Dennis MacShane On Buying And Selling Sex

TIM notes: I hadn’t realised that the idiot Dennis MacShane was involved with this idea to criminalise the purchase of sex.

They say there is no other way of dealing with this scale of misery, but before another law is rushed on to the statute book, with everyone involved feeling the warm glow of a ready solution, it is worth seeing whether the MacShane amendment will work and what sort of principles it is founded on.

As proposed, his amendment makes a distinction between buying and selling sex. While a man will not be able to buy sex in a designated area, it will not be illegal for a woman to sell sex, as long as she complies with the laws concerning the sex trade, chiefly soliciting. Also, it will not be illegal for a man to buy sex from another man or a woman to buy sex from a man, or a woman from a woman, though all these variants in the sex trade - some extremely rare, I grant you - will have to comply with the law in other respects.

So we must conclude that the government does not view the act of buying sex is wrong in principle. This is a shaky position to start from if we are about to introduce yet another criminal offence, because it will be clear to everyone that the exchange that takes place between a man and a woman and a man and a man is exactly the same. The same levels of revulsion, pleasure, release, exploitation, abuse, regret and despair may exist in both transactions, yet only in one will an offence be committed.

Now that I know he is involved it neatly explains why it’s such a howlingly stupid idea. The man’s never uttered a sensible word in his life, including the times he’s used “and” “is” and “a”.

Anorak

Posted: 30th, December 2007 | In: Twitterings Comment (1) | Follow the Comments on our RSS feed: RSS 2.0 | TrackBack | Permalink