The Dish

Ben Leubsdorf flags a study showing what happened:

A loophole in Rhode Island law that effectively decriminalized indoor prostitution in 2003 also led to significant decreases in rape and gonorrhea in the state, according to a new analysis published by the National Bureau of Economic Research. “The results suggest that decriminalization could have potentially large social benefits for the population at large – not just sex market participants,” wrote economists Scott Cunningham of Baylor University and Manisha Shah of the University of California, Los Angeles, in a working paper issued this month.

Mr. Cunningham and Ms. Shah got an opportunity to study the effects of decriminalized prostitution on crime and public health because Rhode Island lawmakers made a mistake. A 1980 change to state law dealing with street solicitation also deleted the ban on prostitution itself, in effect making the act legal if it took place indoors. The loophole apparently went unnoticed until a 2003 court decision, and remained open until indoor prostitution was banned again in 2009.

Adrianna McIntyre delves into the data:

The authors found evidence that, after decriminalization, size of the indoor sex market increased – as expected – and prices commensurately fell. More surprising was the finding that forcible rape offenses fell by 31 percent in Rhode Island from 2004 to 2009, as decriminalized indoor sex work scaled up in the state. This translates to 824 fewer reported rapes. The majority of the reduction in rapes came from Providence, where the state’s sex work is concentrated.

The chart [above] depicts reported rape offenses (per 100,000 people) in Rhode Island (the black line) compared to similar control states. The red line demarcates 2003, when decriminalization took place – and only Rhode Island’s offenses drop off steeply after that.

Peter Weber adds:

[The researchers] speculate that the up to 31-percent drop in per capita rape cases was “due to men substituting away from rape toward prostitution,” and the drop in sexually transmitted diseases is likely because indoor prostitutes tend to be safer sexually than outdoor ones.

Meanwhile, Elizabeth Nolan Brown slams the FBI for shutting down MyRedBook.com, “a popular San Francisco-area website used by sexual service providers (and seekers) of all sorts”:

By almost all accounts, it was a space that not only connected sex workers with clients but also served as a sort of community forum, one which enabled sex workers to vet clients, warn about predators, and offer advice to one another. The website’s shutdown – visit MyRedBook.com and you’ll see only the seals of the FBI, Department of Justice, and Internal Revenue Service – has produced ample outrage from sex workers, who see it not only as a financial hit but also a strike against their safety. … [S]hutting down web forums where sex workers advertise isn’t going to actually stop people from buying or selling sex. But they sell this shit in the language of heroes, speaking to all the women and children they’re helping. They are liars.

That’s how Margaret Carlson characterizes Rick Perry’s and Rand Paul’s foreign policy dust-up:

For now, Paul and Perry are the proxies in the war for the foreign-policy soul of the party between the neo-isolationist/Tea Party/libertarians and the strong-on-defense establishment types. When Megyn Kelly of Fox News tells Cheney that “history has proven that you got it wrong,” you know Republicans are no longer knee-jerk hawks. Wading into this briar patch is perfect for Perry and Paul. Both need to prove they’re broader than their current resumes suggest. As governor, all Perry had to do was keep Texas safe from an invasion by Mexico. As a senator, all Paul has to do is run his mouth.

But that debate is the only real one going on right now – and it’s one that might actually have some impact. On the one hand, the Republicans cannot surely run in 2016 on a Cheney platform, as Marco Rubio appears to be planning. On the other, the Greater Israel lobby will do all it can to make sure that any recalibration toward realism and retrenchment is nipped in the bud. My bet, given reform conservatism’s complete wuss-out on the issue, is that the money will have the edge, for reasons explained by Justin Logan:

To put it bluntly, the portion of the GOP donor class that cares about foreign policy is wedded to a militaristic foreign policy, particularly in but not limited to the Middle East. Tens of millions of dollars every year are pumped into an alphabet soup of magazines, think tanks, fellowships, lobby groups and other outfits in Washington to ensure that conservative foreign policy stays unreformed. If we conceive of the Right broadly, comparatively dovish voices on the Right consist of Rand Paul, those writing at theAmerican Conservative, and the foreign and defense policy staff at the Cato Institute, the latter of which Wall Street Journal editorial page editor Paul Gigot once derisively but not entirely inaccurately referred to as “four or five people in a phone booth.” (We have actual offices, for the record.) But until there is some larger countervailing force in the conservative movement, the well-financed and well-entrenched status quo will persist.

