The World Tomorrow

During the recently completed Easter/Passover season there were a great number of headlines in the various media sources I was following about the latest episode of the Roman Catholic Church and the illicit appetites of its clergy for pedophilia. This time around the scandal of Catholic priests sexually abusing children was stunning Europe.  The media has been talking about incidents in Ireland and Germany where, it seems, some are questioning whether the current pope was actually involved himself in covering up some abuse cases that happened there, during the time he was in charge .

Last week I wrote a column objecting to the premise of a campaign being pushed on our community by Victoria’s sole daily, The Times Colonist. This premise asserts that selling sex—prostitution—should be treated just like any other business regulated and protected by government. I can see it now—El Gordo benevolently smiling as B.C. balances its books with the HST windfall generated by the sweating backs of its whores.

But it seems that I wasn’t the only one unhappy with the newspaper’s favoured position. On Friday, Feb. 5, the newspaper published their riposte, “Time to reduce sex-trade risks,” in order to counter the objections they received. The TC editorial board thinks:

In Victoria’s Time-Colonist newspaper (Jan. 31, 2010 issue) the article “Victoria brothel film makes its debut tonight” recounts the backstory of a documentary that premiered in this year’s film festival entitled, The Brothel Project. The film documents the attempts of a local social activist and a retired prostitute to open a co-op brothel. They wanted to achieve legitimate business status for the brothel and benefits for its “sex workers.”

I guess there is no shortage of potential co-op sex trade workers for such a venture. The newspaper says there are 1,000 licensed escorts in the greater, or maybe more accurately, the lesser Victoria region. When it comes to anything dealing with sexuality we, North Americans, love our euphemisms. We prefer to beat around the bush and see in print words like “sex worker” or “escort” rather than the plain old English words “prostitute” or the more edgy “whore.”