Sex Worker Allies Rally for RentBoy.com Outside Brooklyn Courthouse: PHOTOS

Photo courtesy of Jim Epstein/Reason Magazine

A Thursday afternoon protest outside the federal courthouse in Downtown Brooklyn called out U.S. Attorney Kelly Currie for bringing down the leaders of gay escort site RentBoy.com at a time when the nation should, protesters said, be working to protect sex workers.

“We demand an end to this system of criminalization,” says the rally’s Facebook event page.

Dozens of protesters from a diverse set of organizations — LGBT advocates, police watchdogs, human-rights attorneys, professors, rabbis and more — marched back and forth in front of the courthouse to demand that Currie “drop all charges after the raid on [RentBoy] by Homeland Security.”

Signs at the rally were printed with slogans like:

• “Sex work is real work”
• “Freedom to work”
• “Drop the charges!”
• “Legalize + protect = public health”
• “Legalize sex work and save lives”
• “We see your sex panic”
• “Let sex workers go free”
• “Criminalization = dehumanization”
• “Keep your police cuffs off our bodies”
  
• “Sex worker prosecutions kills joy”
  

RentBoy.com, which claimed to be the world’s largest online escort service, was shut down in August by a joint team of DOJ, ICE, Homeland Security and NYPD agents who suspected that RentBoy’s ”escorts” were really prostitutes.

The feds are accusing RentBoy’s CEO, Jeffrey Hurant, and six of his leading employees of “promoting prostitution.”

“While the site has disclaimers stating that the advertisements are for companionship and not sexual services, Rentboy.com is designed primarily for advertising illegal prostitution,” said a report from the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Brooklyn.

(Story continues after the photos below.)

Even though RentBoy’s offices were in Manhattan, Hurant and his colleagues are being tried in Brooklyn because the federal complaint against them “specifically identifies a number of escorts advertising services in Brooklyn,” said Nellin McIntosh, a spokesperson for the office.

She said she did not have an answer as to why the feds cracked down on RentBoy this summer, as opposed to anytime in its last 18 years of operation.

Opponents of the RentBoy bust have been suspicious of its timing.

Huffington Post’s deputy gay voices editor, for example, wrote that he found it “ironic” that RentBoy’s managers were cuffed “days after a number of America’s leading lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) advocacy organizations issued a joint statement in support of Amnesty International’s resolution to decriminalize sex work on a global level.”

A court date has not yet been set for Hurant and his colleagues, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office.

On Twitter, Melissa Gira Grant, a journalist who writes on sexual politics, condemned women’s rights groups for not showing up to Thursday’s small protest in support of RentBoy.