Oh boy. I honestly have no idea where to start, but I feel that the prostitution rant needs a follow up.
There are so many outlying issues in the debate over whether or not to legalize prostitution. Just like there are for legalizing anything of a controversial nature. Having growng up in Canada, with it's abundance of the sticky icky, I am no stranger to this.
There is merit to the argument that by legalizing prostitution, we will be legitimizing the baggage that goes with it. The drug trade, the human trafficking... you know, all that back alley dirty stuff that feels far too CSI for you and me sitting at home with our bathrobes and lattes (yes I am currently sitting around in my bathrobe and drinking a latte).
But here's the rub. When you're talking about law making, you can't get bogged down in the baggage. Madam Justice Susan Hamel did not legitimize human trafficking or exploitation. She looked at the case and at how the current legislation is failing sex workers. I was happily surprised when I woke up this morning to see some people keeping the issue alive (or trying to). The Chronicle Herald had written a very succinct editorial today. To sum up, Lezlie Lowe shines light on the matter with one brilliant sentence:
"Right now what counts is that all sex workers, victims or not, are fellow members of our society who deserve to feel safe and who are as worthy as anyone else of police protection."
It has echoes of the legalizing marijuana debate. That this wonderful thing called Free Will that we have allows us to make our own choices and mistakes, and the outcomes of those choices should not dictate law. Is smoking dope morally, ethically, legally wrong? Welll, the argument by some is that it shouldn't be, that it's our right to choose to get high and eat a bag of cheetos, just like it's our right to choose to smoke cigaretts until lung cancer kills us or to drink ourselves into oblivion on a Monday afternoon. That the consequences of what people might do with something shouldn't dictate the legality of that something.
Now, I'm not passing judgement here and now on whether or not pot should be legal (that's a whole other can of worms). I'm passing judgement on the fact that sex work is dangerous and that the current system is failing sex workers. That the morality of whether or not it's wrong to have sex for money is so bogged down in our pseudo-Christian ethics that it makes it difficult to see the tree for the forest. That Justice Minister Rob Nicholson is passing judgement on this specific ruling, made with the intention of bringing a certain amount of safety and discussion to an otherwise marginalized and dangerous profession, on the basis of how these women came to sex work and the outlying issues tied to sex work.
Nicolson is quoted as saying: "There's a lot of victims in that industry and we need to protect them." He seems to be forgetting that three of these "victims" are the ones to brought this case to Judge Himel in the first place, seeking protection by challenging the current legislation as having failed them.
CBC reported Nicholson as saying that Ottawa would "fight to ensure that the criminal law continues to address the significant harms that flow from prostitution to both communities and the prostitutes themselves." He makes no acknolwdgement to the fact that the criminal law has not continued to address it's ineffectiveness, and has instead ignored years of studies proving that living underneath the current legislation is proving dangeous and deadly for sex workers. Is he trying to protect our communities and the women engaging in sex work, or trying to maintain the shroud that has so far allowed this type of work to remain hidden from good, upstanding folks living in blissful suburban ignorance?
