“Is It Wrong To Pay For Sex?”

From NPR. Those debating were:

FOR THE MOTION

Melissa Farley is a clinical and research psychologist with San Francisco-based nonprofit Prostitution Research & Education and an associate scholar with the Center for World Indigenous Studies. She wrote Prostitution and Trafficking in Nevada: Making the Connections and Prostitution, Trafficking and Traumatic Stress.

Catharine A. MacKinnon specializes in sex equality issues under international and constitutional law. She pioneered the legal claim for sexual harassment and, with Andrea Dworkin, created ordinances recognizing pornography as a civil rights violation. The Supreme Court of Canada largely accepted her approaches to equality, pornography and hate speech.

Wendy Shalit received her philosophy degree from Williams College in 1997. Her first book, A Return to Modesty: Discovering The Lost Virtue, argues that modesty is misunderstood as “repression”; and her follow-up, The Good Girl Revolution: Young Rebels With Self-Esteem and High Standards, showcases a new generation of female role models.

AGAINST THE MOTION

Sydney Biddle Barrows, perhaps better known to millions as the “Mayflower Madam,” found herself moonlighting as a phone girl at an escort service after having been fired for refusing to participate in a kickback scheme. Less than a year later she opened up her own agency, Cachet, which was eventually closed down by New York authorities. She is now in the information marketing business.

Tyler Cowen is Holbert C. Harris Professor of Economics at George Mason University and director of the Mercatus Center. He has written numerous books on the relationship between commerce, the arts and morality, including In Praise of Commercial Culture and, most recently, Discover Your Inner Economist.

Lionel Tiger is the Charles Darwin Professor of Anthropology at Rutgers University. Among his books are Men in Groups, which introduced and developed the concept of male bonding, The Imperial Animal, The Pursuit of Pleasure and The Decline of Males.

Listen to the debate here. Read the transcript here.