purchase of consensual adult sex cannot be reduced to simple soundbites 

‘Turn Off the Red Light’ campaign aims to criminalise the purchase of consensual sex but is flawed in its assumptions, writes Mick Wallace.

IF successful, the current campaign to criminalise the purchase of consensual sex will signify the re-involvement of the State in the private sexual lives of adult citizens for the first time since homosexuality was decriminalised 21 years ago.

The Justice Committee’s report clearly reflects and adopts the logic of the ‘Turn Off the Red Light’ campaign at the expense of the testimony and first-hand experience of individual sex workers and international experience (bar Sweden and Norway).