Ritter Signs Blue-Law Repeal

Starting July 1, Coloradans will be able to purchase liquor in stores on Sundays. The Rocky Mountain News reports:

With the stroke of a pen, Gov. Bill Ritter today signed into law a bill that makes Colorado the 35th state to permit liquor stores to open Sunday.

“This is a law whose time has finally come,” Ritter said in a statement. “The ban on Sunday sales was an antiquated law that long ago outlived its usefulness or relevance.” ...

The new law came about after liquor store owners dropped their long-standing opposition to Sunday sales.

They made the switch to head off legislation that would have allowed grocery and convenience stores to sell full-strength beer and wine. Lawmakers killed that bill in the face of strong opposition from liquor store owners.

So Colorado continues to suffer from a host of political controls on the liquor industry. Liquor stores can't sell food, and grocery stores can't sell anything but 3.2 beer (except in one location per chain). Nor can liquor stores start chains. Also, Sunday car sales continue to be illegal.

But we can buy bottled booze on Sundays. It's not much, but it's something. So, thank you Democrats. While many political issues are arcane and confusing, this one is simple and obvious to the common person. During all of its years in the majority, the Republicans did nothing but fight for the Blue Laws against the interests and liberty of consumers. On this issue, the Republicans left it to the Democrats to score one for economic liberty.

April 18 Update: Penn Pfiffner writes:

In your recent blog dealing with a step toward rolling back the Blue Laws, you said:

"During all of its years in the majority, the Republicans did nothing but fight for the Blue Laws against the interests and liberty of consumers. On this issue, the Republicans left it to the Democrats to score one for economic liberty."

True, in that the legislature never acted successfully through those years. I wanted to bring to your attention, however, that I offered legislation to end the Sunday prohibition on both liquor sales and car sales. The Republican-majority Business Affairs Committee killed the bill. If memory serves, this was sometime during the 59th General Assembly (1993 or 1994).

I appreciate Pfiffner's clarification and his work in the legislature and out.

I was referring to Republicans as a party, not to individual Republicans who sided with economic liberty.

Smoking Ban (Still) Violates Rights

The Denver Post reported on March 22:

A Colorado appeals court ruled last week that smoking by an actor on stage, while possibly important to character and theatrical message, is still banned by the state's 2-year-old indoor smoking law.

"The smoking ban was not intended to prevent actors from expressing emotion, setting a mood, illustrating a character trait, emphasizing a plot twist or making a political statement," a three-member panel of the Colorado Court of Appeals said in its unanimous ruling, upholding a lower court's verdict.

However, the court added, "smoking, by itself, is not sufficiently expressive to qualify for First Amendment protection."

The smoking ban does violate the right of free speech, but more fundamentally it violates the right to property. (See my earlier comments about the smoking ban.)

Colorado's Bill of Rights (Article II, Section 3) states: "All persons have certain natural, essential and inalienable rights, among which may be reckoned the right of enjoying and defending their lives and liberties; of acquiring, possessing and protecting property; and of seeking and obtaining their safety and happiness."

If Colorado's courts took seriously Colorado's Constitution, they would reject the smoking ban before even getting to the federal Bill of Rights.

Prostitution: Reply to Susan Williams

Susan Williams should have read my March 15 Speakout ("Should prostitution be legal?") prior to criticizing it in her March 20 letter ("Degradation is why prostitution illegal"). Rather than consider my arguments and respond to them, Williams insulted both me and my wife by wondering "if... Ari Armstrong thinks he is purchasing his wife's favors when he pays for groceries or dinner out." Williams's insinuation about our marriage is vicious and dishonest.

In the Speakout, I argued that prostitution is a moral vice, along with infidelity and indiscriminate sex. Furthermore, I wrote, "[S]ex properly involves a connection of consciousness as well as bodies between two people who genuinely admire one another. Purely physical sex undermines the distinctly human dimension of it..." Williams ignored all of this.

Williams instead misrepresented my observation that paying indirectly for sex via expensive dinners or trips is legal, while paying directly for sex is a crime. I made this point in the context of discussing various other vices, such as infidelity, that are legal. My point was that, while we should condemn and discourage vices involving consensual behavior, we ought not criminalize them. For example, while Eliot Spitzer fully deserved the public censure he got, neither he nor the prostitutes he hired deserve to go to prison.

Williams wrote, "The reason we don't legalize prostitution in the United States is that it is wrong and degrading to buy and sell women..." I quite agree that it is wrong and degrading to hire prostitutes, and I argued as much in my Speakout. However, prostitution is not akin to slavery, as Williams suggests. Prostitutes, along with those who hire them, agree to the arrangement. (I noted in the Speakout that "involuntary prostitution and sexual abuse of children must be outlawed.")

