http://www.edmontonsun.com/News/Columnists/Diotte_Kerry/2007/01/25/pf-3444982.html
There's renewed discussion about Canada's archaic prostitution laws in light of the ongoing ghastly trial of accused mass murderer Robert Pickton.
Some commentators are saying our society could best protect sex-trade workers by liberalizing our laws.
The Port Coquitlam, B.C., pig farmer is charged with murdering six street prostitutes, and the trial this week near Vancouver heard testimony that he confessed to killing dozens more.
Even Edmonton's rock radio station, The Bear, was abuzz with the prostitution law debate when I tuned in on a recent evening.
The question put to the audience was whether listeners thought prostitution should be fully legalized so as to help protect sex-trade workers from harm in the future.
The callers seemed split 50-50 on the issue.
One male caller said it was fruitless to try to outlaw what he deemed to be "the world's oldest profession."
A female caller had the view that allowing legalized brothels and the like would make young men and women believe prostitution was an average, healthy, career choice - not unlike choosing to be a school teacher.
Still another woman just didn't like the idea that some so-called "skanky" women could be able to legally operate in society, thus tempting women's boyfriends into sin.
The radio show host argued that people should quit thinking about prostitution as a moral issue and instead consider how legalizing it might just save lives.
I agree. First off, in typical Canadian style, prostitution isn't truly illegal per se.
It's the act of communicating for the purposes of sex that is.
Talk about your Canadian compromise. It's legal but it isn't. It sounds like the federal government's position on Quebec. It's a nation but not really.
It's time to abandon our moral misgivings about the world's oldest profession and deal with the cold, hard reality.
People are always going to buy and sell sex.
If we fully legalize it, I'd think most women would choose to sell their bodies in safe places such as private brothels.
There are lots of legal brothels in the world to emulate.
Make sex-trade workers obtain a licence as we now do with escorts. The City of Edmonton already licenses escorts and massage parlour workers, so the process is in place.
Allow privately run, health-inspected brothels where male and female workers could work if they are of legal age.
This arrangement would be far safer for the bulk of women who turn to prostitution.
I don't buy the argument that it would make scores of women flock to work as sex-trade employees.
It's simply not the kind of life most women would choose.
That's not to say it would eliminate street prostitution. We'll always have that, especially if someone is wrestling with a drug problem.
But legalizing sex for sale would go a long way towards cutting down on the number of pimps who thrive by forcing women to stay on the streets hooking.
It would also cut into a sordid business that feeds the bank accounts of organized crime.
Liberalizing laws isn't the total solution to street prostitution. We'd still have to make a concerted effort to wean from the streets women who are poverty-stricken, drug-addicted and abused. As a society we can never stop trying to help those people.
Perhaps with this change in our law, one girl who's now working the unsafe streets will avoid the kind of fate that befell the sex-trade workers whose body parts, sickeningly, turned up on that infamous British Columbia pig farm.
