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(Zachary Foster | Libertarian Party of Nevada) – The Libertarian Party made national headlines a few days ago relating to the Robert Kraft prostitution scandal. Once the news broke about how the Patriots owner was arrested and charged with soliciting a prostitute, the Libertarian Party of Massachusetts publicly responded by condemning the arrest on the grounds that sex work and being a client of sex work should not be a crime.

According to the Metro West Daily News, LP Massachusetts state chair Jeff Lyons said, “The Libertarian Party has always asserted that consenting adults should be able to exchange whatever goods and services they wish, so long as both parties willingly agree to the terms. It should be pointed out that had Robert Kraft been in Nevada, this would have been a legal activity.”

That’s almost true.

Whether it would have been legal or not depends entirely on its geography. State law dictates brothels can only exist in counties with fewer than 700,000 residents.

Currently, there are brothels in only 7 of Nevada’s 16 counties. It’s plain outlawed in 4 of the rural counties.

In 3 of the rural counties it’s legal, but no brothels are active there, likely due to restrictive state and county licensing laws.

Finally, prostitution is completely illegal in Clark and Washoe counties, where Las Vegas and Reno are located. Because of the heavy restrictions on legal prostitution in Nevada, there are only 21 brothels in the whole state.

All of these legal brothels are in rural counties, and the artificially imposed scarcity makes it so that actually getting sexual services at one of these brothels costs thousands of dollars. Slots for workers are limited and so most men and women who would voluntarily want to begin working quickly as sex workers can’t do so, because there’s no brothel that has room for them. Plus, each sex worker has to be individually licensed by the state, so there’s another delay and a barrier to entry.

Maybe the high rollers can afford to pay thousands for sex, but extremely few tourists actually go to where these places are. Las Vegas is a party town whose selling point specifically is misbehavior and promiscuity. Who would drive two hours or more away from the glitz and glamour of Las Vegas and into the part of Nevada that looks like Death Valley???

And again, it’s nice that the high rollers can afford it, but the cost of a wild night at a legal brothel is equal to or greater than the average tourist’s entire budget for a 3-day weekend in Las Vegas. There’s really no point in legalization if those barriers exist in the market.

Next, the current laws don’t work except to create a greater demand for these services in Las Vegas. There are thousands of independent sex workers and enslaved sex workers operating inside Reno and Las Vegas at any given time. They go where the money is. This wisdom was gleaned when I was once having a conversation with a former drug dealer, right as cannabis was legalizing. This individual had also previously worked as a sex worker and made the point: would you drive two hours one way to the only legal dispensary around, when there’s an illegal drug dealer right down the street who’s ready for you and will give you a good competitive price?

And tourists and locals alike certainly do go for the ‘local option’. According to criminologist Ronald B. Flowers in his 2011 book Prostitution in the Digital Age, approximately 66 times the amount of money spent on legal prostitution is spent on illegal prostitution in Nevada.

The horrible problem with illegal prostitution is that, similar to marijuana and alcohol, legal prohibition pushes these very real goods and services underground into criminal markets. Because hotel-based operations and erotic massage parlors often get raided at random, it’s common for sex workers to do a geographical circuit betwen various cities acros the US. That way no law enforcement agencies get used to seeing certin faces in certain places.

The other bad thing about that industry being pushed underground is that we have no way of knowing which illegal sex workers are slaves and victims, and which ones are empowered individuals who simply have different morals and boundaries than other people, and are using their bodies as property to generate financial capital for themselves.

One one hand, Rebekah Charleston recounts the gut-wrenching details of her being trafficked into Nevada’s legal brothels. Reading it broke my heart, and I can’t deny the validity of Rebekah’s experiences. At the same time, libertarian sex worker Kiteh Kawasaki, who capitalizes on her body, her health, and her ethnicity, is quite adamant that sex work is a career she chose and that she controls her own destiny. I can’t deny the validity of her experiences either.

Miss Kawasaki also says, “Condemning entire groups or individuals removes the opportunity for them to choose to do good. Removing freedoms can’t prevent random evils.” We believe that logic applies to gun ownership, medical and recreational drug use, religion, local AND interstate commerce, and sex work.

Yes, it’s true that sex slavery exists. Yes, it’s true that this cancer exists in our great state. IT MUST END, and it must end on our watch. Free markets cannot coexist with slavery or violence.

