Tom Smith muses over at the The Right Coast about the virtues and vices of legalizing prostitution and ends with this insightful and humble observation:

I don't think the argument that something seems to be going wrong with our sexual culture should be dismissed either.  Today at my son's preschool I saw a little girl of five wearing what appeared to be a low cut pair of pants, giving her that bare midriff look. The bare midriff look is sexy, without a doubt, but should a five year old girl be sporting it?  I don't think so. Humans are sexual animals and you can't just throw out standards and expect to like the results. But what standards and what results, I don't pretend to know.  I just know I see a lot of stuff I don't like. It could be that legalizing prostitution would make our society even more sexually crass and confused, and increase the number of girls who find themselves trapped in the sex industry, however rationally they thought they were making those decisions when they were 18, because of the culture they grew up in.  Or just the opposite might be true.  Those are the questions one would have to know about to know whether to legalize prostitution.  Neither one is illuminated much by observing that the trade in sex slaves is evil, or that the Oingo Boingos pay bride prices.

Indeed, there's something not quite right when parents routinely dress children as if they were sexually mature adults.