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Decriminalize consensual adult sex work, preserve refusal at every moment, license commercial operators, protect reporting, and concentrate criminal enforcement on children, coercion, trafficking, and abuse.
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AI-researched, unverifiedLast Reviewed
Jul 12, 2026
Cited Sources
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What is failing, what we would change, and the conclusion we are willing to defend.
Adults have authority over consensual intimacy. Payment does not erase that authority. It can create economic pressure, third-party control, and hidden coercion that law must examine directly. A child cannot consent to commercial sex. Force, fraud, coercion, confinement, document seizure, threats, and exploitation remain serious crimes.
The Innovation Party supports an Adult Consent and Anti-Coercion Framework:
Decriminalize direct consensual adult participation. States should repeal criminal penalties for an adult selling or purchasing sexual services directly from another adult. Public conduct, harassment, trespass, violence, impaired consent, and ordinary business offenses remain enforceable.
Make consent continuous and withdrawal absolute. Agreement to meet, payment, travel, prior services, a commercial contract, or a relationship never waives the right to stop. A debt or civil claim cannot compel a specific sexual act. Stealthing, force, intoxication-based incapacity, and ignored withdrawal are prosecuted under applicable assault law.
License commercial operators, with space for independent work. A business controlling premises, advertising, scheduling, payments, or multiple workers must disclose ownership, pass anti-coercion review, maintain safety plans, permit private worker access to inspectors and advocates, and carry liability insurance. An independent adult does not need an occupational license to control their own body.
Build a reporting firewall. A person reporting violence, coercion, theft, trafficking, or a missing child receives victim services and may not be prosecuted for consensual adult prostitution revealed by that report. Immigration and unrelated low-level-offense information stays outside the case absent a court order tied to immediate danger or due process.
Concentrate enforcement on exploitative power. Dedicated teams should investigate child exploitation, force, fraud, coercive debt, document seizure, threats, confinement, violent buyers, abusive operators, and organized trafficking. Survivors receive housing, medical care, legal help, income support, and records relief without a cooperation condition.
Publish outcomes and reopen the model if harms rise. Measure violence, emergency reporting, trafficking identification, worker control, neighborhood complaints, health access, market concentration, and exits. Arrest totals do not count as success.
Local governments may use content-neutral rules for noise, signage, traffic, building safety, and public solicitation. Zoning cannot quietly recreate a criminal ban or force activity into isolated places where violence becomes harder to detect.
Write the law around consent and coercion. Punish the person who takes control from another.
Turn frustration into useful pressure.
If this position misses evidence or a lived consequence, challenge it. If it holds up, help test it locally and connect it to the issues around it.