We Libertarians don’t believe that sending the police in with guns blazing against voluntary sex workers and clients is the best way to help the actual victims of human trafficking. This is because, as long as all parties are consenting adults, it’s none of the police’s business. If LVMPD really wanted to “just do their job” of enforcing the law, they would immediately ticket all their coworkers using their emergency sirens to blow through red lights.

In order to fight the evil side of this industry, we need sex workers to trust the authorities again so that they’re willing to cooperate and tell the authorities who in their professional community was kidnapped and which pimps or “agents” are rapists and slavers. That’s not going to happen as long as the government keeps going after voluntary sex workers because it’s a way easier bust than infiltrating a Sinaloa Cartel human trafficking operation that’s enslaving immigrant women in the USA.

Sex work must be decriminalized in all parts of Nevada. Sex work needs to be treated as a legitimate consumer service, just like the casinos and the night clubs. This is because sex workers must have the freedom to file a police report without fear; to sue in court and only be judged based on their contractual obligations and not their life choices. And finally, the public stigma must disappear so that sex workers don’t have the shame that would keep them from telling a stranger, “Help, I’m being forced to do this.”

These kinds of reforms tend to free up law enforcement so they can catch the real sex slave traffickers.

Slavery is wrong and incompatible with freedom and every concept of individual rights. But the same can be said about locking people in a cage for a victimless crime because their life choices aren’t biblical. But for those inclined to believe in a Supreme Being, as I do, let’s remember how Rahab the prostitute was the one who saved the angels from being gang raped and murdered. It was the woman at the well with her questionable lifestyle whom Jesus treated as one of His own students. It’s a shame most believers don’t wish to treat sex workers with the compassion and understanding worthy of the Son of God.

Those in Nevada who are legislating based on their own religious morality would do well to remember that. They would also do well to remember who made it legal for gangsters to create Las Vegas in the first place, and who owns much of the alcohol and casinos today.

Note: The opinions are those of the author and not necessarily those of the Nevada Brothel Association

(Chuck Muth) – My friend Grover Norquist – president of Americans for Tax Reform and libertarian-conservative author of a book titled “Leave Us Alone” – is fond of saying that “no one’s life is a complete waste; some simply serve as bad examples.”

He wasn’t talking specifically about Reno lawyer and anti-brothel zealot Jason Guinasso – but he could’ve been.

Guinasso, as you may have read, filed a federal lawsuit against the State of Nevada on Monday asking the court to overturn Nevada’s unique law allowing legal prostitution in the state’s rural counties as long as it occurs in licensed and highly-regulated brothels.

At the heart of Guinasso’s lawsuit is a wafer-thin argument that Nevada’s legal brothels violate the Commerce Clause of the U.S. Constitution and, thus, Washington, DC should come into Nevada and tell Nevada what it can and can’t do.

Bye-bye, Tenth Amendment.

But it’s even worse than that.

It’s also an attack on the First Amendment; as the core of Guinasso’s claim is that websites and social media accounts of legal courtesans working in legal brothels in Nevada are transmitted across state lines where prostitution is illegal and, therefore, should be shut down.

Bye-bye, free speech.

Guinasso claims that if a woman working in a legal Nevada brothel encourages folks who read their websites, blogs or social media posts to come and visit them, that violates the federal Mann Act which makes it illegal for anyone to persuade, induce or entice someone to travel across state lines for the purpose of prostitution.

Of course, that law was established for people who are actually forcing women to engage in prostitution against their will.  Real trafficking.  But that’s simply not the case in Nevada’s legal brothels because all of the women who work there are there of their own free will.

Consenting adults.

Why can’t this guy just leave them alone?  Live and let live.

Meanwhile, prostitution – including the actual trafficking of underage girls, which does not occur in legal brothels – is going on in Las Vegas and Reno, where it remains illegal, every day.  It’s rampant.  Just try walking down the Strip at night without being accosted by a “flipper” handing out “girls to your room” cards.

You’d think Guinasso and his merry band of busy-body, nanny-state, self-righteous moralists would focus on THAT problem; the REAL problem.  But no.

This guy is obsessed with shutting down licensed, regulated and taxed legal brothels where the women who work there are safe and have no fear of being arrested.  Where the clients are safe from getting a sexually transmitted disease – thanks to mandatory condom use and weekly testing – and have no fear of being arrested.

