Hal Rothman on why the world’s oldest profession is an anchor to rural Nevada

Hal Rothman

Sunday, June 25, 2006 | 7:52 a.m.

If Nevada is going to someday outgrow its unusual position among American states, it may be time to consider greater limitations on our own peculiar institution. We are the only American state to tolerate legalized prostitution; even the most socially liberal states like Hawaii and California will not even consider allowing anything more than dirty movie theaters and bookstores and strip clubs.

Theoretically, there could be a legalized house of prostitution about one mile from the state capital, across the Storey County line. What would that say about our already suspect politics?

A relic of a time when Nevada was a poorer and weaker outcast among American states, legalized prostitution has become an embarrassment to many, a potential obstacle to important forms of economic diversification. If you ran a Fortune 500 company, would you think about bringing your business to a state with sex for sale ... by license? How would your board of directors feel? How would spouses take to such a decision?

It is easy to sit in Las Vegas and decry legalized prostitution. Since Steve Wynn railed against it in 1988, we have undergone a transformation from gambling to gaming to tourism to entertainment. Now mainstream and central to the culture, we have left any vestige of a more open past behind. In the middle of the biggest real estate boom in Nevada history, we simply do not need legalized prostitution to pay our bills.

But it is not so easy elsewhere in the state. Nevada has a long and complicated history with the world's oldest profession. Until World War II, Nevada tolerated prostitution most of the time and in most places. After World War II, prostitution was illegal throughout the state until 1970, when Joe Conforte persuaded Storey County officials to license his brothel to protect him from being declared a public nuisance.

Even then, Las Vegas battled against legalized prostitution. It did not meet anyone's idea of what the city could become. In 1971, Las Vegas officials feared that Conforte was planning a Las Vegas brothel. They secured passage of a measure that made prostitution illegal in counties with more than 400,000 people. In 1970s Nevada, only Clark County had anywhere near that many people.

As of 2006, only Clark, Washoe, Douglas and Lincoln counties have outlawed legalized prostitution, and Carson City also forbids it. Eleven of the remaining 12 counties license prostitution, and it is an important part of the rural economy. It is so important that for years, long-time Assembly Speaker Joe Dini defended the county option.

The rural counties already struggle economically, depending on Clark County, Washoe County and the generosity of the state Legislature to provide their often meager services. Although we see development schemes in many of the rural counties, they are frankly a long way from pulling their own financial weight.

Taking this dependable source of revenue from the 11 counties that utilize it would be like kicking a man when he was down. The starting point for this discussion must include a replacement for the lost revenue to county coffers.

But what if a viable economic strategy existed to replace the dollars that prostitution provides? Would the new Nevada choose to line up with its more licentious past?

While this seems like a side issue in this year's gubernatorial race, I would like to see it discussed. The fate of the rural counties is increasingly important in the state, for the gap between urban and rural has accelerated in recent years.

Even more, Nevada's historic divide between demography and geography is getting worse. At last look, as much as 91 percent of the state's population lived in three counties, Clark, Washoe and Carson. Nevada is the seventh-largest state in terms of area. That's a lot of room for 9 percent of the state's population.

No one can govern Nevada without addressing the needs of the rural counties. The viability of prostitution as an economic device tops that list. But no discussion of the subject can legitimately proceed without a replacement strategy, a way to recover the revenue that would be lost by already barren coffers. I would like to know what each of the gubernatorial candidates has to say on this subject.