The Professionals...

Interesting story out of Rome this week. Turns out the head of security there believes that the city should build a Red-Light district immediately.

It also turns out that prostitution isn't illegal in Italy, while pimping is. The Italian Prefect feels that a specific, regulated zone for the activity would assist in eliminating the serious problem of immigrant abuse, which as anyone who reads a paper knows, prostitution is the #1 job dished out to any unfortunate young woman who wants to jump a border.

Of course, there were people in Rome who balked at the idea.

I've wondered myself why certain cultures have established such an open policy for the oldest profession, while others have opposed the very idea. Sure we could blame the Puritans again for some additional aspect of our American sexual repression, but that seems like such a cop-out nowadays. We as a culture have been influenced by a number of things.

A quick reference of history turns up a number of twists. The usual explanation is that the criminalization of prostitution is a product of a moralizing impulse in American politics. As with other "victimless crimes" such as gambling and drug use, our anti-prostitution laws largely date from the Progressive era around the turn of the 20th century. This period also produced reforms such as the pure food and drugs laws and antitrust regulation.

Many Progressive leaders were educated, articulate members of the middle class that had emerged during the economic expansion, following the Civil War. They felt very strongly that it was no longer necessary to accept social ills as if they were inevitable. They felt that the application of "the scientific method" and the good ole' American "can-do" attitude, could solve social problems permanently.

In many respects the Progressive project was a great success. Today everybody is grateful that we have pure food laws and antitrust regulation. [even if I do get food poisoning when I get adventurous at the all-you-can-eat Chinese seafood buffet] The legacy of the anti-prostitution campaign is perhaps a little more detached from our daily lives for us to be so familiar with it.

Prostitution in the 19th century, while not always legal, was tolerated in most of the world as a necessary evil. Enlightened opinion -- make that enlightened male opinion, anyway -- held that "hey, boys will be boys, and men will be animals". The regulation of prostitution, including health inspections, licensing of brothels, etc., seemed the best solution to keeping things under some form of control back in these days.

But in English-speaking countries the regulatory impulse was countered by a growing sentiment that prostitution was evil, period, and ought to be suppressed. Middle-class women played a leading role in the anti-prostitution movement, arguing that prostitution threatened family life. Sympathetic journalists suggested that prostitutes were the principal carriers of venereal disease, then thought to be rampant. Prior to affordable widespread antibiotic treatments in the early 20th century, VD was nothing to scoff at, so these problems were genuine.

The abolitionists ultimately carried the day.

Before 1900 most legislation dealing with prostitution sought merely to control it, even if it was only at arms length. After World War I, usually considered the end of the Progressive era, the goal was to stamp it out. Officially, that's been the aim ever since. But let's face it. Nobody really expects prostitution to go away, and it's hard to believe that anyone ever did back then either. They, like the opposition of today, just didn't want it in their back yards, and they had a right to feel that way. So over the course of a few years, the courts outlawed prostitution in every State, but one.



So what's up with Nevada? They couldn't be that horny!

They regulate "erotic service industries" like plumbers. It's a business that submits to health and safety regulations like restaurants and nail care salons. More importantly, it pays taxes to the State of Nevada. On the surface it seems like a simple system that benefits everyone. Of course that's not true, but for the most part the State doesn't care what religious groups think about an industry that brings so much annual tax revenue. Get the same authorities behind closed doors and they'll even admit to prostitution being a significant aspect of Nevada's tourism income -- even if it's not legal in Vegas itself.

So what about sexual slavery and all that other bad stuff that we always hear being linked to prostitution? Why do some feminists say it's their right to "rent out" their bodies, while others say its a terrible global-oppression on all womankind? Turns out this is true too. There are numbers of seedy individuals who use brothels and prostitution rings to smuggle young women from all over the globe. In many cases, against their will. How does slavery like this still exist?

Well it helps to live in a third world country where women are treated like cattle.

There are a number of reasons why this practice still exists today. All of which can be argued over by the powers that be. In the end though, it's part of the stink that still surrounds prostitution. And while drug abuse isn't as rampant a problem within the American regulated prostitution industry, the oldest profession still has it's old vices. The image of the cracked out streetwalker is a fresh image in the mind of Americans, because it's a reality in most major US cities.

The habit needs to be fed, and when you've already sold everything you own to chase a high, the only thing you have left is your body. I live in Bakersfield, California. We have Union Ave. Get in your car at about 9:00 PM, and drive down that street. Try not to recoil at the empty eyes and hollow cheeks. It hurts to see.

