Livre d'Or

I have a bit of a problem with keeping something like prostitution out of sight so that innocent people don't have to look at it, actually. If a person believes that prostitution is harmful, then that person has an obligation to try to do something about it politically, not try to hide the evidence of the harm.

I think that sort of attitude is exactly why there is such a problem in New York with the police mistreating prostitutes. They are chasing the women out of "nice" areas because fastidious people don't want to have look at vice and the attendant suffering. That's bad for the prostitutes because they get chased around and mistreated. It's bad for the people living in the not-so-nice areas that suddenly turn into unofficial red light districts with increased crime.

It's not that I'm accusing you of being a hypocrite, or anything like that. It's just that I feel either prostitution is ok, in which case it should be open and above-board, or it's not ok, in which case it needs to be tackled systemically, not cosmetically. And it did occur to me that if I feel safer in an official Red Light District than a de facto one, it's likely that the prostitutes themselves feel safer there too, not to mention the people who might not have that much choice about which areas of the city they want to spend time in.