Canada’s prostitution laws prevent sex workers from obtaining meaningful consent before engaging with clients, a lawyer for an alliance of sex worker rights groups argued in a Toronto courtroom Monday.The hearing is the first of what is expected to be four days of arguments at the Ontario Superior Court during a constitutional challenge of the Protection of Communities and Exploited Persons Act.
That law was passed by the former Conservative government in 2014, about a year after the Supreme Court of Canada struck down the previous law that prohibited prostitution. In that case, lawyers argued existing provisions were disproportionate, overbroad and put sex workers at risk of harm.
The Canadian Alliance for Sex Work Law Reform is now arguing the new laws are more restrictive than what they replaced and continue to criminalize sex work.It says the new laws foster stigma, invite targeted violence and remove safe consent.
Michael Rosenberg said in court Monday that the laws making it illegal to advertise or communicate about buying or selling sexual services are “unacceptably dangerous,” in part because they prevent health and safety checks, or meaningful conversations about consent, from happening.
So if criminal laws against prostitution prevent hookers from exercising their speech rights, what about Rat Bastard 2.0's ban on "conversion therapy" by which we can tell morally deficient faggots that their brains and broken and that they can and should be cured?