And make no mistake.  Should Guinasso succeed in shutting down Nevada’s legal brothel industry, that won’t make prostitution go away.

All it’ll do is push it back underground and into the shadows, as we were reminded just this week when Robert Kraft, owner of the New England Patriots, was charged for allegedly soliciting the services of an illegal sex worker in a Florida massage parlor.

An otherwise law-abiding, upstanding 77-year-old man who lost his wife of 48 years to ovarian cancer in 2011.

“Myra and I had something that was unusual, I think,” Kraft told Forbes in a 2012 interview. “For 10 months after Myra died, I cried every night. I would go out at nights to the events and parties, things I would have normally done with her, then come home to an empty house.”

And that gets to the heart of this business that most people don’t realize.  Many of the men who visit Nevada’s legal brothels are elderly widowers who aren’t gonna be tripping the light fantastic in a Las Vegas nightclub hoping to “get lucky.”

For many men who visit Nevada’s legal brothels it’s not so much about the sex as it is enjoying the companionship of a consenting adult woman which they can no longer enjoy with their spouse or significant other.

And Jason Guinasso wants to criminalize that?  Why can’t he just leave everyone else alone?

Or, at the very least, try to be a little intellectually honest.

When you read Guinasso’s lawsuit you’ll find it littered with statistics, figures and opinions related to prostitution in Nevada without making a distinction between prostitution that goes on illegally in motel rooms, massage parlors, strip clubs and back alleys and that which occurs legally in licensed, regulated and taxed brothels.

It’s hard to have an open, honest debate with people like Guinasso who intentionally try to mislead the public.

Women who voluntarily of their own free will choose – “a woman’s right to choose” – to work in a legal Nevada brothel simply aren’t being “trafficked.”

“Every single worker at the Mustang Ranch is required to undergo an FBI fingerprint and criminal database background check every single year,” Storey County Commissioner Lance Gilman, who also owns the Mustang Ranch, said in a statement on Monday.

“In over 4,000 work card applications filed over the last 20 years by working professionals and employees at the Mustang, not one has turned up to be a victim of trafficking.  Not one.”

For people like Guinasso to compare these two totally different circumstances as if they were the same borders on libelous.

“This is a desperate act by Guinasso,” Mr. Gilman continued.   “He’s trying to do an end run on the people of Nevada.  Unfortunately, it’s just another political stunt by this man.”

Indeed.  But let it not be said his life is a complete waste.  Jason Guinasso expertly fills the role of bad example.  Why can’t he just leave the rest of us alone?

Mr. Muth is president of Citizen Outreach, a limited-government grassroots advocacy organization, and government affairs counsel to the Nevada Brothel Association

(Christina Parreira) – I woke up Saturday to a concerned text from my friend Mitchell Sunderland, an editor at large at Penthouse. I logged onto Twitter to see what fresh hell awaited me, and there it was: a tweet from Kate Aurthur, the chief Los Angeles correspondent for BuzzFeed News, featuring a photo of me and Tucker Carlson that I had posted.

Her tweet read, “Remember @TuckerCarlson’s lecture during the height of family separation in June about how the left doesn’t care about family values? Well, I’m not one to kink shame, but here he is with a sex worker. Go Tucker?”

In the photo, I am playfully kissing him on the cheek as he turns away laughing. What Kate failed to mention is that we were attending the Nov. 3, 2018 funeral of Dennis Hof, the legendary Nevada brothel owner and showman, and close mutual friend of both Tucker and myself.

The day the photograph was taken was an incredibly difficult one for me. Dennis was not only a former boss (at this time I was no longer employed by the brothels) but also a mentor and a close friend. He was family. I had his initial, D, tattooed on my middle finger, a few days after his death as a reminder to try and believe in myself the way he had believed in me.

I met Dennis after approaching him about the research I hoped to conduct for my doctoral dissertation as a student in the department of sociology at University of Nevada, Las Vegas. He was the only brothel owner who would give me a chance, and threw his doors open to me after I made the bold choice to work for him as a means of access to the data I was after. My research would not have been possible were it not for Dennis.

