or work release.

Ideology Over Justice

The way King County has used prostitution charges in this case should alarm anyone who believes in free speech and free association. In the name of stopping sexual exploitation and human trafficking, law enforcement is devoting vast resources to prosecuting men who want to pay consenting adult women for sex—and maybe sometimes talk about it.

As Alison Bass—a journalism professor at West Virginia University and author of the 2015 book about prostitution law, Getting Screwed—wrote on her website about the case in January: "If the American public wants to spend scarce taxpayer dollars to entrap and arrest people for promoting adult prostitution, that's one thing. But it's disingenuous for law enforcement to wrap what they're doing in the guise of sex slavery."

The goal of the"to deconstruct the toxic masculinity that is at the root of men's sex-buying practices."

OPS was founded by Noah Gomez, a "prostitution survivor" who went on to earn a bachelor's degree in social justice at Antioch University, and Peter Qualliotine, one of two Seattle members—along with King County prosecutor Val Richey—of the Cities Empowered Against Sexual Exploitation Network. Qualliotine and Richey are also co-leads of a government-funded "sex buyers intervention program" called Buyers Beware.

Qualliotine says the first goal of OPS is providing "services for folks who are in prostitution or getting out of prostitution"—things such as case management, art workshops, yoga classes, drug-dependency counseling, and support groups. "The secondary purpose is to change the social norms that are at the root of this practice of exploitation."

The Stopping Sexual Exploitation