that take great interest in conformity to some norm to the extent they feel the need to be angry about someone else’s nonconformity reap harm from private thought and activity. In that case I think the harm starts with society and ends with the individual rather than the individual harming society.

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Re:Ex-owners of sex work site Backpage convicted of prostitu... by rayiner on Friday November 24, 2023 @09:20AM (#38404201)

The effects don’t stop at the doors of the bedroom. For example kids suffer when marriages break up due to infidelity.

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Re:Ex-owners of sex work site Backpage convicted of prostitu... by phowat on Friday November 24, 2023 @11:41AM (#38405729)

Sure! Why not outlaw adultery then ? Let's even stone them to death!

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Re:Ex-owners of sex work site Backpage convicted of prostitu... by xyzzyz on Saturday November 25, 2023 @04:33AM (#38412399)

Yes, adultery by married people should be criminal, and the victim spouse should be able to prosecute it.

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Re:Ex-owners of sex work site Backpage convicted of prostitu... by effingwewt on Friday November 24, 2023 @11:02AM (#38405257)

Which can happen for a million reasons.

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Re:Ex-owners of sex work site Backpage convicted of prostitu... by rayiner on Saturday November 25, 2023 @11:30AM (#38414501)

But adultery is a very common reason, and a preventable one.

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Re:Ex-owners of sex work site Backpage convicted of prostitu... by fnordpiglet on Friday November 24, 2023 @01:04PM (#38406526)

In this case it’s not the sex that’s the issue but the betrayal of a commitment. You can have marital infidelity that doesn’t include intercourse and it’s still just as much a betrayal and leads to divorce etc.

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Re:Ex-owners of sex work site Backpage convicted of prostitu... by rayiner on Saturday November 25, 2023 @02:37PM (#38415976)

But the sex is the thing that tempts people to break the commitment. Yeah, there’s the libertarian take where you say “just don’t take the opioids if you don’t want to deal with the consequences” but I thought we had learned that libertarianism doesn’t work. You can’t model humans as rational creatures. You can improve outcomes by limiting people’s ability to make bad choices.

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Re:Ex-owners of sex work site Backpage convicted of prostitu... by Manuel_D on Friday November 24, 2023 @09:21AM (#38404214)

People taking shits in the street does have a clear and concrete harm: worse sanitation, namely the likelihood of stepping into a pile of feces.

How does this analogy map onto prostitution? Higher rates of STDs? People get diseases from non-paid sex too. You don't like seeing prostitutes soliciting on the street? If only they could advertise online...

I'm still not seeing an explanation of how prostitution harms "bystanders and society as a whole".

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Re:Ex-owners of sex work site Backpage convicted of prostitu... by rayiner on Friday November 24, 2023 @09:23AM (#38404243)

It all stems from the same culture of permissiveness and individualism. The shit in San Francisco’s streets, the graffiti, the needles, etc., is a physical manifestation of the city’s underlying cultural degeneracy.

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Re:Ex-owners of sex work site Backpage convicted of prostitu... by Manuel_D on Friday November 24, 2023 @09:33AM (#38404342)

Again, I still have yet to see you or any other commenter explain how two people wilfully exchanging money for sex harms people uninvolved in this transaction.

Shit on the streets has a clear harm: worse sanitation, increased probability of stepping into shit.

What's the harm of sex work? "Cultural degeneracy" is an extremely vague and hand-wavy claim.

And for what it's worth non-individualist countries such as much of east Asia actually have substantially higher rates of prostitution than North America. I don't see the link between individualism and prostitution.

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