Arkansas, C onnecticut, Idaho, Illinois, Iowa, Kansas, Maryland, Massachusetts Michigan, Missouri, Montana, New Hampshire, Ohio, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas and Virgi nia. That, in alphabetical order, is the list of Anti-Whore Super States. The Attorneys General of the aforementioned chunks of America drafted a letter to the craigslist corporate office earlier this week (with Massachusetts drafting its own because it just always has to be a little different, egotistical former colony that it is) demanding that the List remove its much contested Adult Services page. Their claims, which echo those of previous anti-AS politicians, are that Adult Services facilitates human trafficking and child prostitution. Now, I'm not exactly AS's biggest defender but I agree with craigslist CEO and all-around gasbag Jim Buckmaster when he calls such accusations unfounded. I'm not going to say that human trafficking and child prostitution have never happened or don't still happen on craigslist, but I'm also not comfortable suggesting that a black market human organ has never been traded in the For Sale section. The 18 state AsG could have focused on the actual crimes being committed on a regular basis on Adult Services, namely the obvious exchange of sex for money, but th ey're avoiding that. Maybe it's well-known in career politics that it's bad for business to oppose consensual sex in any form, or maybe they just have to stick to their original, ridiculous guns.

As for me, I realized something today that I can't believe has never dawned on me before. Though Adult Services is nothing but a page full of prostitution ads and it's all kinds of illegal, unethical and just plain ugly that craigslist is profiting from them, the ads in Adult Services are unique on craigslist for one, very important reason: They're real. In a stunning display of irony, the one social page on all of craigslist that features mostly genuine, honest ads is the one that is the most deviant and illegal. Consider the following.

Bliss

This is about you receiving!
Exceptional touch
In a peaceful environment
With exquisite care and skill
Ajna
(phone number)

I dare say that there is nothing exactly untrue about this ad. I actually believe that those who call the attached phone number and order Ajna's services will receive all of those things. After all, she's a professional. Why wouldn't her touch be exceptional and skillful? Ajna's not lying about anything, provided she does her duty in a private place and not in the middle of a gun battle or a trading floor. The same ratio of honesty can't be applied to anything in the LTR pages and certainly not to Strictly Platonic (the most dense collection of lies this side of group therapy at a drug rehab center).

"***D=R=E=A=M=S==DO==C=O=M=E==T=R=U=E***"

Hello boys, if you are looking for a fabulous companion for the night,
Just give me a call!!! My name is Chloe

(N-U-M-B-E-R in this format)

Again, I don't really doubt anything in this ad, except maybe the name. Even then, just like an actress this girl is being paid to be "Chloe" for an hour or two. When the job is over, she can go back to being Jane or Sarah or Mildred without changing anything about the encounter. It's almost certainly true that Chloe Sometimes will be a companion, even a fabulous companion, for one night at a time when somebody calls that number.

So, even if I think Jim Buckmaster is full of crap when he posits craigslist as some kind of forward-thinking platform for sexual liberation, I have to hand it to the folks at the List for finding a way to get people to do what they say they're going to do. While socialization is almost always full of lies, trepidation and disappointment, socialization turned into a business transaction is fairly reliable. When Adult Services gets shut down (and it will eventually get shut down), it will take with it the last source of regular honesty on craigslist. How strange life and the Internet can be.