By: Billy BeerSlugger
Just so everyone knows, Craigslist has taken down the Adult Services section on their website. Now you may be thinking, “That’s good, prostitution is illegal and disgusting” and for the most or all of that equation you will be right. Prostitution is definitely illegal and Craigslist is one of the main places that people in every major city have gone to acquire an escort, get a blow job or be beaten unmercifully by a dominatrix.
On the surface, taking down a portion of a website known to harbor such activity is hailed as a victory for morals and right wing politics. However, having one place for people to go to advertise or acquire such services also gave law enforcement a one stop shop to snoop, sting and arrest the people partaking in such activities. So on one hand you have a free-ish website devoted to people providing erotic services and on the other hand the people who are posting these services are opening themselves up to arrest and prosecution if they are providing illegal services as well as the people who are responding to ads may be caught in a sting also. So does one negative and one positive equal a wash? Apparently not.
With a political season in full swing and right wing rhetoric being spewed out of every trying to be a senator/representative that is in a conservative area it put a lot of pressure on Craigslist and they eventually caved. Why? I’m not really sure. Maybe endless days in court and lawyer fees, maybe they didn’t want the bad press, maybe they figured it just wasn’t worth the hassle to let people sell sex for free essentially. Either way, the people that were frequenting the Craigslist Adult Section now have to go other places to find what they are looking for. Places the Police aren’t privy to or do not have good ways of tracking. So that when things do go wrong, someone gets hurt or killed it’s going to be that much harder to solve the case.
You can look at this things from the two angles, pro-adult section and anti-adult section and have a great argument on both sides but I’m of the mind that people will find another way to do their illegal activities, just like in the realm of illegal downloading of copyrighted data. You shut one file sharing site down and 10 more pop up and then more people know that there’s file sharing sites when they hear the news on TV that one was shut down. It’s almost better to leave the original one up and try and control that monster than tear it down and create a long line of copycats.
Anyway, that’s why we call them issues because they have two equally different but somewhat logical thought processes behind them. Whats great about this country is we are allowed the opportunity of free thinking unlike many other countries and cultures. I always find it’s best to discover both parts of the argument, look at both rationales behind the thought processes before you make an informed decision. Don’t know why but this issue kind of reminded me of how blindly following a politician on certain issues is often not the right thing to do. They were some of the people frequenting Craigslist Adult Section to begin with.
Catch our fun take on BeerSlugger.com’s brief foray into the world of Adult Personal Ads on Craigslist.