Williams asked how I would react if my (hypothetical) daughter decided to take up prostitution. I would react the same way I would if she decided to take up indiscriminate sex, infidelity, or any other serious vice. If she were a minor (for whom prostitution would properly remain illegal), I would prevent it. If she were an adult, I would passionately plead with her to make wiser choices.

I've answered Williams's question; now it is only fair that she answer mine. Does Williams think that people should be sent to prison for infidelity or indiscriminate sex? If not, doesn't she still grant that those things are "wrong and degrading?" How can she justify criminalizing some vices but not others? Finally, assuming that there are any vices that Williams thinks should remain legal, would she appreciate it if I insinuated that she therefore participates in those vices?

* * *

I have asked that the Rocky Mountain News publish the first three paragraphs of the reply above.

While the point is a minor one, I did find it humorous that Williams assumed that I'm the one buying groceries and dinner out. My wife makes way more money than I do.

My previous notes on the matter are also available.

Finally, I do agree with Williams's statement, "Men who think that all exchanges between them and women are negotiations for the price of sex are doomed to loneliness in the midst of company," though there is a sense in which the "price of sex" is properly one's character. And Williams's paragraph about Spitzer makes a good point.

Prostitution Article Now Online

My article in the Rocky Mountain News arguing that prostitution should be legal is now available online. I've also written some additional notes about the subject. Also, in 2001 (during my libertarian days), I reviewed a debate on the matter featuring Wendy McElroy.

Legal Prostitution: Article in Rocky Mountain News

Subscribers to the Rocky Mountain News may notice an article of mine today on page 26 (in the second news section). It's titled, "Should prostitution be legal?" Unfortunately, the News has not made the text of the article available on its web page at this point (a matter that I'll try to resolve).

[March 17 Update: The article is now available online.]

After discussing some non-vices that are sometimes banned and some vices that are not banned, I describe prostitution as a vice that should not be banned. Here is my central claim: "The proper purpose of government is to protect people's rights, not prevent vice beyond that context." I add that prostitution (between consenting adults) should not be banned because it does not violate anyone's rights.

Notice that I do not use the phrase, "victimless crime." Opponents of legal prostitution (and legal drugs) argue that the activity harms third parties. However, that's not the relevant distinction when defining legitimate crimes. Instead, the relevant factor is whether someone initiated physical force (or fraud). Without that element, no action should be considered a crime. Take the following example. A father who doesn't work, but who lays around on the couch all day watching television while his wife works a low-income job, thereby harms his children. But should laziness be banned? Clearly not. Obviously, Eliot Spitzer harmed his family by hiring prostitutes. But he did not initiate physical force. Single people have no family to harm, though arguably they still harm third parties, but again no initiation of force is involved.

The final two-thirds of the article considers four objections to legal prostitution (see the text).

Here I want to add several qualifications based on the comments of various readers. (The article has fewer than 650 words, so it is highly essentialized.)

Thanks to the advice (and reference) of Brian Schwartz, I did not use the phrase "legalized prostitution" in an effort to try to avoid the sort of definitional issues that Wendy McElroy addresses:

Legalization (or regulation): government has registered prostitutes with the police and subjected them to rules meant to protect health and public decency. Legalization refers to some form of state controlled prostitution. It often includes mandatory medical exams, special taxes, licensing, or the creation of red light districts. It always includes a government record of who is a prostitute, information which is commonly used for other government purposes. For example, some countries in Europe indicate whether a person is a prostitute on his or her passport. This restricts that person's ability to travel since many countries will automatically refuse entry on that basis. Controlling legalized prostitution usually falls to the police. ...

Decriminalization (or tolerance): all laws against prostitution have been abolished. It refers to the removal of all laws against prostitution, including laws against pimping. Almost all prostitutes' rights groups in North America call for the decriminalization of consensual adult sex on the grounds that laws against such sex violate civil liberties, such as the freedom of association.

The individualist feminist approach to prostitution is to advocate decriminalization: that is, the abolition of all laws against selling sex.

My goal with the article was to argue for legal prostitution, without getting into the debate that McElroy reviews.

However, I may need to clarify the following sentence in my article: "On a legal market, both prostitutes and their solicitors would be screened and monitored much more carefully..." What I had in mind is that both houses of prostitution and independent prostitutes would have the ability to screen clients more carefully, and houses of prostitution and and other parties would have a greater incentive and ability to screen and monitor prostitutes. Of course knowingly putting someone at risk of a sexually-transmitted disease (without disclosure) should be illegal across the board, for prostitutes and everyone else.

In discussing the legality of prostitution in the article, I mean to address only criminal law. Obviously any sort of infidelity violates the typical marital contract, but contract is a matter of civil law.

Hopefully the entire text of the article will become available for online readers soon.

[March 17 Update: The article is now available online.]

