By pinpointing brothels which parade under the euphemism of "massage parlors," and by exposing sex traffickers who enslave women, Brian J. Lowney, assistant editor of the Rhode Island Catholic, performed a public service.
His tripartite article bolstered by this paper's editorial on "Sex slavery" coincides with the recent arrest of Gotham prostitutes plying their trade under the guise of "escort services." Rhode Island Rep. Joanne Giannini's anti-human-trafficking legislation highlights the prevalence of sex exploitation of women.
These incidents resurrect the question of decriminalization. Should the government legalize the three-billion-dollar-a-year prostitution business, most of it non-declared income?
The arguments in favor of decriminalization are quite strong.
Some maintain that prostitution laws attempt to foist the moral values of one segment of society on the whole, and divert limited public resources that could be better used against graver types of crime.
Thirty years ago an American Bar Association resolution stated that prostitutes should not be stigmatized and punished as criminals while their male clientele were seldom arrested – a double standard. (Fearing that national moral standards might be lowered, the ABA voted against lifting legal bans on prostitution.)
The American Civil Liberties Union speculates that statutes against soliciting may be violations of the right to freedom of speech as guaranteed under the First Amendment. In Rhode Island street solicitation is banned, but bordellos are not illegal.
Hookers themselves contend that sex for hire is not only harmless; it is positively humanitarian.
The harlot organization, COYOTE (Cast Off Your Old Tired Ethics), thinks strumpets ought to be as highly regarded as nurses or social workers. COYOTE conducts seminars to improve the doxy's self-image as prostitute.
Ultimately, however, it is not public service but hard cash that makes a hooker happy.
Finally, history proves the uselessness of trying to stamp out the world's oldest profession. All schemes to regulate, zone out, suppress, license or tolerate prostitution in red-light districts or legalized outlets have failed. Indeed, in a country where the ratio of male to female is lopsided (e.g. China: 120 men to 100 women) bawdry abounds.
St. Thomas Aquinas opined that society puts up with trollops in order to avoid a greater evil – the assault and rape of virtuous women. St. Augustine believed that "If you do away with harlots the world will be convulsed with lust."
But the case against legalizing prostitution is more compelling than arguments in favor of decriminalization.
Laws may be unequally applied, but legalization would embolden prostitutes to descend on cities like plagues of locusts. Let's not forget the important educational function of law: it proclaims a public moral standard and this is weakened when laws are changed in favor of greater laxity. Citizens sometimes confuse legality with morality. If an act is not unlawful, they argue, it is therefore not immoral.
Prostitutes say they have the right to earn a living, but what about the rights of passers-by harassed by the more blatant forms of solicitation, or the rights of mothers and daughters accosted by predatory males? Do not parents have the right to raise children in well-ordered, family-oriented neighborhoods without being encroached upon by pornographic parlors, tawdry whorehouses or bold and shameless tarts?
Prostitution debases feminine dignity. Pimps frequently beat, threaten, cajole and intimidate their stable of girls, and prostitutes often become hooked on drugs, supporting the habit by robbing their clients. Inevitably, organized crime muscles its way in wherever prostitution thrives.
Healthwise, a large percentage of all professional hustlers contract venereal disease during their career. Indeed, a city's VD rate usually rises or falls in direct proportion to the number of prostitutes living there.
Emotionally, the very act of peddling her body distorts a woman's feelings toward all men and callouses her attitude toward life itself.
Customers are exploited for all the traffic will bear. Men's feelings of loneliness, shame, fear of rejection and social ineptness are manipulated for money and in the meretricious transaction, sentiments of self-worth and nobility go down the drain.
But prostitution victimizes youth most of all. Covenant House in Times Square, a refuge for runaway and homeless teenagers, has first-hand contact with the ravages of a life-style of prostitution. It opposes decriminalization because "without laws, there would be more impetus to open brothels, more girls on the street, more pimps, more Johns who'd no longer be afraid of arrest, and it would be easier for kids with false IDs to work in joints." How can anyone ever call prostitution a "victimless crime?"
Ultimately, the customer is the key to the control of prostitution. No buyers, no sellers. Fines and prison sentences do not solve the problem. The difficult long-range solution lies in strengthening home and family life, in safeguarding public morality and in eliminating the financial causes of prostitution.
A concerted reeducational rehabilitation program is needed – a program that deals with the purpose and ideals of human existence, provides worthwhile vocational objectives, and pays due deference to the dignity and awesome potential of the human procreative power.
The Rev. Joseph L. Lennon, O.P. is in residence at St. Thomas Aquinas Priory at Providence College.
