‘Mother Jones’ Takes Deep Dive Into Sex Work Decriminalization

For what is certainly the first time in the history of United States presidential campaigns, four major candidates have publicly stated their support for decriminalizing sex work. As AVN.com reported, California Senator Kamala Harris and New Jersey Senator Cory Booker—both candidates for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination—were first out of the gate declaring their support. They were followed not long after by Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren, with Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders as the fourth candidate to declare support for sex work decriminalization. How did the issue of removing criminal penalties for selling or purchasing sexual services suddenly become a hot political issue? In a lengthy, deep dive into the issue published online Friday, Mother Jones magazine reports that what may seem like an overnight phenomenon was not nearly as sudden as it seems. The emergence of the issue is “literally built on relationships and coalitions that go back 15 years,” Kate D’Adamo, a sex worker rights advocate, told the magazine.   “A lot of the bills that are happening right now are built on this history of really strong, well-forged relationships that didn’t just pop up out of nowhere,” D’Adamo told Mother Jones. “And a lot of these relationships that we’ve built organizationally, and with each other, are still really grounding a ton of the work that’s happening.” The New York state legislature is now considering a bill that would take significant strides toward full decriminalization, as AVN.com reported, rolling back laws against “loitering for the purposes of prostitution,” and immediately reversing criminal convictions of sex workers who are deemed to be victims of sex trafficking. In addition to the hard work of forming political coalitions around the sex worker rights issue, according to the Mother Jones report, last year’s passage of the FOSTA/SESTA law has accelerated the drive to codify sex worker rights into legislation.  The law was supposedly designed to combat online sex trafficking, but instead—as opponents of the bill had long predicted—it has made the lives of sex workers more dangerous, and taken away many of their opportunities to earn income. Yet the bill earned overwhelming support in Congress, and all four of the Democratic presidential candidates who now say they favor sex work decriminalization voted in favor of the bill. Donald Trump, unsurprisingly, supported the bill, and signed FOSTA/SESTA into law in April of 2018. “I don’t want to give Donald Trump credit for anything, but I think that this wave of organizing is really surfacing a lot of conversations that have been very pertinent to a lot of us for a very long time,” D’Adamo told Mother Jones. “It takes a big cultural moment to unveil some of these things.” Photo By Domina Colette / Wikimedia Commons