Letter to Editor - Prostitution Must Be Legalized

The expressed opinions or views of this letter does not necessarily represent the opinion of the MiddletownMike blog:


Dear Editor,

The ACLU of New Jersey is right that prostitution must be legalized, and in the meantime prostitutes should not be arrested by police.

In New Jersey, where Latino male illegal immigrant day laborers are permitted by the courts to openly advertise the availability of their illegal labor to the public, are allowed to loiter in front of businesses, and the local courts require their employers to pay wages to those unpaid, there is no rational basis to deny the same equal protection to U.S. citizen sex workers, who are largely disenfranchised females, trans people, or gay men.

Communities like my hometown of Fair Haven (Monmouth County) are where suburban riches fuel the demand for urban sex workers and drugs like heroin, resulting in urban street violence, yet these lily-white suburbs are sheltered from the numerous problems their wealth enables.

The communities of Rumson, Fair Haven, and Little Silver should join together to provide a Sex Worker's Empowerment and Counseling Center, with an on-site drug rehabilitation, HIV testing, needle exchange, and transitional housing program, well-funded and outside of the shadow of urban blight.

We cannot judge prostitutes, when our own communities are awash with their customers.


Rev. Dr. Eric Hafner
Toms River, NJ