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The landmark decision taken Monday, decided that the dangerous work of prostitution could be made more safe if it occurred under one roof with security staff, reported the Globe and Mail.

The Appeals Court of Ontario said that some of the country's anti-prostitution laws were unconstitutional as they restricted the prostitute's ability to protect themselves -- a ruling already made by a lower court in 2010 but appealed by the provincial and federal governments.

The court also said that it would re-model the law against pimps, which prohibits living off the work of others by adding "in circumstances of exploitation," reported PostMedia News.

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For many progressives, there is a dramatic tension here: Horror at the existence of child trafficking, and a desire to see it disappear, and yet a belief that consenting adults should be able to do what they want sexually -- maybe even if it involves the exchange of money. It’s not even a question of one concern trumping the other, because, while theories abound, it’s unclear what impact the shuttering of Backpage’s adult section would have on trafficking as a whole, let alone whether similar ads wouldn't just pop up in the personals section; nor is it clear what impact the site’s screening measures have had on reducing trafficking ads.

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My parents are a pretty conservative middle-class Jewish family. I was always open-minded about sex, but that's not where my decision to work in the sex industry came from. I think that had more to do with a lack of boundaries, and from having inappropriate relationships. (I had a relationship with a much older man when I was 12 years old -- the kind of thing that imprints young women who often wind up being strippers.)

When I was 16, I went to college a year early in New York and promptly dropped out. My friend said to me, "Why don't you come and work at the club where I work? They won't care that you're a terrible waitress." So I started off as a stripper, and then I moved into doing escort work, and it was through a friend that I knew from doing the latter that I got the job working supposedly to entertain rich businessmen in Singapore. Then I wound up being a guest of the Prince of Brunei and essentially becoming a member of his harem. This was about 18 years ago. (I haven't done sex work for the past 15 years.) I was in Brunei for about a year and a half on and off. We parted ways amicably and I went home and never went back.

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“I've pretty much read every book, saw every movie and heard every song relating to the subject matter," he told a Brooklyn judge, according to the New York Daily News. (Efforts on Tuesday afternoon to ascertain just which cultural products are definitive in this regard were unsuccessful.) Answering the standard questions about his qualifications as an expert witness, McCord also said he had attended two national conferences on pimping -- perhaps one of these -- and was “a member of a quiet society of pimps.”

Quiet? For decades, feminists and advocates for sex trafficking victims have been trying to stem the tide of pimp glorification in pop culture. And for decades, almost no one has given a shit. McCord may be an innovator in his particular audacity, but he's by no means alone.

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"There are not 100,000 to 300,000 children in America turning to prostitution every year. The statistic was hatched without regard to science. It is a bogeyman," said the Voice article, written by Martin Cizmar and Ellis Conklin and Kristen Hinman. Apparently, this unverified fact has been circulating widely across the media, including Salon. Doing some research of their own, the Voice concluded that there have been only 8,263 arrests for child prostitution in the last decade here in America, a much smaller number than the one Ashton (and other outlets) quoted.

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"Meet Melissa Petro," the story began," the teacher who gives a new twist to sex ed." The piece describes me as a "tattooed former hooker and stripper" who was "shockingly upfront about her past." Indeed, earlier that month, I'd written an Op-Ed on the Huffington Post that criticized the recent censoring of the adult services section of Craigslist and came clean about my own sex-worker past. Because I was arguing that sex workers shouldn't be ashamed to speak for themselves, I signed my name to it. The New York Post wasn't interested in my politics, however; its interest seemed only in cooking up shock that an elementary school teacher would dare admit such a shady history.

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The 74-year-old faces trial in Milan over charges that he paid for sex with a Moroccan minor and used his influence to try cover it up.

In court documents, the prosecutors have identified 33 women, including the Moroccan, involved in parties at Berlusconi's villa.

The premier told La Repubblica -- a leftist newspaper that has called for his resignation in the wake of the scandal -- that "even though I am a little brat ... 33 girls in two months seems like too much even for a 30 year old."

He vows to participate in all hearings of his trial, which opens April 6.

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For proof, Reid cited a conversation with an unnamed business owner who expressed discomfort over the fact "that one of the biggest businesses in the county he was considering for his new home is legal prostitution." A local brothel owner responded today by claiming that the business in question is planning to move to the state, regardless. Other than this mystery case, though, there is little evidence that Nevada's bordellos -- which are legal in certain far-flung rural counties -- are keeping businesses out of the state.

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The Fox News host spent his entire show yesterday railing against the non-profit, saying that it assists in sex trafficking operations involving underage girls. He even brought on pro-life activist Lila Rose to try to corroborate his claims.

Here's Beck's introductory montage on Planned Parenthood, edited with the explicit purposes of scaring your socks off:

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In an email exchange with The Associated Press on Wednesday and Thursday, Karima El Mahrough, who goes by the stage name Ruby, lamented that she has been "treated as a prostitute by all the Italian and foreign media."

