Religious priggishness is that selfrighteous closedmindedness and intolerance that wishes to outlaw anything they can twist their religious teachings to show opposition to, as if their religion should have any bearing on the laws of a secular nation.
Appearance elitism is the attitude that pretty people should get sex (and just about anything else they want) and if you are not pretty or handsome you are not deserving of such. The existance of prostitution, where anyone with $50 can get laid, tends to undermine this completely.
For thousands of years various societies and cultures have tried to ban, outlaw and in any other ways they could think of eradicate prostitution. As we can see these efforts have been an abyssmal failure and a colossal waste of time and effort. All that criminalizing prostitution does is give a nice funding source for criminals. Also such unreasonable and arbitrary laws turns otherwise law-abiding citizens into criminals, thereby allowing for extortion to be committed against them. Also having prostitution illegal promotes the concept of pimps who use women to line their own pockets.
From a public safety position there is no justification to prostitution being a crime and great reason for it being legalized. If legal you could, just like restaurants, institute health checks, which would greatly reduce the spread of STDs. Also you could save all the money wasted on persecuting prostitutes and their customers. Add to this that you would then be able to tax the revenue generated by prostitution, estimated annually to be in the billions of dollars!
One of the most obviously hypocritical aspects of these laws is that it is a crime if you go pay Sally $50 for a sure thing of sex, but even is she is known to be a sure thing, it is not a crime to pay $50 to some restaurant for the dinner which gets you sex from Sally. Why is it that the restaurant owner should benefit from Sally's charms? What is the harm of Sally getting the money directly and spending it as SHE chooses?
Politics