In an attempt to demonize consensual sex at every turn, the federal government shut down the largest advertisement website for gay escorts, Rentboy.
The Justice Department, working with the New York Police Department, called Rentboy an “Internet brothel,” and said the website was a front for prostitution.
They’re not wrong. The website technically prohibited exchanging money for sex, but Rentboy didn’t regulate what happened behind closed doors.
For eight years, this system worked for both those who sold sex and for those who bought it. No sex trafficking scandals emerged for the men who used Rentboy. The escorts remained relatively safe compared to sex workers on the streets, whose only protection were their pimps.
The raid’s timing is almost as unsettling as the situation itself. Amnesty International voted to urge decriminalization of sex work less than a week before the raid. Several LGBT rights organizations, including Lambda Legal and the Gay and Lesbian Advocates and Defenders, supported the measure.
Many western nations already decriminalized prostitution. America, as usual, lags behind. The U.S. leaves sex workers vulnerable to violence both in doing their job and in prison by criminalizing prostitution.
Assaulted sex workers aren’t likely to go to the police for problems. They’d incriminate themselves in the process of filing a report. Instead, they have to go to their pimps. This causes a violent cycle undetected by the government.
Websites like Rentboy curtail the violence because sex workers can scan their clients in the safety of their homes before initial contact. However, the government decided to put the law and money before safety. The government seized more than $1.4 million from six bank accounts connected to the probe.
So why did the federal government raid a male escort website less than a week after an international organization called for decriminalizing sex work? Why target a website with no history of sex trafficking?
Aside from our hypocritical Puritan ideology, our private prison industry profits off the incarceration of nonviolent offenders.
Private, for-profit prisons ruined the justice system in the U.S. For-profit businesses exist to make money. The prison industry can’t thrive if there aren’t any inmates, so they lobby for Congress to keep policing our private lives.
Some states have contracts with private prisons to keep their population rate at 90 percent. These corporations aren’t in the business to better the social welfare of American citizens. They care more about profiting off the backs of victimless criminals.
Take the Rentboy case. According to a California study, the arrested employees of Rentboy have a 67 percent chance of being sexually assaulted in prison, which is 15 times higher than the assault rate for heterosexual inmates.
I don’t know if the federal government chose to raid Rentboy because of intentional homophobia. It seems unlikely, but they did shut down a gay male escort website with no history of sex trafficking. They’re putting gay men at risk for sexual assault, and they chose to raid the website right after LGBT groups supported Amnesty International’s proposition to decriminalize sex work.
Regardless of the particular fact, there is no reason to make prostitution illegal if it’s between two consenting adults.
Cody Sibley is a 19-year-old mass communication sophomore from Opelousas, Louisiana. You can reach him on Twitter at @CodySibley.