Dennis had introduced me to Tucker’s television program. We were getting ready to do some media and he said, “You have to check this guy out––he’s great!” The first clip he showed me was Tucker’s “Campus Craziness,” a show segment about how the PC thought police are destroying academia. As someone in academia, I knew it all too well, and became an immediate fan of Carlson’s show. Dennis assured me that one day I would meet Tucker, and although I had hoped for a very different sort of meeting, I approached Tucker confident that Dennis would be furious if I missed my chance to say hello.

There was nothing salacious or inappropriate about this moment with Carlson. It was a celebrity taking a few minutes out of his day to make a fan feel good. I approached Tucker and told him what a huge fan I was, and he was kind enough to say yes to a photo. It was nothing more and nothing less. When I offered to buy him a drink, he declined. He had a club soda instead.

I sat with Tucker and Mitchell and we shared stories about our late friend. We were three people from diverse backgrounds coming together to remember a man who touched all our lives. I asked Mitchell if he would take a photo of Tucker and I. After taking the first silly one that Aurthur irresponsibly grasped onto, we took a second “normal” photo, both smiling and facing the camera.

Mitchell texted both photos to me and I was delighted. Afterwards, Tucker headed to the airport and flew back to Washington, D.C. I remember musing that he probably wouldn’t even get a chance to sleep before his show, and that he was a good friend to Dennis to travel all that way to pay his respects.

Yes, it is true that I am a sex worker and that I once worked in a legal brothel. However, I was not there as a sex worker that day. I was simply a friend in mourning. Everyone present had come to celebrate Dennis’ extraordinary life.

I am proud to be a sex worker, but I am not defined simply by what I do to pay the bills. It’s interesting how, again and again, the supposedly feminist left takes women and reduces them to nothing but their job title, is it not? It’s no wonder that so many embrace the term “fake news,” and that so few trust the media.

Aurthur threw together a reckless tweet, without checking the context, in an effort to garner clickbait. It can happen to any of us. Imagine waking up to see a misinformed and callous “journalist” with a chip on her shoulder maligning an innocent moment at a funeral, and having no recourse.

Some people angrily tweeted me accusing me of disrespecting Carlson’s family. I am also married and have nothing but respect for him and his family. Quite frankly, I am stunned that I should have to write this piece to explain myself.

I hope this episode serves as a lesson to Aurthur and her ilk, but I doubt it. She immediately blocked me when I attempted to explain the circumstances. We deserve better from journalists, and I am getting tired of one “fake news” hit piece after another. Do better.

Christina Parreira, M.A. is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Sociology at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. She’s been studying legal Nevada brothels since 2014 and manages sex worker outreach at Trac-B Exchange, Las Vegas’ first syringe exchange.  This column was originally published by The Federalist on February 24, 2019.

(Chuck Muth) – Brother, can you spare a…kidney?

If you believe the misinformation, bordering on libel, and never-ending stigmatization put out by self-righteous moralists against Nevada’s legal brothels, you’d think brothel workers are pretty much the spawn of Satan; low-life degenerates deserving of nothing but public scorn and contempt.

Well, meet Phil Wooley.

Phil is an exceptionally talented graphic artist who works for Dennis Hof’s World Famous Moonlite Bunny Ranch brothel in Mound House, Nevada – just outside Carson City and a short distance south of Reno.

I worked extensively with Phil during late Assemblyman Hof’s campaign for the Nevada Legislature last year – and a more amiable, down-to-earth guy you just won’t find.

Yet he was a fierce defender of the legal brothel industry last fall when an unscrupulous Reno lawyer conspired with a disgraced former sheriff to pass a ballot question that would have shut down his place of employment and put him out of work.

Fortunately, the voters of Lyon County crushed the initiative in November, 80-20 percent.  But back to our story…

Like everyone else working in Nevada’s legal brothels, Phil’s a real person with a real life totally unconnected to his job.

To start with, he’s married, has 5 kids and is very active in the community.  In fact, Phil is the founder of an organization called The Dayton Pigs – a group of citizen-volunteers who go out on weekends cleaning up trash dumped illegally in the desert.

“Couches, mattresses, televisions, tires and household garbage are the most frequently cleaned up items,” the Reno Gazette-Journal reported last summer.  “But the group has also found a pile of Smith’s grocery carts with all the metal removed, as well three dead goats – one cut up and placed in a plastic bag.”

