Activists in the sex worker community are expressing disapproval that the Democratic Party is becoming less of an ally to their cause.
The criticism comes after the party didn't contain language about protecting sex workers' safety in its platform after having included it in 2020. They also characterize Vice President Kamala Harris, the party's presidential nominee, as flip-flopping on the issue.
Electra Rayne, who is bisexual and the founder of the Sapphic website QueerCrush, told the B.A.R. that "we don't really know" where Harris stands on the criminalization of sex work.
"As far as I'm aware, she hasn't put out an explicit statement since 2019 when she said she's in favor of decriminalizing sex work," Rayne said. "However, her track record as a prosecutor, attorney general, and [U.S.] senator of California says otherwise."
While running for the 2020 Democratic Party's presidential nomination in 2019, then-senator Harris was asked if she was in favor of decriminalizing sex work. She responded, "I think so, I do. I think that we have to understand though that it is not as simple as that. ... But when you're talking about consenting adults, I think that yes we should really consider that we can't criminalize consensual behavior as long as no one is being harmed."
Harris dropped out of the race before the primaries, which were won by former Vice President Joe Biden, who selected Harris as his vice presidential running mate. The two won the 2020 election.
Asked about Harris' track record in elected office, Rayne said she was concerned about Harris' support for FOSTA-SESTA, a bill ostensibly to stop sex trafficking that became law in 2018, and more recently for the Kids Online Safety Act, which passed the Senate earlier this year, as the B.A.R. reported. (It still needs to be approved by the House of Representatives.)
The Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act and the Stop Enabling Sex Traffickers Act were merged into one bill. Many sex workers say it's had the effect of putting their lives in danger by hobbling an online infrastructure they have come to depend on, according to an article on WHYY.org.
"There's a huge push for laws that are supposedly aimed at protecting children but are really about backdoor censorship of adult content," Rayne said. "People like the Heritage Foundation want to use 'porn' to describe anything about queer relationships, so it's not so simple as what you or I think of as adult content."
The Heritage Foundation is the group primarily responsible for Project 2025, the right-wing authoritarian presidential transition playbook that argues that pornography is not protected by the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution and should be banned.
Sex Workers Outreach Project Behind Bars, a branch of the nonprofit SWOP-USA, sent Harris an open letter July 30 about FOSTA-SESTA. (Harris by then was the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee after Biden dropped his reelection effort July 21. She later selected Minnesota Governor Tim Walz as her vice presidential running mate.)
"Sex work is work," the letter states. "For many of us, it is a chosen profession, a means to support our families, and a pathway to financial independence. Yet, despite the legitimacy of our work, we face relentless stigma, discrimination, and criminalization. These systemic injustices not only undermine our safety and dignity but also perpetuate cycles of poverty and marginalization. And FOSTA/SESTA hurt us. You not only voted for it, you helped craft the damn thing."
The letter states that "without online platforms, sex workers lost crucial safety mechanisms, like the ability to screen clients and share information about dangerous individuals.
"It's important to highlight that consensual adult sex work and sex trafficking are distinct issues," the letter continues. "Policies designed to combat trafficking should not harm sex workers or trafficking victims and survivors. People who trade sex should be able to report violence to police without fear and that includes reporting if we are being exploited! We legitimately fear police interaction because oftentimes they ignore us or fail to take our calls for help seriously. Worse yet, they are often directly perpetuating harm against us without consequence."
Rayne said that the letter didn't receive a response from the Harris campaign.
Sex work decriminalization has become one of several issues the Democratic Party platform advocated for in 2020 but dropped this cycle. There is also no discussion of police brutality in the 2024 platform, which states "we need to fund the police, not defund the police," and it no longer calls for the end of the death penalty.
In 2020, the Democratic Party's platform passed by the delegates at its convention stated, "We recognize that sex workers, who are disproportionately women of color and transgender women, face especially high rates of sexual assault and violence, and we will work with states and localities to protect the lives of sex workers."
This year's platform, passed at the Democratic National Convention on August 19, contains no such reference.
Rayne, a sex worker herself in Nevada, said that's "a disservice to the community of sex workers."
"It really says a lot about who the DNC does and doesn't care about," Rayne said. "You grow up in the U.S. and are told your vote is so important, so to be asked to give your vote time and time again to someone who doesn't care about you and doesn't think you're important, it's diminishing my faith in the candidate and in the democratic process as a whole."
Rayne said that sex workers and victims of sex trafficking should both be involved in crafting legislation on these issues.
The Harris-Walz campaign didn't return a request for comment for this report.
LGBTQ Agenda is an online column that appears weekly. Got a tip on queer news? Contact John Ferrannini at [email protected]
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