Uh.. No, I think its a much more banal thing – if the people in charge of the fed and local governments concerned themselves with what the majority wanted, there would be progress towards a more open world, and saner legislation, but the only people they ever listen to, either because they **are** one of those people, or because they are scared to death of both the real, and illusionary, power(s) of such people, are those claiming “moral high grounds”, especially fundamentalists and evangelicals. Mind you, some of these people only have the power they do as a result of a) money they cheated people out of, in scams that are illegal in any case that doesn’t involve religion, b) the number of letter writers they can drum up, to make it look like a majority of Americans agree with them (which is also often unverifiable, since there is nothing to stop them from writing multiple letters, phone calls, etc., and having them arrive from different place. Heh, these sorts of people see nothing wrong with Republican gerrymandering, you think they don’t do the mail/email/etc. version of ballot stuffing?), and c) managing to do what even Trump can’t manage, and rally thousands of people to show up for a demonstration of how much everyone trusts them.

No, I don’t think it has much of anything to do with sex work lying outside the “legitimate marketplace”. They have, literally, no problem trafficking little children to spout BS slogans and nonsense, or run them through “camps” to brain wash them with the same. But, they are also all being told (I can guarantee this) by their “leaders” that liberals, sex workers and everyone else that isn’t a fanatic, are likely secretly trying to traffick the same sorts of kids into sex parties. After all, back when naturism saw a growth “Republican” run states, like Texas went so far as to pass laws to, “Prevent opening such sex clubs for kids!”, not because that sort of thing happened, at all, at such camps, but because they, and the public they conned into supporting this nonsense idea, where *certain* this was what took place in such locations.

This isn’t about whether or not its an acceptable market, its about, as you yourself comment, “acceptable moral definitions”, in effect. If it was purely about market, half these con artist and corporate shills would be driving legislation to promote brothels and create loopholes to enable trafficking by pimps.