So where does regulation help remove this problem? Some say that an established network, with brothels and service support systems, generates a healthy atmosphere. It provides authorities with the ability to scrutinize the "sex worker" closely. The old free market system belief that the desire for efficiency and customer satisfaction generates a better work environment where Brothel management can spot problems early and assist their employees, as needed. It's a sales industry if you really think about it.

Go sell cars for a living however, and you will understand the relationship between a pimp and a whore better than you ever could without spreading your legs for a stranger. Believe me.

The "regulated" American pornography industry claims to benefit from exactly the same kind of network, but while similar service industries for health inspections and safe business practices exist for porn -- the business as a whole just churns young women out like they're catte too. The individualized care claimed by many, is really just a short lived period of time that the porn biz gives each actress until she is replaced.

And there seems to be a never-ending line of 18 year old girl-next-door types to put in the next butt-plug bonanza flick.

Germany reportedly has taken the regulatory approach as well for its prostitution industry, in which prostitutes register with the police, obtain licenses to work in specified houses or areas, submit to VD checks, and so on. Our cool neighbors to the north, Canada, have a very similar system in some areas as well. Both countries report the system works and is very benefitial to their overall society. Canada even takes this one step further by establishing law enforcement attitudes that lean towards the "if you're not hurting anyone else, it's fine" flavor.

Britain has followed another course, somewhat confusingly known as abolition. What was abolished was not prostitution, but prostitution laws on one side of the industry. Prostitution as such, is legal in the UK. What's not legal are various nuisances associated with prostitution, such as soliciting on street corners, living off "immoral earnings," and keeping a brothel. In short, prostitution is legal in theory, illegal in practice. English prostitutes complain of police harassment just as American ones do, and receive similar punishments because their legal system doesn't provide this "support network".

So: different legal theories, same result. That's the thing about prostitution. Whatever may be said for the rights of prostitutes in the abstract, streetwalkers don't do much for a neighborhood's property values.

Sure, in these liberated times, we all have healthy attitudes about sex, right? But even among defenders of prostitutes' rights, the fundamental reaction to the image of the streetwalker still brings a negative sensation deep in your stomach. Where can you stand on an issue when you see such horrible conditions that could be theoretically eliminated by legalization? Where can you stand when your faith says it's a terrible sin and your culture frowns upon it very strongly? What came first, the chicken or the egg? The hooker or her heroin habit?

Does it all come down to the individual and his/her desire to do to their body what they, or the person they're renting it out to, choose? The problem with this is, it sounds like the argument for another regulated activity that gets people so hot under the collar here in the US that I will stop referring to it right now. The similarities are there.

But you get my point: It's sticky.

Then you have to ask yourself where the line between other so-called victimless crimes gets drawn? Can we say that one behavior is less dangerous than another because it doesn't require the smoking of a chemical? Legal prostitution, like that in Nevada, does. It says that the act of engaging in random sexual activity with another consenting adult, for a fee, isn't as dangerous to individuals and/or society as a person smoking marijuana in the privacy of their own home. It also implies that the organized sale and distribution of this activity is not only legal, but a positive thing that pays for parks, schoolbooks, and road signs in your neighborhood.

Whereas the sale and distribution of pot can get you a federal prison sentence stiffer than that for 1st time murderers.

There's a thing called legal precedence in this country. Lawyers live by it, special interest groups manipulate it, and laws evolve along their lines. If a guy named Joe, living in San Francisco sued a company for millions because they closed up and moved away, he would get laughed out of the courtroom. But, if a girl named Sally, living in Los Angeles, sued another company for a similar reason and won big -- Joe's in for a nice payday.

Because legal precedence has been set. If a court rules on Monday that one thing is legal/illegal, you can walk into a court somewhere else on Tuesday and argue it as rock-solid gospel.

So toss any ideas you had about getting that pound of coke, the hot chick named Roxanne who hangs out by the 7-11, and taking her to some Casino in your neighborhood so you can snort blow off her breasts while you double down. Nobody is going to legalize any of these "Victimless crimes" unless we're ready, as a county, to allow the precedent to be set for all potentially hazardous behavior. I just don't see that happening anytime soon.

But then again, Alaska did make weed about as legal as it can get a few months back.

Who knows? We could be standing on the edge of a major American shift in culture. The interpretation of our constitution is reviewed daily, as is our enforcement of the laws we've amended to it over the years. Maybe the America we lived in around the turn of last centry, is different than the America we live in at the turn of this century?

Maybe we all just need to go to church?

Or maybe we all just need to smoke some weed?