Michael Brendan Dougherty is nonetheless hopeful that foreign policy, “one of the areas where American presidents still have relatively free rein to pursue their own course,” is shaping up to be a focal point of the next presidential election:

One of the faults of the American system of governance is that the public tends to elect presidents based on feelings about the economy. Every single poll from Gallup leading into 2012 showed that voters listed the economy as their top issue. But the truth is that presidents can do relatively little to improve the economy. Whether they want a major new executive branch program, a round of stimulus spending, or revisions to the tax code, they have to go through Congress, a body that is in the habit of resisting large-scale transformations of the American state. Usually less than 5 percent of voters claim foreign policy is a paramount issue (although some 30 percent or more will say “terrorism” is on their minds). But foreign policy is what presidents can do.

Which makes a Rand Paul-style makeover in office slightly more likely, if he isn’t Sheldoned out long before that. Kilgore looks forward to how this debate will develop as other contenders stake out their positions:

GOP divisions on foreign policy are very likely to sharpen as we move into the 2016 cycle, partially for competitive reasons but also because the candidates will be forced to project their own vision of America’s role in the world and not simply play off Obama’s record. And while Paul and Perry have staked out early and sharply divergent turf (as has to a lesser extent Marco Rubio, another neocon favorite), it’s possible other candidates will find intermediary positions–viz. Ted Cruz’s claim that he stands “halfway between” John McCain and Rand Paul on foreign policy. It will be quite the contrast from the 2012 cycle, in which the entire field lined up in support of traditional conservative positions favoring higher defense spending and aggressive confrontation with Iran, Russia and China, with the lonely exception of Rand’s father Ron.

Molly Ball observes that Paul’s opponents in this debate are not longstanding hawks:

Perhaps more interesting than this hawks-versus-libertarians dispute, which is an old argument, is who Paul’s antagonists have been. Both Perry and Cruz are politicians who’ve long been associated with the Tea Party, as Paul has. Perry, in his ill-fated 2012 campaign, warned of “military adventurism,” called for withdrawal from Afghanistan, and advocated cutting off aid to Pakistan. Cruz was lumped in with Paul in the category McCain derided as “wacko birds” after Paul’s 2013 drone filibuster. Yet both Perry and Cruz are anxious to differentiate themselves from Paul by turning him into a peacenik caricature.

Because they’re following the money! For now, anyway. Gillespie takes the opportunity to advocate for a libertarian foreign policy. To him, that means getting the government out of the business of shaping our influence around the world, and letting American liberty speak for itself:

The most powerful weapon the United States has for expanding peace and enlarging prosperity has nothing to do with guns and bullets and everything to do with the way in which we have created a nation of 300 million-plus people who generally get along peacefully while pursuing radically different visions of the good life. To the extent that we share our culture and commerce with the world rather than our drones and disdain, we will not only protect ourselves more effectively, we will actually help more people.

During the Cold War, the United States wasted millions if not billions of dollars on highly mannered, pathetic “cultural exchanges” designed to show that the “free world” could compete against communism in areas such as chess, and classical music. Yet no dissidents ever named a revolution after piano prodigy Van Cliburn; they named their revolution after the Velvet Underground.

(Photo: Alex Wong/Getty)

Not very, according to the CDC:

The National Health Interview Survey, which is the government’s premier tool for annually assessing Americans’ health and behaviors, found that 1.6 percent of adults self-identify as gay or lesbian, and 0.7 percent consider themselves bisexual. The overwhelming majority of adults, 96.6 percent, labeled themselves as straight in the 2013 survey. An additional 1.1 percent declined to answer, responded “I don’t know the answer,” or said they were “something else.”

The figures offered a slightly smaller assessment of the size of the gay, lesbian and bisexual population than other surveys, which have pegged the overall proportion at closer to 3.5 or 4 percent. In particular, the estimate for bisexuals was lower than in some other surveys.

Eugene Volokh notes that, according to the CDC, lesbian and bisexual women slightly outnumber their male counterparts:

1.8 percent of men self-identify as gay and 0.4 percent as bisexual, and 1.5 percent of women self-identify as lesbian and 0.9 percent as bisexual. The results are generally in the same ballpark as past estimates — and far below the long-debunked 10 percent estimate. But past data that I’ve seen had suggested that there were about twice as many gay or bisexual men as lesbian or bisexual women; this data suggests that there is no such gender gap.

Meanwhile, Arit John considers the importance of framing:

The survey comes up with a number that’s lower than the 3.5 to 4 percent figure found in other surveys. And as we’ve seen from past surveys, what’s asked matters. Specifically, the broadness of the answers available to respondents makes a difference.

