Senate majority leader Harry Reid learned to swim at a whorehouse in Searchlight Nevada, a tiny mining town located an hour or so southwest of Las Vegas. There were 13 brothels operating when Reid was a kid and the future senator’s mother did laundry for the working girls. Sunday morning would come and go without notice in Searchlight, there wasn’t a single church. Miners displayed their preferences and the market responded.
Today there are two dozen legal brothels operating in ten rural counties in Nevada and Senator Reid believes they should be closed. “If we want to attract business to Nevada that puts people back to work, the time has come for us to outlaw prostitution,” Reid said in an address to the Legislature.
Talk of shutting down Nevada’s brothels has been circulating for weeks. Some insiders believe that it’s the retirement of bordello lobbyist George Flynt along with the unwanted attention that HBO’s “Cathouse:The Series” has brought to the state that has state legislators ready to lock the doors and run out the whores. “Cathouse” is filmed at Dennis Hof’s Moonlite BunnyRanch located not so far from the capitol steps.
Hof was on hand for Reid’s speech with eight of his employees in tow. “Harry Reid will have to pry the cat house keys from my cold dead hands,” he told the media.
When the nation thinks about Nevada, Reid said, “it should think about the world’s newest ideas and newest careers – not about its oldest profession.” Reid touted renewable energy instead saying, “the future of our economy depends on it and so does the future of our environment and our national security.”
Harry, there’s a reason it’s the oldest profession.