Boulder Bans Pink Pooch

Unbelievable. Put this is the "only in Boulder" file:

The Boulder salon owner facing a $1,000 fine for dyeing her miniature poodle pink will have to wait for her day in court.

... Joy Douglas, owner of Zing Salon... appeared before a judge in Boulder Municipal Court and asked for her hearing to be rescheduled because she's retained a defense attorney.

The judge granted Douglas' request and reset her hearing for April 7.

Officials at the Humane Society of Boulder Valley issued Douglas a ticket on March 1 for violating Section 6-1-14 of Boulder's city code, titled "Dyeing fowl and rabbits prohibited."

Douglas has insisted she didn't break that law, because she uses beet juice -- and occasionally Kool-Aid -- to "stain" her dog Cici's coat. She said she never has used chemicals, and her pooch never has had a reaction to the stain. ...

She also reiterated her claim that she dyed the dog pink to support breast cancer awareness.

Is this some sort of elaborate practical joke? Apparently not. Here is the code in question:

6-1-14 Dyeing Fowl and Rabbits Prohibited; Selling Dogs, Cats, and Fowl Limited.

(a) No person shall dye or color live fowl, rabbits, or any other animals or have in possession, display, sell, or give away such dyed or colored animals.

This reminds me of the colorful horses in the Wizard of Oz -- except that Oz makes a hell of lot more sense than Boulder policies.

The Denver Post adds:

Not everyone who saw pink Cici was pleased, and some customers called the Humane Society of Boulder Valley, whose commissioned officers enforce the city's animal ordinances. ...

"We've received a number of complaints about the dog," said Lisa Pedersen, director of the humane society. "We've been out to talk with Joy several times. Finally, we gave her a ticket to let the courts decide the issue."

"This is a misrepresentation of what animal control is supposed to be," said Douglas, who drives a pink scooter, a pink car and now is looking for a lawyer to represent her and her pink dog. "This doesn't hurt Cici at all. We color her about once a week to keep it bright. She's fine."

Pedersen agreed that the dog appears to be well-cared for, except that she's pink.

So then why doesn't Pedersen -- and the other intolerant asses in Boulder who registered the complaints -- mind their own damned business?

The Sin is the Tax

So-called "sin taxes" are appropriately named, because it is morally wrong to forcibly transfer wealth even if the taxes discriminate against politically-incorrect behavior. Here's the latest from the Rocky Mountain News:

...Denver Democrat [Rep. Jerry Frangas] very quietly drafted a bill introduced this week that would raise alcohol taxes 2 percent to cover all of Colorado's 180,000 uninsured children.

The tax of 11 cents, for example, on a $5.49 six-pack of Budweiser, would raise about $57 million for the state children's health care program. When paired with federal matching funds, Frangas said it would provide up to $150 million.

In other words, through the magic of federal "matching" welfare payments, Frangas can capture a portion of the national income tax by imposing a state sales tax. That way, Frangas can also force people in every other state to fund the health care of select Coloradans. Ah, the glories of federalism in the modern age.

But socialized medicine is fine, "for the children," right? On the contrary, generally parents have a moral obligation to fund their own children's health-care expenses, and they should plan their families and expenses accordingly. Of course, parents whose children suffer unexpected, catastrophic illnesses already benefit from a wide array of voluntary charity programs (often in addition to insurance payments), as is appropriate. All of us want to see innocent children taken care of, which is exactly why even today's mixed economy often provides for their needs and why a truly free market would do so even better. However, unlike force-funded welfare, voluntary charity is more likely to discourage dependency and irresponsibility on the part of the parents. Offhand, I don't have a good estimate for how much socialized medicine "for the children" displaces private insurance (and discourages parental responsibility), but the figure is large. And, obviously, socialized medicine "for the children" is merely a stepping stone to socialized medicine for everyone. As one advocate of politically-funded medicine reportedly said, "[S]ome of you may think of me as an incrementalist. I prefer to think of myself as a sneaky sequentialist."

If politicians really wanted to help, they would repeal the interventions that have artificially increased the costs of health care and insurance and reduced access to medical services especially among the poor (as Lin Zinser and Paul Hsieh explain.)

What about a tax on alcohol? I oppose sales taxes in general. But, so long as there is a sales tax, it is wrong to discriminate against some people (in this case consumers of alcoholic beverages) and select legal activities. No doubt advocates of the tax on alcohol will argue that the tax would fund a "worthy" welfare program while discouraging a vice. But it is the proper role of government to protect individual rights, not to socially engineer behavior desired by politicians. While obviously alcohol can be abused -- as can many other properly legal products -- there is nothing inherently rights-violating or irresponsible about drinking alcohol. And purchasers of alcohol ought not be uniquely forced to subsidize other people's children.