| LadyGardenSnake |
09-21-2004 09:29 AM |
San Francisco D.A. gives tacit OK to prostitution
In the strip clubs of San Francisco and across the nation, paying for a lap dance can get you a lap dance -- or, depending on the club, the dancer, the time and place and many other factors, it can get you full-on paid sex. This past spring, San Francisco's finest raided two clubs with private booths for lap dances and arrested a number of people for prostitution or "keeping a house of ill repute." Now, in a precedent-setting move, Kamala Harris, San Francisco's new district attorney, has announced that she has no intention of prosecuting those who were arrested. Further, she declared that her priority was the safety of sex workers, not whether they engaged in prostitution, and that she intends to "prioritize murders, rapes, and narcotics crimes higher than whether people are paying for consensual sex in the theaters' private booths." In the words of David Steinberg, author of this article that covers the history and evolution of lap dancing from its inception in the 1970s to the present, "Kamala Harris' decision to refocus the concerns of law enforcement -- from moral indignation over lap dancing to the protection of lap dancers -- has all but decriminalized prostitution that happens in a private booth at a strip club, rather than on the street. The decision reflects a largely unpublicized consensus among politicians, neighborhood groups, strip club owners, dancers, and customers on the value of private sexual entertainment to San Francisco. The decision also has the potential to influence the policies of other cities as they craft their own responses to this latest addition to the American sex-entertainment palette." There's a lot more in this article, especially about how lap dancing developed, how dancers are paid (and now pay the clubs), and how and why private rooms developed in strip clubs. Check it out on SF Weekly:
http://sfweekly.com/issues/2004-09-08/feature.html
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