Public Policy Polling did a poll of voters in Nevada and found a couple of interesting results. Nearly two thirds of Nevada voters think brothels should be legal — more than three times as many people that think same-sex marriage should be legal.
There’s one thing Nevada voters across party lines can agree on: they love them some brothels. 64% think brothels should be legal to only 23% who think they should be illegal. The most striking thing in these numbers is that an equal 66% of Democrats and Republicans each think that brothels should be legal. In late March we found that only 20% of Nevada GOP voters supported gay marriage so that’s an interesting take on family values there.
As Zack Ford puts it, “Nevada’s brothels have no legal restrictions on sexual orientation, so according to the state’s Republicans, it’s okay if gays and lesbians pay for sex, just so long as they don’t settle down and start families.” And that’s the “family values” position.
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Nemo
June 19, 2012 at 1:42 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
That’s among Republicans. They don’t give a figure on marriage equality for Democrats, or overall.
Uniquely in Nevada, support for legal brothels means support for the status quo — so, a “conservative” position, in the truest sense of the word.
d cwilson
June 19, 2012 at 1:53 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
I followed the links to the original polling data. It looks like gay marriage wasn’t even asked in this particular poll. That’s what they’re citing a figure from late March. The article, however, doesn’t link to the March poll, so I can’t tell how support for marriage equality plays out among democrats or Nevadans in general.
kagerato
June 19, 2012 at 1:54 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Nemo, pretty sure it’s limited to certain counties. Asking the question in the abstract leaves the ambiguity of whether they mean the status quo or state-wide legalization.
It would be interesting to look at a breakdown of such a poll according to county. The PPP data is not at all granular.
In any case, marriage equality is a much easier call morally than brothels. There’s next to nothing reasonable in preventing any two arbitrary and consenting adults from marrying each other, and all the counterarguments reduce to either an appeal to authority, tradition, or the naturalistic fallacy. Brothels are more complicated, because we have to get into matters of labor standards, fair treatment, gender-segregated socialization, stigmatization, and many others.
Ryan Jean
June 19, 2012 at 1:55 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
No. As the quote you put spells out, the March poll showed 20% gay marriage support from the GOP, not from the population overall, while the brothel support was roughly even whether you split by party or looked at the average.
I couldn’t find the March results on PPP’s site, but I did find one from last year that shows how incorrect portraying the overall as 20% is: (link)
uncephalized
June 19, 2012 at 2:02 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Never mind that Nevada brothels, by all accounts I’ve read, are pretty shitty places to work. Many of the sex workers involved would much rather be self-employed, which gives them a chance to set their own schedules, screen and pick their own clients, and in many cases also make a better income than working in a house. But of course, they can’t, because in Nevada the only legal sex work is the more-demeaning kind where someone tells you where to be and who to do, for how long and for how much money.
Just fucking legalize it already so women (and men!) who want to do it can enjoy the same protections against violence, fraud, and exploitation that everyone else has. Stupid Puritanical country…
slc1
June 19, 2012 at 2:06 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
It should be pointed out that brothels are illegal in the counties in which Las Vegas and Reno are located.
busterggi
June 19, 2012 at 3:43 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Oh course Nevadans support legal prostitution but not gay marriage.
A heterosexual man having sex with a professional of the opposite sex dressed as a dominatrix while he’s wearing a diaper & ball gag isn’t icky like gay sex.
Shawn Smith
June 19, 2012 at 4:00 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
As slc1 stated, prostitution is illegal in the state capital and in all counties with more than a given population (my memory is that the limit is 200,000, but I could be wrong on that.) Las Vegas is pretty much in the middle of Clark County, with the closest place out of Clark being about 40 miles outside of the metro area. Reno is almost on the border of Washoe county, and you only have to go a couple miles outside the metro area to get into another county.
In 2002 and 2004 Nevada voters changed the state constitution to define marriage as between a man and a woman (because a constitutional amendment requires passing both houses of the legislature and a majority vote in two consecutive elections.) The legislature meets for 120 days every two years. Although medical marijuana is not illegal, illicit possession is punished quite severely, and it is illegal to smoke indoors except in casinos, smoke shops, brothels, or bars that do not serve prepared food (anything more complicated than a bag of potato chips.)
Shawn Smith
June 19, 2012 at 4:02 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Oh, you can smoke in your private residence or in your car, too. How generous.
bahrfeldt
June 19, 2012 at 4:53 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Because to a Republican, a legal brothel (whether or not incorporated) is a person, while a female brothel worker is not. And gay sex is icky, except lesbian sex performed by attractive sex workers for (financially) well endowed (allegedly) heterosexual male clients.
democommie
June 19, 2012 at 11:52 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
I’m sure that this could be referenced in another thread, but wtf, I have it now.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=heXZTMHG88Y
Lisa Koch shows more sack than most men.
democommie
June 20, 2012 at 7:44 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
And where do the good voters of Nevada come down on the subject of teh GAY brothels?
harold
June 20, 2012 at 8:06 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Correction required –
No, that’s “three times the percentage of Republicans who, in another poll, thought gay marriage should be legal”.
What percentage of Republicans in MA, NY, or Maryland think gay marriage should be legal? Probably a low percentage. Right now, gay marriage is perceived as a defining issues.
The rest of the comment was funny, but…we do NOT know that.
All polls show that support for gay marriage has increased a great deal in most parts of the country since 2004, due to an increase in support from Democrats and Independents, with the Republican party remaining ideologically opposed to gay marriage.
Nevada is a weird state, but politically, it isn’t particularly “red”. It’s more likely that polls of the general population would reflect national trends.
I have heard, and have no reason to doubt, that the casino industry believes that marijuana tends to slow down gambling. This is the usual explanation for the unusual emphasis on marijuana prohibition in a state otherwise not known for prohibition.
(I support fully legalizing sex work by and between consenting, competent, fully informed adults, of course.)
d cwilson
June 20, 2012 at 8:42 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
I don’t know about that. You’d think a stoner would find sitting in front of a slot machine, watching all the flashing lights and spinning wheels, to be endlessly entertaining.