(Long Island, NY) Eliot Spitzer’s career is over. The media is having a feeding frenzy. The Emperor’s Club web site is shut down, and the FBI has its hands more than full with more than five thousand phone calls, text messages and other intercepted communications since it started its investigation.
The one thing nobody’s really talking about here–what exactly is the criminal behavior in this case that menaces society? The idea of one person paying to experience sexual gratification? That’s already legal on many levels with DVDs, mechanical toys and strip clubs. What makes a person taking the step from exhibitionism to a more direct form of sex work a greater threat to society?
Is it the idea that people might be forced into this type of work against their will? That is already a criminal act without the sexual element attached…so again, why single out one particular aspect of employment as being more reprehensible than, say, forcing people to work in sweatshop conditions? The act of coercion should be the focus of the criminal investigation rather than the nature of the work itself.
I’m trying to figure out exactly WHY we have laws banning prostitution. Not that I necessarily in favor of it–in today’s world, sexually transmitted diseases are scarier than ever and it’s too easy to catch one in a perfectly legal sense, let alone in the sex industry. But if strip clubs are legal, and XXX movies can be bought and sold with no consequences, why is the act itself targeted?
Even more confusing is the fact that the FBI is involved in an extensive wiretap and surveillance program designed to catch people whose sole threat to the fabric of our society is that they want to pay someone else to give them sexual gratification. Why does this confuse me? Because we have organizations in this country that act as armed, paramilitary groups that as far as THIS writer can tell have NOT been singled out as terrorist organization under the Homeland Security Act.
The Ku Klux Klan and other supremacist groups do not get any attention for being terrorist organizations–again, as far as I can tell–and are not classified as domestic terrorists. They fall under the Hate Crime laws instead. While we have these buffoons running about in their monogrammed bedsheets apparently free to organize and arm themselves at will, the FBI focuses its investigative manpower on a bunch of women in lacy undergarments and the desperately horny Governors who pay them.
I ask you–what is the greater threat to society? Eliot Spitzer and the problem in his pants? Or a bedsheets-warning jackass with a rifle who thinks that “white” people should push out the “mud people”. I have bad news for the KKK. Race is a social construct. Genetically speaking there are no sub classifications of Homo Sapiens. You are either one of us, or you’re part of the animal kingdom. We are ALL “mud people” as the racists so crudely put it. Racial purity? What a joke. There’s no such thing as race, let alone a “pure” one.
Of course, the bedsheets crowd doesn’t want to be confused with the facts.
My ancestors came from Scotland. But where did the Scots come from? Did they magically sprout there overnight like toadstools? I suppose the people living in Japan arrived on earth by way of a meteor. Who is “pure”? Not ME, matey boy. And damn proud of it. If there are “mud people” as opposed to those racially pure ding-dongs,I will happily raise my hand to be counted among them. I don’t WANT to be pure. Let’s mingle.
But I’m getting awfully far afield of the subject at hand here.
Why is Spitzer resigning? Why is he being investigated? I know there are some questions about how he moved the money around, but when it boils down to it, the reason he did what he did was because prostitution–paying another person for sexual gratification–is illegal. I’m still trying to work out why that is. I can’t see any threat to society coming from the act of money changing hands for a romp in the sack.
Maybe I’m too sheltered. Sure, Spitzer jeopardized his family with potential STD transmission. You get herpes for life, after all. Don’t even need to have sex to catch that one if you’re really unlucky. Spitzer was thoughtless, irresponsible…but criminal? I suppose the State of New York may well need to declare a state of emergency and martial law (I almost typed “marital law”, go figure) until we determine whether or not he’s rotted the very foundations of government because he paid more than some people earn in a six months to…have sex.
No matter how hard I try, I won’t be able to reason my way through this one. We may as well make serving sodas on Sunday illegal again for as much sense as any of this makes. I invite you, dear reader, to present me with one RATIONAL reason why paying someone (for the benefit of something you can get for free on any Saturday night at any singles bar) should be illegal.
And don’t hand me that morality tommyrot. We’re not living in the 18th century anymore, and I don’t buy it. But if you have an idea that doesn’t involve disapproval on “moral” grounds, I’m all ears. Fire away.
