"The issue is privacy. Why is the decision by a woman to sleep with a man she has just met in a bar a private one, and the decision to sleep with the same man for $100 subject to criminal penalties?"

Anna Quindlen highlights a contradiction at the heart of sexual morality and law: consensual sex between adults is considered private when it is romantic or spontaneous, yet becomes criminal when money is exchanged. The question forces a reexamination of what justifies state intervention. If consent and the absence of harm are the core ethical standards, then the mere presence of a financial transaction shouldn’t convert a private act into a public crime.

The tension lies between two competing intuitions. One sees sex as an intimate realm of personal autonomy, guarded by privacy rights. The other sees commodified sex as morally troubling, potentially exploitative, or corrosive to social values. Laws against prostitution often reflect the second intuition, invoking concerns about coercion, trafficking, public nuisance, and health. Yet Quindlen’s framing points out that these harms, when present, are separable from consensual exchanges and could be addressed through targeted policy, labor rights, safety regulation, decriminalization paired with robust enforcement against coercion, rather than blanket criminalization of the act itself.

Her argument also uncovers class and gender dynamics. Casual sex without payment is more socially acceptable for those with certain cultural or economic capital, while selling sex is more likely to involve marginalized people who then face legal penalties. The state thus polices bodies and choices unevenly, using criminal law to regulate the behavior of the less powerful under the guise of public morality.

By asking why money transforms a private decision into a criminal one, the statement challenges moralism disguised as law. It invites a harm-focused approach: punish force, fraud, and exploitation; protect consent and privacy. It also asks whether punishment truly alleviates the vulnerabilities associated with sex work or instead deepens them by driving the trade underground. Ultimately, it is a call to align legal standards with the principles of autonomy, equality, and pragmatic harm reduction.