There’s no shortage of opinions on how to deal with prostitution. A Parliamentary committee has crossed Canada to hear them all, listening to police officers, rights’ advocates, academics, legal experts and prostitutes.
But one legitimate perspective remains largely unheard—morality.
In the past, it was the key determiner of society’s response. Today, it’s silenced by the naive belief that morality has no place in our enlightened, “post-moral” world and by the erroneous perception that morality is merely the judgement that prostitution is “sin.”
But there are clear moral arguments that should influence any legal reforms. Some readers may be surprised to discover they are quite worthy of public discussion and support.
Society has a moral responsibility to treat its members with utmost respect for their human dignity. In a moral framework, such dignity is inherent to every human being and society must act to protect it at all costs.
In contrast, it’s being proposed that society should artificially create dignity for prostitutes by legalizing and therefore legitimizing their profession. But Chamber of Commerce luncheons won’t enhance the dignity of one who is still being bought, sold and treated as an inhuman orgasm machine.
Booker T. Washington, an emancipated slave who became one of the most prominent blacks in American history, once asked an ex-slave how many were in his group when he was sold.
The old man replied, “There were five of us; myself and brother and three mules.”
Enslaved for so long, he had lost all sense of his own humanity and couldn’t even distinguish himself from an animal. Do you really think that promoting the legitimacy of slavery would have restored his sense of dignity?
In contrast, morality compels us to protect prostitutes from the degradation of their dignity by freeing them from the commercial sale of their bodies. If we fail to do this, nothing—not even legalization—will protect their human dignity from its total dissolution.
Society has a moral responsibility to protect the disadvantaged.
Legalization advocates inadvertently acknowledge this responsibility when they argue that current laws fail to protect prostitutes by forcing them to conduct business in remote areas and discouraging them from contacting the police if violence occurs.
Acknowledging this responsibility is honourable, but claiming that legalization will protect prostitutes is utterly dishonest.
The sex trade is connected to numerous illegal activities that won’t be affected by regulating prostitution.
The drug industry and organized crime will still ensnare workers into a life of drug-induced subservience; abuse/violence will still force women into the streets; and women will still get sexual diseases because neither government health checks nor condoms can stop the transfer of pathogens like HPV (a leading cause of cervical cancer), syphilis and herpes.
Brothels will provide men easier access to vent their sexual frustrations and legitimize the business plans of the creeps who control the sex industry.
But, as Dr. Michael Horowitz writes, resolving the problem of prostitution is more complicated than establishing, “ergonomic standards for mattresses and minimum wages.”
It’s equally dishonest to claim that legalization gives prostitutes “choice” to enter or leave their “profession.’ Such semantics bypass the truth that almost all women are forced into the business by life circumstances like abuse, domestic violence or drug addictions.
Morality, if not common decency, dictates that our concern be directed to the prostitutes themselves, not to the provision of non-existent benefits like the “right to choose.”
It compels us to help women say “no” to prostitution by providing practical assistance like moral support, food, shelter, education, healthcare and counselling.
We have a moral responsibility to protect the public good.
A key argument to justify legalization is that law enforcers are weary of protecting the public good.
We’ve already experienced this in our non-existent war against drugs. But giving up on law enforcement only guarantees that the sex trade will flourish and women will be exploited.
We are a weak society with no real future if we abandon our moral responsibility to protect the public good just because it makes for an easier day at the office.
It’s a tribute to this same moral weakness if we believe that changing the legal definition of prostitution on paper will magically benefit women in the real world of whorehouses.
Yet, this is to be expected when any discussion of morality is pushed aside. Society gradually becomes unable to differentiate between right and wrong, or good and bad. Perhaps that’s why the reforms proposed to help prostitutes are being proclaimed as “good” when in fact they are “bad.”
If the goal of reformers is to create a state that sanctions the sale of women, then legalization is the answer. But if the goal is to create a more civil society that values, and affords dignity and opportunity to all women, then legalization is the wrong choice.
Susan Martinuk is a Vancouver columnist, a freelance writer and speaker on public policy issues and current affairs. Her weekly columns have been featured on The Province’s editorial pages for the past ten years and now also appear in the Friday edition of The National Post. [email protected]
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