Maine Governor Janet Mills waited for the last second— yesterday— to sign or veto a bill the legislature passed earlier in the month that decriminalized selling sex— while leaving it illegal to buy sex. She vetoed a similar bill in 2021 which was more wide-ranging. This one makes it legal to sell sex but illegal to buy sex— really stupid. Yesterday she signed it, making Maine the first state to institute an insane and illogical law about prostitution that will make the state a laughing stock.
Alexandra Heal reported that “Maine is embarking on a controversial experiment by partially decriminalizing prostitution in an attempt to eliminate exploitation of sex workers— adopting a model advocates say is a first in the country.” Because it’s statewide, it goes further than the ghetto-approach Nevada has taken. It eliminates penalties for those who sell sex while leaving in place laws against the purchase of it. Apparently, Gloria Steinem got Mills to change her mind.
At one point, I had moved from living in Amsterdam to living in New York and didn’t really have a way to support myself. So… until I found a couple of part-time jobs, I worked as a prostitute. I didn’t like it much but the money was decent and I knew where to draw lines and had the wherewithal to enforce them. It was still kind of creepy and once I stopped doing it, I never thought about doing it again. I’m sure the experience is a lot different for a woman, especially for a woman with less self confidence and agency. But the Maine approach is absolutely idiotic. They claim that they’re using an approach used in Canada and some European countries— although none I;’weever heard of— and “is championed by many feminists who see it as the best way to stamp out demand for paid sex [oh, yeah— that’s going to happen] while protecting those who sell it because of economic need or because they are victims of trafficking. Among its opponents are conservatives who say it could impede efforts to help trafficking victims; also opposed to the partial decriminalization are those who advocate the full decriminalization of consensual sex work.”
Cities and states nationally have been reevaluating how commercial sex should be treated under the law. Last year, California followed New York state in repealing a ban on loitering with the intent to sell sex.
In 2021, then-Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus R. Vance Jr. announced that his office would no longer prosecute other prostitution and unlicensed massage cases but would continue to pursue buyers and traffickers, joining Baltimore and Philadelphia.
But the exchange of sex for money remains illegal for sellers and buyers in the rest of the country, except Nevada, where some rural counties allow the operation of licensed brothels, according to the organization Decriminalize Sex Work, which seeks to change laws nationally.
“The point of this whole thing is to decrease the demand for commercial sex,” said Maine state Rep. Lois Reckitt (D), who sponsored the bill, adding that she wanted to do something to help women in the “revolving door” to get out of the sex industry.
Reckitt said police traditionally have used the women they arrested for prostitution to get to the people trafficking them. “Now they’re going to have to arrest the Johns and lean on them to find out where the trafficking is coming from,” she said.
Reckitt, who will retire from the state legislature next year as she reaches her mandatory term limit, also sponsored the 2021 measure and said she was “surprised” by Mills’ recent change of heart.
…Another bill to seal the criminal records of women who have been convicted of prostitution is moving through the legislature. Both chambers of Maine’s legislature are controlled by Democrats. Opposition in the state House to the bill, which also upgrades the commercial sexual exploitation of children from a misdemeanor to a felony, came largely from Republicans.
“It has to be an all-or-nothing scenario for the police to be able to do their job,” said Rep. Jennifer Poirier (R), a member of the Maine House Judiciary Committee who opposed the bill.
Another GOP opponent, Rep. Rachel Henderson, said that outlawing the purchase of something but allowing the sale of it made no sense.
Others say they think the law does not go far enough.
Daniella Cameron, the deputy director of the Maine poverty outreach nonprofit group Preble Street, said that she supported the decriminalization of selling sex but that penalizing buyers “pushes the industry further from the margins” and therefore increases the risk of violence toward sellers. She said that truly addressing trafficking would require tackling root causes such as homelessness, poverty, hunger and immigration laws. The legislation carries no new funding.
The partial decriminalization approach— known by advocates as “the Nordic model” because it was first adopted in Sweden— is based on the notion that the exchange of sex for money is almost always exploitative and therefore should be eliminated.
To that end, Reckitt’s bill as originally introduced in March would have changed all references to “prostitution” in Maine’s code to “commercial sexual exploitation.”
“It denigrates all women when some women are being bought and sold,” said Reckitt, a former officer of the National Organization for Women who for three decades led an organization that fights domestic violence in Maine. “There’s no way to have total gender equality in this world if we’re selling women.”
Ariela Moscowitz, the communications director at Decriminalize Sex Work, which favors fully decriminalizing consensual sex work, countered that it is unrealistic to fully abolish the practice and that feminists who press for “bodily autonomy” in other realms of life should support those who choose to engage in it.
Multiple attempts have been made in other states to change the law around prostitution. Hawaii recently distinguished between buyers and sellers in law, although buying and selling both remain illegal. Some legislators in New York and Massachusetts also have been pushing competing measures that would adopt either the “Nordic model” or full decriminalization. The latter also is under consideration in Vermont.
Back to my own experience. Technically illegal in New York, the police didn't bother anyone as long as there was no violence. That's not as good as just making it legal and leaving everyone alone, but I still think this twisted Maine experiment is half-assed and foolish.
it has the typical stench of a democrap pretense to do something that they'll never actually do.
sure a law says something is illegal. but will they enforce it? and are they counting on the first trial to be challenged to the supremes to get it overturned, as obamanation figured ACA would be and as biden designed the student debt thing to be?
in american politics, it's a win/win by losing. you get your dumber than shit voters thinking you give a shit, and convince them it wasn't your fault when the supreme court strikes it down.
FTR, ACA is, technically, unconstitutional. Health CARE could be done constitutionally, but not without taking a huge bite out of insurance and phrm…
If the goal is to suppress commercial sex, then it makes more sense to bust the johns and dry up demand. With no demand, pimps would need a more lucrative line of work. It makes more sense than busting sex workers, who provide a useful service while being exploited by all sides. The question is why suppress sex.