A group of old Act Up activists I keep up with have been among a coalition of LGBTQ advocates helping to push for this. I’m delighted to see the announcement. It’s about time we stopped treating transactional sex as criminal.

Like with the “walking while trans" loitering laws New York State just struck down, laws that criminalize sexuality are far too often weaponized by privileged white people against Black and Brown people.

But even when racism isn’t involved, there seems little (or no) societal benefit to putting sex workers in jail and giving them criminal records. If prosecutors want to target sex trafficking of vulnerable people, they can do that. They should do that.

But vice squads sweeping neighborhoods and arresting street prostitutes has never been about stopping sex trafficking or helping vulnerable people.

At it’s worst, those sweeps are about appeasing white people who don’t want to see “undesirables” in or near their neighborhoods. At its best … well, I’m kind of at a loss to figure out what the best might be.