I bring it to your attention because it is a legislative train wreck, quite possibly unconstitutional. It certainly flies in the face of separation of church and state, the First Amendment, and may further endanger the very people it seeks to protect, much in the same way that prohibition enabled criminals to profit from the production, distribution, sale and consumption of alcohol while forcing legitimate bar owners and producers to either leave the business or join the criminal underworld. We apparently have to learn the lessons of prohibition all over again.
Pared down, the basic idea is to make websites responsible for the consequences of classified advertisements for sexual services they may carry. Imagine if you bought a car that turned out to be a lemon because of a car dealer commercial on TV. The logic in this bill would enable law enforcement to pursue the TV station for commercial fraud, even though they had noting to do with the sale of the car.
If that happened, television stations would cease all car advertisements immediately, newspapers and commercial billboards would soon follow. Car dealers would end up with no way to advertise and would go out of business, regardless of the quality of their cars or their business ethics.
In this example, the "bad cars" are people who are forced into doing sex work. There are people who are forced to have sex for money, usually to enrich someone else, because they are caught by circumstances of age, immigration status, or even sometimes outright imprisonment. No one wants this practice to end more than I, just as I wish car dealers didn't cheat their customers. People who do sex work voluntarily feel the same way.
Sex work covers a huge gamut of human relations from waitresses at Hooters to full-service prostitutes. Many people who choose this line of work participate in the full spectrum, they don't necessarily do one thing.
In New York City, it is legal for someone to offer to manually sexually stimulate someone to orgasm for money as long as they adhere to the City health code which demands barrier protection, either a condom or a gloved hand to eliminate direct contact with potentially infectious bodily fluids. Much according to the same logic, people who make your Chipotle burrito bowl can't do that legally without wearing gloves.
Of course, full service (i.e., including intercourse) prostitution is much more lucrative, just as grilling steaks at Delmonico pays better than working the line at Chipotle, but the gloves stay on either way.
George Carlin said it best:
"I don't understand why prostitution is illegal. Selling is legal. Fucking is legal. Why isn't selling fucking legal? You know, why should it be illegal to sell something that's perfectly legal to give away? I can't follow the logic on that one at all! Of all the things you can do, giving someone an orgasm is hardly the worst thing in the world. In the army they give you a medal for spraying napalm on people! In civilian life you go to jail for giving someone an orgasm! Maybe I'm not supposed to understand it."
The reason, which he permits the audience to observe without mentioning it, is of course religious in origin. Beyond that, in my opinion, if one looks carefully enough, it's really (as with a lot of religious dogma) more about men controlling women.
Stormy Daniels and Karen McDougal had sex with Donald Trump for profit. Both were promised career opportunities. Trump told Ms. Daniels he would get her on Celebrity Apprentice, he told Ms. McDougal he would get her a exercise and fitness column in the National Enquirer. He was lying of course. He's not man enough to come to terms with the fact that he can't attract a partner based on desire alone. He feels he has to engage in deception. He is clearly unable to negotiate healthy relations in his marriages.
Most sex worker clients are like him is that respect. They aren't "good catches" romantically. Because of their appearance and/or financial circumstances they do not attract the attention of sexually available females, or cannot offer the support necessary to sustain a partnership. I am one of these men.
I have never been approached sexually (by a female) in my 57 years. I have had sex, but not because of my sexual charisma. My sexual partners have been so because of other reasons, most of which take time to understand and appreciate. No one has ever walked into a bar, seen me, and decided to try and take me home. I doubt anyone ever will.
Beyond that, I was an only child of a couple unprepared to meet my emotional needs so I could develop intimate relations easily later in life. I had difficulty negotiating romance as a young man, and I developed a kind of a loner personality because of it. I love people, don't get me wrong, but I learned to rely on myself and my platonic friends for emotional support over the years. Now that I am largely past child-bearing age there's even less reason for someone to pair up in a typical sexual partnership for the purposes of procreation.
However, I am still deserving of the sexual affection and attention which supports my good health. So are the many of the clients of sex workers. Many sex workers feel their work is a kind of healing vocational mission to support men like me, much like my psychotherapist takes on some aspects of the role of a primary relationship partner to help me pursue good emotional health by understanding myself. There has been much written about the analogies between psychotherapy and sex work, so I won't go much further into that, except to say there is a fertile ground for those discussions in my experience.
However, this is not the only need I have. I also need to be safe. Much like getting a beer in the 1930's involved dealing with criminals and ducking the cops, or at least being elbow-to-elbow with people who routinely evade the law, securing the services of a prostitute, or escort, as they prefer to be called, is similarly rife with opportunities to become the mark for criminals and law enforcement in the US.
Internet advertising by independent sex workers provides me the opportunity, whether or not I pursue it, to make contact with individual sex workers and negotiate not only my safety but help them negotiate theirs as well. People who seek to exploit people forced into sex work are obviously unconcerned with anyone's safety, so I can't speak for them.
Do unethical sex work agents (pimps) use the same advertising mediums? I assume they use anything they can, just like crooked car dealers put up billboards and run ads on TV. But just as Car-FOSTA would not discriminate between ethical car dealers and crooks, FOSTA shuts everyone down, including massage parlor providers who work 100% legally and do so because they want to.
This means they are forced into the underground or forced out of business, one or the other. Illegitimate sex traffickers will simply raise their rates for their clients, put their clients in further peril, and even further remove the people they are abusing from opportunities to get the help of law enforcement.
In short, just like prohibition made the social problems associated with the consumption of alcohol to excess worse, and funded much more dangerous criminal enterprises, FOSTA is hurting everyone voluntarily involved in sex work and helping little, if at all, with the problem of people being forced into sex work. Like prohibition, it is puritanism run amok.
Like prohibition, and like so much of the idiocy arising from the Trump administration and the 115th session of Congress, this will ultimately have to be un-done if we are to preserve a free government.
You may object to even legitimate sex work, that is your right. You probably also object to crooked car dealers. You may even object to consumption of alcohol. Your freedom to make those choices is best shared with everyone.
There's nothing we can do about FOSTA now but watch the slow-motion trainwreck this will become and try to support the innocents who will be harmed by it. If you know a sex worker, support them. I count more than one among my friends. If you are a client, or want to be, cooperate with your provider however they ask while this unconstitutional law puts them at needlessly increased risk.
If you want to end sex trafficking, as I do, support full decriminalization of sex work, just as George Carlin suggests above. Sex workers will become law enforcement's best allies in pursuing sex traffickers, they particularly don't want them around just as ethical car dealers want to to shut down the crooks.
If paying people for sex just seems wrong to you, consider the other legal activities which fall into that category, and consider developing tolerance for people who have different beliefs, just like every escort supports your right to disapprove of their vocation.
I just returned from Australia, where sex work is decriminalized. None of the social ills usually predicted by those who oppose decriminalization came to pass. Sex workers in Australia get regular testing, enjoy the protection of the police and court system to ensure their safety. Sure, there are plenty of people in Australia who disapprove, just as there are people who disapprove of gambling. They are similarly free to live their lives as they choose.
I haven't heard that sex trafficking is a problem in Australia though. Hmm.
