Victimless crime?

http://www.abc15.com/dpp/news/region_southeast_valley/tempe/pd-teens-try-to-trade-sex-for-food

Two teens arrested for prostitution. Imagine being so hungry and willing to trade your body- your mouth- for food. Imagine conservative pundits on Topix making jokes about "Happy Meals". Which is more offensive?

What to do with homeless kids? You can scream at them to get a job but, in most states the kids are too young to be fully employed. Missouri recently dumped their Child Labor laws but not so much to thwart these situations as to promote cheap child labor should the republicans be successful in diverting funds from schools into... Wall Street casinos, I guess. If those kids aren't going to be in school, they need to work, right? If you don't think that is doable in this still recovering economy, you need to consider how cheap minors would be to employ. Dove-tailed with a repealing of minimum wage laws, we could have near full employment to rival China or the American South prior to The Civil War.

I'm going to guess that the 18 and the 14 year old are homeless as well as jobless. There are no parents in the picture to teach them right from wrong and the folks that were there, most likely abused them, causing them to survive as they could on the steets. Except for the mentally ill, would anyone chose to live on the streets?

I doubt few choose prostition as a profession. For every "Pretty Woman" (Julia Roberts) there must be 10,000 male and female whores supporting a drug habit and/or a pimp. This isn't about an attractive woman *working* her way through law school as an *escort*. It's about survival. It's no laughing matter. Women, men and children are exploited world-wide and right here in America, every moment of every day. Putting them in jail is not the answer. The customers (johns) almost never do time, usually getting a citation, if not let off with a warning. If it's illegal to sell one's body, why isn't it illegal to buy?

Except for dating a call girl back in the day, I've never been with a prostitute. Angelica is a story for another day but, I was young and did rationalize her occupation and her being with other men as, more honest than my ex had been....

Again, I was young. Living in cities as I have, I've been around more prostitutes than most likely have. One morning in Memphis I sat in my truck having coffee, on break from work. I was facing a busy street, one of many known for prostitution. A young girl that I had to suspect was a crackwhore walked by my truck and made furtive, hopeful eye contact. I think I shook my head 'no' and she walked on.

I wasn't part of the problem but, neither was I part of the solution. Granted, saving souls is not in my job description. It was hard to tell how old she was but I'd have to guess teens going on thirty. A little rough looking. Somebody's daughter though. They all are. What could I do? Give her $20 with no strings attached? Part of me still wishes that I had though I know that would have been a short term solution to a long-term problem. Take her home and clean her up? That wasn't an option. If she had one, I wouldn't have minded beating her pimp/dealer senseless. All I did was not allow her to degrade herself with me. It seemed like enough, at the time. Cold comfort that that small non-act was more than many men would have done.

Exploiting other human beings has always been the way of the world. It always will be. All we can do is fight it as best we can, helping who we can. Legal semantics aside, lets not have sex between adults *illegal*. Let's not give tacit approval to adults having sex with minors by jailing the children for prostitution. At the very least, let's not joke about it.