I know there are some out there who would consider this no laughing matter. To those people, I politely say: Lighten up. It would appear that the latest victim of the renown Craigslist Killer is none other than Legal Prostitution. According to the above article, through an oversight of the Rhode Island legislation, they created a loophole in a law which allowed the legal exercise of prostitution with the singular stipulation that it be done indoors.
All forms of prostitution were illegal in the state until 1980, when legislators -- while amending the existing law to speed up prosecution -- inadvertently deleted the section that addressed the actual act of prostitution. The result was that the only thing that remained illegal was street solicitation, since police mostly use anti-loitering laws to arrest streetwalkers.Kudos to Mikey and shame-shame on RI legislators. At this time, I would like to slowly enjoy this moment as I point out the irony of the situation. The legislators were amending a law to allow them to rush prosecutions on prostitutes and ended up rushing the amendment instead, overlooking a major line of verbiage, which then allowed for the legalization of prostitution.
This legal loophole went unnoticed and police weren't thwarted until 2003, when Providence lawyer Michael Kiselica was representing sex workers in a case before the state district court here. He acknowledged to a Providence city prosecutor that the women had offered sex for money to undercover police but asserted no state law was broken. The case was dismissed.
Somehow I get this vision in my mind of a man standing on a beach with an umbrella. He looks up to the sky, opens the umbrella, and lifts it over his head. Then the Tsunami hits.
State legislators have tried to restore the law for years, but fell short in the face of opposition by some lawmakers, civil libertarians and academics, who said that allowing the arrest of prostitutes could end up punishing victims of human trafficking.
This year, however, momentum to change the law has grown. Bills have passed both the Rhode Island House and Senate, and the two bodies are now meeting to craft a common piece of legislation to send to the governor.
The new momentum is partly a response to the so-called Craigslist killing. Medical student Philip Markoff was indicted in Massachusetts in June on charges of killing a woman at an upscale Boston hotel who had advertised on the "exotic services" section of Craigslist. Rhode Island officials also charged Mr. Markoff with assault and intent to commit robbery of a stripper he had arranged to meet at a hotel in the state.
It always perplexes me how we can't ever make a stance on something and make a change because something is wrong; we always have to use something that's virtually unrelated to make our point stick.
Oldest profession or not, prostitution is immoral and wrong. You can argue all day long about how it's going to happen no matter what, so why not legalize it and then bring out the grocery list of things that legalization will stop. It makes no difference. If it's wrong, we shouldn't be advocating the benefits of legalizing it, we should make a conscious effort to stamp it out. Instead our politicians, city officials, judges, and law enforcement let prostitutes walk in exchange for free service.
So now we're going to grasp at straws and try to use an unfortunate set of events that has no real correlation to fix the law we broke. How politicized and bureaucratized is our system that we can't just fix a simple mistake like this without an act of God or Congress?
Mr. Markoff has pleaded not guilty to the Massachusetts charges and has not yet appeared in Rhode Island to answer charges there. His attorney did not immediately respond Friday to a phone message seeking comment.
At this point in the article, we would like to make a brief, obligatory announcement that we have no juevos and don't want to get sued, so we're not going to say that the guy, who we know is completely guilty, is in fact guilty (HE'S GUILTY!!!). Just to repeat, he said he was not guilty, and as far as this newspaper is concerned, that's good enough for us (HE'S GUILTY!!!). Thank you for your understanding in this matter (HE'S GUILTY, I SAY, GUILTY!!!).
Opponents of the change argue that indoor prostitution is safer for women, among other things. Tara Hurley, a Rhode Island filmmaker who did a documentary on sex workers, this summer organized prostitutes who are opposed to the law change to testify at the State House. A reporter accompanied her on Thursday to a Providence spa that she says offers sex. The spa was on the second floor of a mostly vacant office building.
After ringing a buzzer, guests were admitted by an older woman. Ms. Hurley said most spas have an "Imo," the Korean word for aunt, who cooks and cleans. In a den, off a dimly lit hallway, another woman who said she was an employee sat on a couch in pajamas, munching popcorn and watching a Korean movie.
The woman, who declined to give her name, said she is 41 and that she works at the spa for the money, some of which she sends back to her native Korea to help her family. She said she hopes the state law is not changed. "Nobody likes this work, but they are taking care of their families," she said.
Okay, they pulled out the, "I didn't know how much badder things were for these bad people until I made a movie about them and then it, like, changed my sociopolitcal views on the subject cause, like, just fifteen minutes of filming anything and you just, like, understand all of this...stuff about things." defense. That changes everything. They should have said this at the beginning of the article, then I would have avoided all of those paragraphs of using my brain and judging the situation for the bumbling mistake it was. Sheesh. These people need to take a Journalism class or something. Oh, and like, think of the children. Whoa...I think I just blew my mind!
Among those fighting the brothels are nearby businesses. In Middletown, R.I., near Newport, a local toy store relocated 40 minutes away in August after the owners grew frustrated with doing business near what they believed was a brothel.
Eric and Hema Bulmer, owners of Pow! Science! said when they stopped by their store at night, they would see the spa's neon "open" sign lit and cars parked outside. During the day, men occasionally walked into the store and noticed that Mrs. Bulmer, who is a Nepalese immigrant, was a petite Asian woman. They immediately assumed the toy store was a front for a brothel, Mrs. Bulmer said.
"Guys look at you and think, this must be it," Mrs. Bulmer said, calling the unwanted attention "humiliating."
Now I don't know about you, but that's a Creep Factor of about 2,025. If I were them, I'd switch over to a Basque Restaurant just to be on the safe side. Who knows how long it will take them to get the legislative spackle out and fix this one?