But that’s nothing.  Get this: Phil’s now preparing to undergo potentially life-threatening surgery to remove one of his kidneys.

No, there’s nothing wrong with it whatsoever.  In fact, just the opposite.  It may prove to be PERFECT.  Here’s the 411…

You see, there’s this guy in Dayton named David Mickelsen.  And late last year, according to a story this week in the Nevada Appeal, David sent Phil a request through Facebook to join The Dayton Pigs – a request Phil says saved Phil’s life.

How?

“61 days ago,” Phil wrote this week, “I smoked my very last cigarette. I couldn’t have done it without his (David’s) help. Every time I feel the urge to light one up, all I have to do is think about him…because if I smoke that cigarette, it will kill him.”

Say what?

OK, as Paul Harvey used to say, now the rest of the story…

You see, David is already dying.

“Mickelson,” the Appeal reported, “who survived a childhood brain tumor, was diagnosed with kidney failure as a result of an autoimmune disorder shortly before moving to Nevada from the Bay area in 2014.  He’s been on dialysis since, but it only rids the body of about 10 to 15 percent of the toxins a kidney would do.”

And David’s been searching for YEARS – without success – to find a living donor who would keep him alive.  And time for him is running out.

“David has almost reached the end of the road with his kidney disease,” Phil wrote. “Due to medical confidentiality laws I cannot say too much about the specifics of his condition, but it’s safe to say he suffers every single day, and none of it is his fault.”

Phil had been following David’s plight on Facebook, “seeing him plead with the citizens of my town to help save him, and nobody answering.”

So Phil did what Phil does…he stepped up and took action.

He offered to give David one of his own kidneys.

I’ll let Phil take it from here…

“I contacted David on (Facebook) Messenger, and found out I was the right blood type. After filling out a couple applications, and speaking to a nurse from UC Davis on the phone, I was told I had to quit smoking for 30 days to be eligible.

“I quit smoking that day.

“A couple weeks ago, I finally met the future owner of my kidney. We did an interview for a local AM radio station. After listening to David’s stories of suffering, and witnessing the physical toll dialysis takes on a person, I was 2,000% ready to do this.  

“All fear of my surgery faded away when I realized how tough this man has to be to just stay alive. Who am I to complain about a few weeks of discomfort?”

This, folks, is the very definition of “hero.”

Back to Phil…

“There are still more tests for me, but according to the labs, I’m a match. How weird is that? The only person in my town to step forward, and I’m a match?!

“Anyway, March 11 and 12 will be two days of X-rays, scans, needles, and psych evaluations. They have to make sure I can survive the surgery, and they give donors every possible chance to back out.

“I’m not worried about the tests. I know I’ll pass, because I have to. No other eligible donors have stepped up, and David’s almost out of time.”

All for a man who was a complete stranger just a few short weeks ago.

“Right now,” Phil told the Appeal in an interview, “I have four times the filtration system I’ll need for my entire lifetime.  With one kidney, you have two times the filtration system you need. It’s a very small inconvenience on my part compared to what David’s looking at.”

Small inconvenience?  Hardly.

Despite all the advances of modern-day medicine, we’re not talking about removing a mole here.  We’re talking about major surgery to remove a vital organ from a man with a wife and five young children to give to a fellow human being who will likely die without it.

How many of us would do the same?

Phil told the Appeal that “his wife, Lisa, was somewhat reluctant at first but understands his motivation. He hopes his five children see him as an example.”

Oh, they will.  And so will the rest of us!

It’s an honor to know Phil and a blessing to have him living in our state.

Yet as I write this, there’s a Nevada state senator in Carson City drafting a bill to outlaw all of Nevada’s legal brothels – not just the ones in Lyon County – and put Phil and hundreds of other workers out on the street.

Enough.

Why can’t these moralists follow Phil’s example and simply live and let live?

People like Phil neither need nor deserve to have this legislative Damocles sword hanging over their heads yet again.  It’s…just…not…right.  Leave these folks alone!

Final note…

David will still have considerable out-of-pocket medical and travel expenses after the surgery.  And donation boxes have been set up at the Bunny Ranch, Love Ranch, Sagebrush Ranch and Kit Kat Ranch brothels in Mound House to help cover those expenses.

