Tag Archives: Prostitution

Canada Supreme Court strikes down prostitution laws

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From here:

The Supreme Court of Canada has unanimously struck down the nation’s anti-prostitution laws.

The high court deemed laws prohibiting brothels, communicating in public with clients and living on the profits of prostitution to be too sweeping.

The ruling follows a court challenge filed by former and current sex workers.

The justices’ decision gives the Canadian government one year to craft new legislation.

All nine of the court’s judges ruled in favour of striking the laws down, finding they were “grossly disproportionate”.

“It is not a crime in Canada to sell sex for money,” Chief Justice Beverley McLachlin wrote in Friday’s decision.

Chief Justice Beverley McLachlin has a point: since prostitution is not illegal in Canada then, legally, brothels should be little worse than restaurants, “communicating in public with clients” is merely advertising and pimps are a form of publicity agent. Becoming a prostitute is clearly a legitimate career choice whose adoption by, say, one of McLachlin’s daughters – assuming he has any – would prompt little more than the raising of a parental eyebrow.

Perhaps prostitution should be illegal – at least that would be consistent.

Lawyers for the Ottawa government reportedly claimed “if the conditions imposed by the law prejudice [sex workers’] security, it is their choice to engage in the activity, not the law, that is the cause”.

But the Supreme Court ruled it was not a choice for many.

“Whether because of financial desperation, drug addictions, mental illness, or compulsion from pimps, they often have little choice but to sell their bodies for money,” Justice McLachlin wrote.

The Supreme Court didn’t pay prostitutes much of a compliment by ruling that prostitution is not “a choice for many.” To claim a person is bereft of one of the distinguishing characteristics of humanity, free will – the potential a person has to make a choice that is not entirely conditioned by circumstance – is to regard her as less than human.

Go and sin some more – and take photos

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John tells the story of the woman caught in adultery in John 8. No-one condemns her after Jesus says: “Let him who is without sin among you be the first to throw a stone at her.” Jesus doesn’t condemn her either, but says: “Neither do I condemn you; go, and from now on sin no more.”

How does the church cope with this type of situation today? Since it doesn’t place much emphasis on – or even believe in, in many cases – sin, it takes a different approach.

All Saints Church–Community Centre in Toronto is giving prostitutes – or “sex-trade workers” as the current circumlocution has it – cameras for them to “tell their stories” – while plying their trade, one presumes. The idea is that this will “empower” them. I can certainly foresee new opportunities for blackmail; perhaps that is what is meant by “empower”.

From the Journal:

A photography project to empower women who work in the sex trade has raised about $38,000 for the drop-in program at All Saints Church–Community Centre in downtown Toronto, where the project began.

Carly Kalish, a full-time social worker hired by the church, dreamed up the idea of giving 10 women disposable cameras and photography lessons as a way to tell their stories. The result was The Exposure Project, an exhibition of 33 images at Holy Trinity Church in downtown Toronto. The exhibition ended in a fundraiser on April 19 which attracted a sold-out crowd of 250 people. Most of the photos, which were professionally framed, sold for $75 to $200 each; gala ticket sales and donations further boosted the bottom line.

While the photographers did not attend the gala themselves, they did bring partners and friends to a private viewing beforehand. “It was just breathtaking to see them see their own work,” says Kalish. “They were so proud of themselves.”

Something else to evoke Pride

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“Pride”, having been hijacked by militant homosexuals, is fair game for everyone else, too: now you can be a Proud Prostitute – sorry, sex-trade worker.

From here:

An advocacy group for sex-trade workers in Halifax has launched a poster campaign designed to humanize their image, as a man faces charges for allegedly brutalizing a prostitute and murdering another.

Rene Ross, executive director of Stepping Stone, said the goal is to show that sex workers are everyday people.

“They are somebody’s mother, brother, daughter … and they’re not just whores, tramps, hookers, which is what labels society has given them,” she told CBC News.

One poster features an image of a grandmother with the caption, “I am proud of my tramp for raising two kids on her own.”

Presumably the proud grandmother would be content to see her grandchildren following in their mother’s footsteps.

Should prostitution be illegal?

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Not according to the author of this article:

John Moore: Prostitutions foes are welcome to their moral offence. But hands off of the law, please.

People are squeamish about sex. So it’s understandable they’re going to be squeamish about those who have a lot of it and more so about the fact that some people trade sex for money.

Tuesday’s court ruling that the Criminal Code’s hodge podge of laws surrounding the otherwise legal practice of prostitution are unreasonable has left moralists who think their squeamishness should trump other people’s freedoms sputtering. Not only are they astonished that the law will no longer backstop their efforts to impose a state morality, but they’ve been stunned by the fact that some of the most articulate people in the debate are a bunch of out and proud prostitutes lead by an affable whip-cracking dominatrix known as Madam de Sade.

The article goes on to make the familiar argument that the state should not be imposing the values of “moralists” on everyone else, thereby limiting their freedom. The problem with this argument is that it can also be used against any law that limits freedom – and all laws do that.

Implicit in the article is the presumption that it is wrong to harm other people or to unnecessarily restrict their freedom – precepts which themselves are moral. If the state is not to “legislate morality”, what should it legislate: immorality? If harming another person is an immoral act – and it is – no-one would argue that the state should not legislate against it on the grounds that it is legislating morality. One might argue that the law’s preventing destructive acts such as murder are necessary to prevent social chaos: that is also a moral judgement, though, since it assumes order is better than chaos.

Our laws are based on a Judeo-Christian ethic: to legislate morality in some form or other is inescapable. The question is, is prostitution immoral? Christian teaching says that sex other than between a married man and woman is wrong; selling sexual intimacy is wrong. Prostitution is not a private act of immorality, it is one which requires society’s acquiescence in order to operate: it should be illegal.