Next Week Is Deborah Jeane Palfrey Week
By Justin Gardner | Related entries in General Politics, Law, Sexuality
I think it’s quite telling about the human condition that the one person who will most likely destroy thousands of lives and careers in Washington is not a lobbyist or a politician, but somebody who peddled the one thing most people can’t live without.
Personally, aside from hypocrites like Randall Tobias, I don’t think anybody did anything wrong here. Prostitution should be legalized and regulated. And one has to wonder if, after this scandal, we’ll start to hear politicians saying the same thing.
In any event, the Washington Post has a profile about the woman most knew as Miz Julia, but who is now one of the most powerful women in Washington.
This entry was posted on Sunday, April 29th, 2007 and is filed under General Politics, Law, Sexuality. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
April 29th, 2007 at 11:52 am
Totally agree. Why is it illegal to provide a little comfort to lonely travelers. She provides a fantastic service.
April 30th, 2007 at 6:28 pm
Well, you then get editorial cartoons like this popping up
http://www.theweeklydonut.org/index.php/category/pamela-martin-and-associates/
May 1st, 2007 at 5:56 pm
1. I think prostitution, like many other crimes, should be legal.
2. Elected officials routinely grandstand on “family values” and in more recent years the “sanctity of marriage.” Entire elections and referendums revolve around these simple-minded phrases.
3. In my own state consensual sex between unmarried adults is illegal, and all forms of sodomy are illegal.
4. Holding someone in physical incarceration for doing something with his body that he and all the involved parties consented to represents in my opinion an extreme form of repression.
Which leads me to my final point:
When the elected officers and appointed agents of a government–which routinely physically incarcerates thousands of its own citizens for victimless crimes–themselves make use of services which the government deems illegal, short of a mass resignation, there is no reason to respect the authority of that government. Some may argue that this standard is too high, but I will note that asking for mercy from a court because the standards of conduct are too high rarely pans out for all but the upper echelons of power.