If you’re in the neighborhood, please consider the sacrifice and risk Phil and his family are taking and stop by to kick in a couple bucks.  Or if you don’t live in the area, you can donate online (I just did) to a GoFundMe account Phil has set up.

Click here

God bless you, Phil.  And best of luck, David!

Mr. Muth is president of Citizen Outreach, a limited-government grassroots advocacy organization, and government affairs counsel to the Nevada Brothel Association

(Chuck Muth) – About the worst thing you can do when it comes to the horrific crime of sex trafficking – especially of underage girls – is to trivialize it through absurdity.  Yet that’s exactly what the National Center on Sexual Exploitation (NCSE), formerly “Morality in Media,” did earlier this month.

As reported in a February 11 article published by the Las Vegas Review-Journal, NCSE named the State of Nevada to its annual “Dirty Dozen” list of “major, mainstream facilitators of sexual exploitation” – along with American corporate icons such as Amazon, Google, HBO, Netflix, Twitter, Sports Illustrated and even United Airlines.

Now, think about what this Washington, DC group is saying…

If you search Google for a recipe for Hungarian goulash, you’re facilitating sexual exploitation.  If you order a book on gardening from Amazon, you’re aiding and abetting sex trafficking.  If you watch HBO or Netflix, you’re an accessory to sex crimes.

Indeed, if you tweet about a story you read in Sports Illustrated on Major League Baseball’s spring training camps while flying on United Airlines to a Bible convention in Alabama, you’re all but a street “pimp.”

That’s right…YOU.

And according to NCSE, Nevada was added to its list because “legalized prostitution in Nevada’s rural counties has turned the state into a ‘magnet for sex traffickers and prostitution tourists.’”

Oh, puh-lease.  Talk about absurd.

The closest legal brothels to Las Vegas – arguably Ground Zero for illegal prostitution and sex trafficking – are an hour and a half away.  And because of extremely strict licensing and regulatory oversight of those legal brothels, there are no underage girls working in them and no one is working there against their will.

Sex trafficking in Nevada’s rural counties is all but non-existent.

On the other hand, Las Vegas is awash with gentleman’s clubs, nudie bars, escort services, massage parlors, “girls to your room” in luxurious Strip resorts, adult sex shops, and good old-fashioned slam-bam-thank-you-ma’am in the back seat of cars behind convenience stores and in seedy motels.

Yet NCSE doesn’t talk about THAT.

Instead it focuses on Nevada’s legal rural brothels which prohibit underage girls from working in the trade, keeps the consenting women who work there safe, protects the public through weekly health exams for sexually transmitted diseases, and contribute significant tax revenue and charitable donations to the communities where they’re located.

NCSE’s linking of Nevada’s legal rural brothels to the illegal sex market in Las Vegas is like comparing a car that needs a quart of oil and a carwash to one with four flat tires, a busted windshield, a smashed bumper, a blown engine and a cigarette lighter that doesn’t work.

Where are your priorities, people?

Or think of it this way: To claim that Nevada’s legal rural brothels are a “magnet for sex traffickers” is like saying legal pharmacies such as Walgreens and CVS are magnets for illegal drug traffickers.  We’re talking apples and oranges here, folks.

In naming Nevada to its “ignominious” list, NCSE cites a Lyon County Sheriff’s Department audit of its four legal brothels last fall that purportedly found “signs of potential sex trafficking” – while failing to note that audit report was generated by the local sheriff who was secretly funding a ballot question to ban legal brothels in part because his ex-wife had gone to work for one.

Yeah, that’s a credible report.

Nevertheless, Lyon County voters – not wanting the crime and disease rampant in Las Vegas’ illegal sex market – defeated the ballot question by a whopping 80-20% margin.  Leading NCSE to accuse “Lyon County residents who voted against the brothel ban” of being “complicit in the sexual exploitation of ‘countless women.’”

Hogwash.  And how insulting.

The adult women who work in Nevada’s legal brothels are business women and entrepreneurs who have chosen such sex work of their own free will – even though that’s not a career choice many others would make.

They’re not the problem; they’re part of the solution.  The anti-Nevada puritans at NCSE should get off their backs.  Live and let live.

Mr. Muth is president of Citizen Outreach, a limited-government grassroots advocacy organization, and government affairs counsel to the Nevada Brothel Association