Senator Scott Wiener (D-San Francisco) has introduced Senate Bill 357, repealing provisions of California law that criminalize loitering for the intent to engage in sex work. This proposal — arrests for which are based on an officer’s subjective perception of whether a person is “acting like” they intend to engage in sex work — results in the disproportionate criminalization of trans, Black and Brown people, and perpetuates violence toward sex workers. SB 357 does not decriminalize soliciting or engaging in sex work. Rather, it simply eliminates an anti-loitering offense that leads to harmful treatment of people for simply “appearing” to be a sex worker.
Criminalizing sex work does not make sex workers or our communities safer. Most criminal penalties for sex workers, loitering laws included, do nothing to stop sex crimes against sex workers and human trafficking. People engaged in sex work deserve to be treated with dignity and respect.
In February, a similar piece of legislation to end this type of loitering ban became law in New York. SB 357 is part of the movement to end discrimination against and violence toward sex workers, especially the most targeted communities — trans, Black, and Brown people. SB 357 is cosponsored by Positive Women’s Network – USA, St. James Infirmary, SWOP LA, Trans Latin@ Coalition, Asian Pacific Islander Legal Outreach, and the ACLU of California.
Under current law, it is a crime to loiter in a public place with the “intent” to commit a sex work-related offense. But this law can be broadly interpreted, and thus allows for discriminatory application against the LGBTQ community and people of color. Law enforcement can use a non-exhaustive list of circumstances to “determine” if someone intends to engage in sex work, including factors such as speaking with other pedestrians, being in an area where sex work has occurred before, wearing revealing clothing, or moving in a certain way. Because current law regarding loitering is highly subjective and vague, law enforcement officers disproportionately profile and target Black and Brown transgender women by stopping and arresting people for discriminatory and inappropriate reasons. This is how Black and Brown transgender women get arrested and cited for quite simply walking on the street. It also gives law enforcement the ability to more easily target and arrest sex workers.
People within the LGBTQ, Black, and Brown communities report high rates of police misconduct throughout the United States and are disproportionately affected by police violence. Transgender people who have done street-based sex work are more than twice as likely to report physical assault by police officers and four times as likely to report sexual assault by police. A Black person is 3.5 times more likely to be shot by police than a white person. These statistics are a daily reality that transgender, Black and Brown people face and lead to mistrust of law enforcement….
The above comes from a March 10 release from the office of Scott Wiener.
I commend this compassionate and Christian effort to eliminate inequities in criminal penalties and punishment for LGBTQIA+ peoples, Black peoples, and Brown peoples. The Black and Brown communities suffer from rates of arrest and conviction far disproportionate to their presence in the community. The white community doesn’t suffer as much. It’s an example of how bad laws perpetuate and codify systemic racism against Black and Brown peoples. This will be a small step to making criminal punishments of white, Black and Brown peoples equitable.
No, Kris. People who are underprivileged have a sad history of falling into lives of crime. They need to be removed from such evils and filth and extreme degredation– and they need education and help to better themselves, and move up from lives of poverty, discrimination and hopelessness, to live as more so-called “privileged” in America do, leading lives of happiness, success, good jobs, financial security, morality, responsibility, self-respect, successful marriages– and plenty of happiness, self-respect, responsibility, morality, financial security, and success for their children.
He might not appreciate you calling it a Christian effort.
“People engaged in sex work deserve to be treated with dignity and respect.” Many girls and women are forced into prostitution and pornography and it strips them of their dignity and wounds their souls.
Weiner loiters around
the State Capitol with the
intent of scr*&@ng californians
who hold traditional values –
is this a crime???
Scott Wiener, a lawless, immoral, immature San Francisco gay lawmaker who ignorantly supports crime and sin in the gutters, should not be representing our state as a lawmaker! Such filthy, totally corrupt people who wrongfully call prostitutes “sex workers” are sick! Prostitution, sex trafficking, is a crime, and a horrible sin! Not a form of “employment!” Don’t these horrible people care about young women abused severely, enslaved in sex trafficking?? We need good, morally decent lawmakers who will pass good laws to protect young women from lives of dangerous crime on the streets, and rescue and rehabilitate those savagely enslaved in filthy, dangerous prostitution, sex trafficking! And steer the underprivileged of different races far away from crime, sin degradation, enslavement, corruption and filth, into good, wholesome, positive, productive lives they can be proud of! Get them out of the gutters, out of enslavement, educate them, and rehabilitate them. Give them a good and decent future in America!
Kris seems to know the inscrutable
plans of God include calling greater numbers
of black and brown people to the “vocation”
of prostitution.
Does this make God racist ???
Weiner has, putatively, been voted into office
by the fine people of the Castro District to represent
their “interests” – whatever they may be.
I’ve always found it interesting that as Castro proceeds
northbound, at around Dubose Triangle, w/ a slight jog,
it changes identity to Divisadero Street.
No matter what street(s) we walk in this world,
we’ll all come to that ultimate dividing line, that
chasm that cannot be bridged. Not choosing, is itself
a choice. We end up on one side or the other.
Anon. March 12, 2021 at 3:06 pm, correctly, in my
humble opinion, identifies Weiner as a: ” lawless, immoral,
immature San Francisco gay lawmaker.”
Is Mr/Ms Anon implying, ever so subtly, that San Francisco
has OTHER kinds of lawmakers???
Hey, John Wayne! Love your name! John Wayne was a Catholic convert, who wrote beautiful “love letters,” as he said, to God, in gratitude for all the fabulous blessings God bestowed upon his life! He loved God so much, and had many tears of love and gratitude to God! And one of his grandsons became a priest! God loves all His children, and calls them all to repentance, and to a beautiful life with Him! Our Catholic clerics ought to preach, teach, and actively evangelize our wayward politicians!
How is it “pro-woman,” as the Left so morally espouse, to not help prostitutes and sex-trafficked young girls? A woman treated with dignity is not used and abused as a plaything for perverts.
Because the left doesn’t consider sex work to be immoral. It’s just as honorable as stocking shelves.
Prostitutes deserve dignity and respect. As human persons, they do; but, not as they identify as “sex workers.” We are not what we do. Pray these women find deliverance and healing from the bondage enslaving them (as well as their pimps and customers).
Yet, somehow, you and I, who pay taxes on our income, are not deserving of the same respect and should be prohibited from loitering.
This is an example of Democrat Wiener logic.
And only one example of the disaster of identity group politics. Some groups are favored and others are penalized.
See Primal Screams – How the Sexual Revolution Created Identity Politics by Mary Eberstadt.