In 2007, researchers at Cornell University interviewed 20,000 individuals in 80 communities. “Mostly heterosexual” was an option for respondents, and the results showed a higher percentage of nonheterosexuality, especially among women:

85.1 percent of the young women identified as heterosexual; 0.5 percent reported no sexual identity; and the remaining 14.4 percent were sexual but not strictly heterosexual, i.e. either lesbian or bisexual. Among young men, 94.0 percent identified themselves as heterosexual; 0.4 percent of the men reported no sexual identity; and the remaining 5.6 percent identified as gay or bisexual.

Meanwhile, the study showed that gay and lesbian Americans were healthier than US heterosexuals in some respects and less so in others – more likely to drink, for example, but also more likely to exercise.

Peter Baker interviews author Deborah Halber about her book on amateur detectives who use the Internet to solve cold cases:

“An unidentified corpse is the Blanche DuBois of the forensic world: completely dependent on the kindness of strangers,” says Deborah Halber in her book about amateur Web sleuths who solve cold cases. According to a 2004 survey—the first and only of its kind—there are at least 13,486 Blanches nationwide, with about a thousand more added to the rolls each year. Amateur sleuths congregate online, swapping information and theories, looking for details or connections, poring over facial reconstructions, dental records, and serial numbers on breast implants and artificial joints. Halber says these forums have “propelled a remarkable shift in the number of cases solved, and in the relationship between the public and law enforcement.”

America has always loved the amateur detective, or the pro gone rogue. … Add the Internet to this strain of American do-it-yourself amateurism and you get the group of Web gumshoes Halber calls “the Skeleton Crew.” She recounts several cold cases, and she profiles active hunters. Some know the hurt of going years without information about a missing relative, and take satisfaction in relieving others from that pain. (This almost always means letting them know the person in question is definitely dead—a comforting if not happy finality. “I’m trying to help families get closure, because I don’t seem to be able to get it for myself,” says one sleuth.) Some are men fixated on the corpses of pretty women. Some read about a case in the news, then get sucked in by the online vortex of possibly relevant evidence, the connections radiating in every direction, the allure of scoring a “solve.” Many amateurs find, online, possibilities for creative thinking and meaning they lack in the drudgery of daily life.

Reviewing Jonathan Rose’s The Literary Churchill: Author, Reader, Actor, Michael F. Bishop appreciates the insights offered by approaching Sir Winston through the writing he both produced and loved:

Like Abraham Lincoln, the greatest statesman of the 19th century, Winston Churchill, the greatest of the 20th, had a genius for language. But unlike Lincoln, Churchill made a lucrative living as an author, inflating both his bank balance and his reputation with prodigious (and shrewdly self-promoting) feats of literary craftsmanship. In this sometimes speculative but immensely enjoyable biography, Jonathan Rose shows that Churchill’s authorial and political careers were entwined and inseparable. And he convincingly argues that while “tracking down literary influences is often dismissed as a purely academic exercise . . . sometimes the lives of millions depend on what their rulers read.”

According to Rose, Churchill was principally driven in life by “the desire to frame a thrilling story” for himself, and “once we understand that as his life goal, then Churchill’s impulsive courtship of danger becomes predictable, explicable, and eminently reasonable.” To Rose, his performance on the world stage was influenced in part by the theater, especially the Victorian melodrama of his youth. This sense of life as a drama, with him in the starring role, prompted both rash judgments and acts of dazzling courage. While a more prosaic outlook might have helped him avoid misadventures, it would have deprived Britain of its “finest hour” in 1940.

In an earlier take on the book, Sam Leith had more on how Churchill’s flair for the dramatic helped  him understand Hitler’s rise:

Rose paints Churchill as a man in love with the bold stroke — the coup de théâtre — and mired in a view of the world as Victorian melodrama. While the fractured categories and stalled certainties of modernism were making the literary weather, Churchill looked backwards. His was a world of clear identities, dramatic reversals and good triumphing pluckily over evil. His ideas of everything from Irish Home Rule to the government of native populations in India are credited with having been formed by the view from the cheap seats. He spoke claptrap — which, as Rose tells us more than once, is a term from melodrama: the inspiring speech the hero makes with his back to the wall, trapping the audience into applause.

This is the stopped-clock version of how Churchill got the fascists right: Hitler was one type of melodramatic villain (dark, shouty, moustachioed); Mussolini (treacherous, semi-comic) another. It just happened that silly old Winston, who sonorously predicted the final crisis of western civilisation once a week or so, happened to coincide with the real thing. Rose’s dimmish view of Churchill seeps up like ground-water. He presents him as an egotistical lunatic obsessed with being remembered as one of the great men of history, heedless of who died to make that dream come true, and with a script for achieving it based, more or less, on a bunch of babyish Victorian pantos.

(Image: Churchill waves to crowds in Whitehall on the day he broadcast to the nation that the war with Germany had been won, 8 May 1945, via Wikimedia Commons)