"I WANT TO BE COMPENSATED for having been hurt so much and all the gold in the world would not be enough," she wrote to the AP.

Ruby, now 18, requested euro15,000 ($20,340) for a full TV interview, saying: "I don't do anything for nothing."

The AP, a nonprofit media organization, does not pay for interviews.

Berlusconi was indicted Tuesday on charges that he paid for sex with Ruby when she was 17 and under age, then used his influence to cover it up. The trial begins April 6 in Milan.

Berlusconi has denied ever paying for sex. Ruby, in a Jan. 19 television interview on a TV channel owned by Berlusconi, said she met the 74-year-old premier at a dinner party at his villa and that he gave her euro7,000 ($9,500) that evening, but never "put a finger on me."

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Berlusconi is the third richest man in Italy and the 74th wealthiest person in the world. His personal fortune lies in real estate, his influence cemented through a vice grip on the country's media landscape. His BFF is Vladimir Putin. And he's an alleged sex addict. 

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Prostitution has flourished in Amsterdam since the 1600s, when the Netherlands was a major naval power and sailors swaggered into the city's port looking for a good time. The country legalized prostitution in 2000, but authorities are only now demanding prostitutes pay income tax.

Janneke Verheggen, spokeswoman for the country's Tax Service, said now is the right time to "increase compliance."

In a sign of the times, few prostitution advocates are protesting -- though many are skeptical tax law can be enforced in an all-cash industry.

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This is the first jarring stop on the tour of Lobert's battle wounds from more than a decade of hooking in Las Vegas, and it's this ugly side of the sex trade that she helps to expose in Investigation Discovery's reality TV series "Hookers: Saved on the Strip." The show, which wraps Wednesday at 10 p.m., follows Lobert as she reaches out to Sin City prostitutes and offers to help them escape abusive pimps, just like she did. There is just one catch: She offers harbor in a transitional home run by her organization, Hookers for Jesus, and the Church at South Las Vegas. It's a human rights mission, and a religious one, too.

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I picked prostitutes as victims because they were easy to pick up without being noticed. I knew they would not be reported missing right away and might never be reported missing. I picked prostitutes because I thought I could kill as many of them as I wanted without getting caught.

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On Tuesday, activists lined up seven women like merchandise in the window of a shop in Tel Aviv's Dizengoff Center mall. A sign above them read, "Women for sale according to personal taste." Haaretz reports that some "were made up to appear as if they had been beaten, and all had price tags that listed details such as age, weight, dimensions, and country of birth."

There's no doubt that having real-life human beings pose as prisoners of sex trafficking is an effective way to stop people dead in their tracks. On that front, the "Women To Go" campaign certainly succeeds. The ultimate aim, though, is to get enough signatures to push forward a measure that would criminalize johns. Uri Keidar, one of the Working Group's founders, argues that "the law will cause a reduction in the demand for prostitution, and therefore also a reduction in the trafficking of women."

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In late June I witnessed something unusual in New York City’s Midtown Community Court: a trial on a prostitution charge. Hundreds of people are arrested for a prostitution-related offense in Manhattan each year, but only a fraction challenge the arrest at trial.

This trial was even more interesting because the charge was not actually prostitution. The defendant, a woman, had not been caught in the act of agreeing to sex for money; rather, she had been charged with "loitering for the purpose of engaging in a prostitution offense," a nebulous -- some say unconstitutional -- charge that allows police to arrest a man or woman they suspect is attempting to engage in prostitution. In New York, both charges are B misdemeanors that can carry a penalty of 15 to 90 days in jail.

The testimony of the arresting officer was just as intriguing. He told the court that, while sitting in an unmarked police vehicle early on the morning of May 21, he observed the defendant "engaging in conversation" with two men and "attempting to stop" another on the west side of midtown Manhattan, an area he testified is "frequented by prostitution."

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Five weeks and one party after arriving in Saudi Arabia, I began to think it might not be such a bad place to get laid. I had come to the country to help write policies and procedures for a hospital, and I expected to remain celibate during my time in the desert. It's not like I hadn’t gone five weeks before during my adult life. So this was an unexpected turn.

She walked toward us, every eye in the place fixed on her. She was what you would call exotically beautiful -- tall, lean, skin so dark it was nearly blue, and deep brown eyes as soft as melted chocolate. With her wedge heels on she was taller than me. Her hair was pulled back into a tight ponytail and when she smiled, showing her flawless white teeth, you swore all your troubles would melt away. If you were going to break a dry spell in Saudi Arabia, you could do far worse.

I had seen her earlier in the night. I think we all had. I was at this party on a Westernized compound with some co-workers, two ladies and their husbands who decided I had to experience my first party and try the homebrew and "Sid," a hard liquor based on the Arabic word for friend. Truth be told, I didn’t see much of those friends once we arrived. I’m a people person, and I was also a newcomer -- expatriates here seem to know when a newcomer is in their midst.

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