In this live-and-let-live town, where medical marijuana clubs do business next to grocery stores and an annual fair celebrates sadomasochism, prostitutes could soon walk the streets without fear of arrest. | Hookerage has, of course, always been against the law in San Francisco. There has never been a time where women were exploited in large numbers, hawking their personal wares from the streets or spending a miserable existence taking on all comers in cribs on the Barbary Coast. Such things would never happen in the City by the Bay. |
Are you sure it's not Proposition K-Y? And I don't think I'd use "proposition" in the wording.
| They had the separate K-Y version for homosexuals, but that was deemed discriminatory. |
In the very near future it seems San Francisco will be it's own little State where only San Francisco laws apply.
Proponents say the measure will free up $11 million the police spend each year arresting prostitutes and allow them to form collectives.
Ahhh, "collectives". Is that another word for Unions?
Not quite...The foundation upon which the Barbary Coast reared its fantastic structure of crime and debauchery was a system of commercialized prostitution that occupied a semi-lawful status in San Francisco for more than sixty years. Throughout that period the harlot was the divekeeper's greatest single asset and his most important attraction; whatever she did worked to his advantage, whether she labored as a streetwalker, as an inmate of the brothels, as a decoy in the deadfalls, or as a waiter girl and performer in the dance-halls, concert saloons, melodeons, and peepshows. Without the drawing power of the professional bawd it is doubtful if the Barbary Coast could have maintained, for more than a few years, a profitable existence as a so-called amusement center. In the final analysis a great majority of the men who visited the quarter did so because of the lewdness and depravity of the women who were to be found there; and when open prostitution was driven out of the shadow of the Golden Gate, the Barbary Coast soon followed it into oblivion.We're not even going to bring up the Sidney Ducks. |
| I'm guessing that wasn't the only reason she moved ... |
From the first 49ers to the first hookers was a matter of a day or two. From the first hookers to the first Vigilance Committee was about 18 months. The second was five years later. Some form of prostitution is already legal in two states. Brothels are allowed in rural counties in Nevada. And Rhode Island permits the sale of sex behind closed doors between consulting adults, but it prohibits street prostitution and brothels. In 2004, almost two-thirds of voters in nearby Berkeley rejected decriminalization. But proponents of Proposition K
More at the link. There are both pros and cons to legalized prostitution and I don't pretend to judge one way or another. The fact that a municipality that is subject to State laws is considering not obeying or enforcing them is my point here. That goes for any municipality that refuses to obey or enforce State or Federal laws.