Legalizing Prostitution

Fendy Aidi Kurniawan

The word 'prostitution' always represents problematic issue in society for years. Constant attempts to solve this existing problem have not really brought any positive results. Although there are some efforts to manage prostitution, such as localization, for some time the problem was obviously ignored by the government as if it completely did not know what to do with it. Prostitution has always been “covered“ from the eyes of citizens as it has always been a taboo matter in society. Nevertheless, the problem does not disappear, and in fact it becomes bigger over time. It was also thought that prohibition would put an end to many social problems. However, passing new laws, such as prohibiting prostitution, runs a risk of creating more criminals, and that is exactly what happened in the society nowadays. Although in the eyes of citizens prostitution has always been unacceptable, I think legalizing prostitution can answer some problematic issues in society.
Religious people often claim they know what is good for society, and prostitution is always deemed as wrong in the eyes of religion. Consequently, they seek to shape the society into a better one through their dogmas. Religious people will always seek for what is true or what is wrong according to their belief. So, they might think why must we legalize something that is absolutely wrong. That could be the point to the futility of prohibiting prostitution. However, real life is not as smooth as religious dogma. There are a lot of people who do not have sufficient knowledge or skills to get a job and a decent wage to feed themselves. In this kind of situation, people no longer have a choice to choose a job considered proper by norms in society. As long as they can earn money to survive, they will do anything. Their body seems to be the one and only asset they have. To that, one would have to point to justify the act of using their body as an asset to gain money. Unfortunately, our world...