[AFNobody]

This is largely correct but not something the US's religious right is willing to accept.

Decriminalizing prostitution and criminalizing the person doing the "buying" in public is the maximum that is viable without encouraging abuse.

[pitaj]

There no reason to paint this as a partisan issue. There are plenty of puritans on the left.

[untog]

There are plenty, but there are also definitely a lot more on the Republican side. A majority of self-identified Democrats favor legalization, while a majority of self-identified Republicans are against: https://today.yougov.com/topics/politics/articles-reports/20...

[AFNobody]

The majority of the left supports decriminalization or legalization as the other commenter pointed out.

Pretending it isn't a partisan issue is silly.

[tomhoward]

> "Pretending it isn't a partisan issue is silly."

The stats to which you refer don't support that dismissal.

In that survey, 50% of Dems supported legalisation/decriminalisation (which you'll notice is not quite a majority, or is a narrow one if you ignore the undecideds) and 34% of Republicans supported it.

So it's a 16 percentage point difference. Yes there's more support among Democrats, but not so much so that you can dismiss it as a partisan issue.

Anecdotally, here in Australia, someone I know very well works in a government policy role administering sex work, and some of the most strident campaigning in favour of re-criminalisation comes from the left. In this state it was a conservative government that legalised it in the early 90s, in the first year they came to power after 10 years of social-democratic government. There's no campaign from the conservative side to re-criminalise it here.

[jack9]

Both sides are criminalized in the US

[AFNobody]

Which is the problem.