Starchild: Making It Safe to Walk the Streets

In November, San Francisco voters will get to vote on whether to decriminalize prostitution in the city.

The measure would bar authorities from spending money to investigate or prosecute people for engaging in prostitution.

The measure, which qualified Friday, would also end a local program that allows those caught soliciting a prostitute for the first time to avoid charges if they attend a class and pay a fine.

And the measure got in the ballot in large part because of Starchild, America's best-dressed Libertarian activist. He helped collect the signatures to qualify it, and he's one of the measure's spokespeople. Eric Dondero pays tribute:

Libertarians and most especially Libertarian Republicans are aligned with Conservatives more and more these days, on a variety of civil liberties issues. Conservatives have come around on smoking bans, seat belt laws, speed limits, free speech rights, and even in some cases on the gambling front. But they still seem completely out-of-touch on sexual matters, and hopelessly uncool.

And they wonder why young people are turning off to the GOP in record numbers.

Perhaps they should consider that it's their oldline prudishness that's more of a turn-off to younger voters than the War in Iraq. Solution: Let the Libertarians take the lead on issues such as legalization of prostitution and swingers' rights, and bring some hipness back to the GOP.

It's a beautiful coda to the city's 2007 lawsuit against Starchild, which he won.