Chez Chesler

I’ll throw in my two cents.  I doubt I’ve got anything to say that hasn’t been said already somewhere in the blogosphere.

• Governor Spitzer was doing his part to help wayward girls.  That’s commendable.
• Dinesh D’Souza disagrees with Alan Dershowitz, pointing out the prostitution has victims, in this case Mrs. Spitzer, their daughters, the citizens of New York, and Professor Dershowitz.  No man is an island, so it follows that every choice has consequences, good or bad, for non-participants. That doesn’t make them victims, and doesn’t justify criminalizing the behavior, if freedom is to have any meaning.
• I agree with those who are enjoying the exposure of former-prosecutor Spitzer’s hypocrisy, and the irony of the situation.
• In his dissent to Lawrence v. Texas, Justice Antonin Scalia suggests that the holding, that "majoritarian sexual morality is not even a legitimate state interest" means laws against prostitution cannot "survive rational-basis review."
• Around here, the Woburn and Burlington police have been running stings and surveillance operations to find escorts who are working in private rooms in local hotels.  I understand that streetwalking may be as disturbing to other users of the public streets as other vendors and business nuisances, but they are going after the same sorts of Internet-based escorts as Governor Spitzer did business with.  They are engaging, in private, in activities which would be completely legal were it not for the commercial aspect.  There are enough crimes with actual unwilling victims here (things like bicycle and GPS theft) that I’d much rather the limited police resources be directed towards solving or preventing those crimes.
• I heard Professor Dershowitz on WBZ-AM (haven’t been able to find this in a transcript online) saying something along the lines that if every politician who engaged in some indiscretion had to resign, we wouldn’t have any elected officials.  I disagree.  If these laws, which the Professor seems only now to be loudly complaining about, were enforced against every minor violation, the bad laws would be repealed.

Labels: Dershowitz, Prostitution, Spitzer