Nevada's Brothel-Ad Ban Says More About Old Media Woes Than Legalized Prostitution

(MoneyWatch)  A federal court of appeals has -- predictably -- upheld a ban on advertising brothels in Nevada, but the case says more about the recession in old media than it does about legalized prostitution in the Hooker State.

The case wasn't brought by the Shady Lady Ranch or* the Bunny Ranch. It was brought by Coyote Publishing, which owns two newspapers that wanted to carry advertising for brothels. They argued that Nevada's ban on call-girl ads "in any public theater, on the public streets of any city or town, or on any public highway" was a violation of their First Amendment right to, er, take money from pimps when the classified-ad market gets destroyed by CraigsList.

The ruling itself was clearly a labor of love for Judge Marsha Berzon. It begins:

[A]s long as poverty makes virtue hideous and the spare pocket-money of rich bachelordom makes vice dazzling, [the] daily hand-to-hand fight against prostitution with prayer and persuasion, shelters and scanty alms, will be a losing one. --George Bernard Shaw, Preface to Mrs. Warren's Profession viii (1902)

The American experience with prostitution over the last hundred years is testament to the sagacity of Mr. Shaw. Even the coercive machinery of the criminal law, not yet arrayed against the sale of sexual services when Shaw penned Mrs. Warren's Profession, has not extinguished the world's oldest profession.

The rest of the ruling is an academic history of prostitution in America. (From 1980 to 2009, so-called "indoor prostitution" was legal in Rhode Island!) It also contains a discussion of whether society has the right to stand against the commoditization of sex, or whether nookie can be a paid-labor transaction just like blogging everything else.

* Shady Lady was a party to the case. Apologies for the error. Related:

• Inside the Billboard Biz: Puppet Cleavage is a No-No, But Hookers and Pot Dealers Are Just Fine