should have their nads cut off, period, end of sentence.  Well, maybe not their nads - I would imagine there are women involved, too so the nads thing really doesn't work anyway - but there should be penalties of the severest nature.  Consenting adults willing to pay and receive large sums for having and giving sex should do so only at the risk of having their wives and husbands cut off their nads (or whatever).

No person female or male should ever be forced into sex - be it for money, for a promotion at work, inside or outside the bounds of a relationship or marriage; nor am I a fan or advocate of street pimps and hookers.  Women who work the streets are often abused physically and sexually and taken advantage of financially.  Both the women and their johns are at great risk for sexually transmitted diseases and crime against the johns is rampant.  However...
 
for adults who freely choose to exchange sex for money, I just don't understand the rub (well, I do understand the rub, just not "the rub").  Now I'm not advocating prostitution as a major at any university or as a career track for the vast majority of women but I don't understand how consensual sex between adults - whether for fun or profit - is the business of anyone other than those taking part in the act.  I particulary don't understand how women who are so quick to claim reproductive rights in regard to their choice of multiple partners and/or contraception can then say that no woman should use her reproductive organs to make money.  If a woman rents her womb out for ten months to a couple who longs for but cannot have a baby, that is considered by most to be a generous act; yet if she rents an adjacent area out for an hour, it's considered reprehensible and immoral and she is either a victim or a whore.

I walk down the street every day with women - young and old - who look like they buy their clothes from the hooker stores on Vine Avenue in Hollywood.  (In fact, some of them have to do just that, there is no way in hell that all of those stores are being supported only by those who ply the trade.)  Let's be honest, a woman doesn't have to go to the hooker stores to get those looks, they are readily available in almost any store in almost any mall.  Breast augmentation - let's call it what it is, slicing open a woman's chest and sewing silicon bags inside - is one of the most popular elective operations.  Most jeans these days rise just above the pubic  hair in front and often give a glimpse of thong in back.  (I remember being embarrassed to say the word pubic in private until my second year in college.)  All of these things are meant to entice, to give the appearance (and quite often the reality) of desireability, of availability.  Couples hook up and drift in and out of marriage with less thought than they give to cell phone contracts.  

Oh, yeah, sorry - it's not about giving your body, it's about giving your body for money.  If you want to get a lowdown on trading sex for cash, durable goods and/or favors, take a seat at lunchtime with the girls.  I have heard women talk about giving it up for a new couch, withholding it because they didn't get a new couch, getting frisky before the holidays to juice up the Christmas presents, doing those special little acts for jewelry, for meals, for a vacation - and these women were talking about men they love, their boyfriends, their husbands.  (A personal opinion here: within a love relationship the only reason for having sex is love, that's another period, end of sentence and I won't be rethinking that one.)  Were I a man, I would rather know I was getting played and how much it was going to cost me from the get go.  As a woman, if I'm in it for money or possessions or favors, I would rather know at the end of the tryst I'm going to end up with what I wanted.

Eliot Spitzer alledgedly likes it a little rough and unprotected.  To have it that way he was willing to pay a goodly sum to an adult who was willing to accomodate him.  By currently available information, Mr. Spitzer used his own money to procure these services but he circumvented the banking system in order to hide what he was doing.  All of these things (with the exception of rough and unprotected and using your own money) are illegal.  Mr. Spitzer knew - perhaps better than most - that all of these activities were against the law and yet he chose to do them anyway.  He did so while governor of New York and he did so while holding others accountable to a different set of standards than he applied to himself.  Under these circumstances, Mr. Spitzer should face the same penalties as those who provided him with the opportunity to indulge himself.   

It's not the punishment I question, it's the fact that we think there was a crime.