I approved all of the comments I received on this post, but now it’s time to move on and take up this discussion in your own blog space. Comments in this thread are officially closed. Thanks for your input, observations, and criticisms. It’s been lively!

Anger Hangover

Passage Matthew 21:32: Jesus said to them, “I tell you the truth, the tax collectors and the prostitutes are entering the kingdom of God ahead of you.

Also you should consider that Jesus did not want you to chastise, or to judge but rather to assist people in finding there way back to walking in his flock:

Passage Matthew 25:40: “The King will reply, ‘I tell you the truth, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me.’

While we agree for the most part I do notice that we have a few differences and I respect the amount of thought that you place into your argument and I must say “touché”.

On a side note eeb my academic accomplishment was not meant to boast rather lend some credence to the way I write. I am not a college freshman with a thesaurus. Rather a frequent visitor to charm city who cares about its preservation.

I agree with Snay — that’s an idiotic argument at best. How many people live here and can’t (or don’t want to) blog about what goes on in the neighborhood, yet deal with the aftermath of violent crime, drugs, and prostitution? It’s not like you have a small handful of residents who are sometimes held prisoner in their homes because of what goes on outside — and they don’t have the means to move away. Those folks deserve a clean and safe community just like anyone else does — and until we clean up the streets, they’ll never have it.

I’m totally cool with legalized, legislated, regulated prostitution. But we don’t have that in Baltimore. In Pigtown, what seems to be happening is the terrorizing of folks who live there, and are only by zip-code connected to the sex-trade. When a so-called “victimless crime*” is actually victimizing folks who are neither interested in buying or selling sex, then it becomes a matter for law enforcement. And I don’t believe the whole “You chose to move THERE, you deal with it” argument. Sure, that’s easy for me in Timonium where the biggest crime I deal with is the occasional armed robbery in front of my apartment building — so, what, I shouldn’t be outraged about that armed robbery? Because I chose to live here?

When the johns are getting out of their car to threaten non-streetwalkers who tell them (rightfully) to “fuck off”, this is not just some lonely ugly guy who wants companionship, this is a violent individual who will, sooner or later, hurt someone who is in no way connected to the sex-trade.

*And when one of the participants has an intimate significant other with whom he or she is not aware of the other’s sexual liberties, then

I’m not saying that streetwalking, tricking or johning are not a valid concern for matters of public health, or human exploitation, or other public issues such as neighborhood safety… or, more importantly to matters of reality, real estate values. But, as long as prostitution is illegal, then prostitution will manifest itself in ways that are a detriment to public health, human exploitation, neighborhood safety and, of course, real estate values. What we are left with is the hope that social shame will solve society’s ills. Sort of like the storyline of a Nathaniel Hawthorne novel, and if we play into this we’re like the dastardly characters in a Hawthorne novel… a bunch of fools and idiots who are aghast and disgusted when others fail for follow society’s rules, even when those rules don’t really make much sense.