Sen. Harry Reid Calls on Nevada Legislature to Close Brothels

Nevada should outlaw prostitution.

That’s the message Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid sent the Legislature in his home state this week. He said the brothel industry is hurting the state’s image.

“If we want to attract businesses to Nevada that puts people back to work, the time has come for us to outlaw prostitution,” he said. “Nevada needs to be known as the first place for innovation and investment, not as the last place where prostitution is still legal.”

Reid said he has talked to “parents who don’t want their children to look out of a school bus and see a brothel or to live in a state with the wrong kind of red lights.”

The junior senator from Nevada, John Ensign, said the issue should be decided at the county level. U.S. Rep. Shelley Berkley, Nevada, claimed it’s not her job to tell county governments what to do. “As Nevadans, we are no strangers to criticism about what goes on in our state,” she told the Las Vegas Review-Journal, “and this issue is no exception.”

Jeff Johnston, social policy analyst at CitizenLink, pointed out that prostitution directly contradicts God’s design for sex. “To treat sex as a business exchange devalues both participants and turns women into objects,” he said. “That’s not the message a state should be giving to its people. On this issue, the Nevada Legislature should listen to Senator Reid.”