Tag Archives: prostitution

Canada’s great new business opportunity: prostitution!

By a weird twist of irony, Canada’s 1982 Charter of Rights and Freedoms is now being interpreted by the Ontario Court of Appeal some 30 years after its immaculate conception by Pierre Trudeau as enshrining the inalienable human right of a certain sort of business people, who carry whips and dress in black leather, to run right proper bordellos that provide good security for their sex slaves—sorry, I mean “sex workers.”
As Raymond de Souza, a columnist at the National Post, wrote concerning this court decision:

In the euphemisms employed by the plaintiffs, prostitutes are “sex workers,” as if they were selling real estate or peddling cosmetics. A more accurate term is “sex slaves” — women forced to turn tricks by their drug dealers, the violent gang culture of the streets, or even abusive boyfriends.
http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2012/03/26/father-raymond-j-de-souza-if-prostitution-is-a-tragedy-why-make-it-easier/

Yes, of course, the court just knew how we, Canadians, have been chaffing at our previously appalling lack of legal rights to conveniently run our own little whorehouses on the prairie, as it were, in our neighbourhood strip malls! Why heck, don’t bother any more with those stuffy sex-ed classes at Billy and Meghan’s elementary school. It would be much easier to have the teachers plan a field trip to their local House of the Rising Sun for an educational show-and-tell that the kids will never forget.

I’m just so impressed with these judges’ seductive powers of legal reasoning. And, what a clever blow below the belt performed on all those moralistic Canadians who just can’t seem to get it through their heads that being a prostitute in a whorehouse is just as good a career choice as, well, being a judge in a court house. Anywise, it’s getting too hard these days to tell the judges and the whores apart anymore. After all, they both seem to be professionally working in a sort of well-paid position.

But prostitution is not like other professions. Most women cannot be said to “choose” a line of work they have been forced into, and find so disgusting, most of them need drugs to numb their misery (assuming they weren’t addicts beforehand). Those championing the rights of “sex workers” base their arguments on theory, and the word of a small minority of confident, articulate, happy or heart-of-gold hookers who know how to manipulate credulous elites. They would get a very different story from Tania Fiolleau, as I did in a recent telephone interview. Tania got into prostitution when an acrimonious custody battle over her two sons left her penniless and desperate. She eventually ran several brothels, serving as madam to 500 prostitutes. On the outside she seemed to have it all: good looks, money and power, but inside “I was the walking dead,” and “a shell of a woman.”

Tania pours scorn on the liberal image of the prostitute as a working gal like any other. Of the hundreds of girls that worked for her, she says, “not a single one ever said that she did not regret it.” She says many of her former workers are homeless or hopelessly drug addicted; some have been murdered or committed suicide.
http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2011/08/03/barbara-kay-prostitution-is-an-affliction-not-a-profession/

Of course, don’t blame the judges for upsetting the nation’s sexual apple cart. The judges could only work with what parliament handed them. Our politicians have refused, so far, to make the actual act of a human being prostituting herself or himself illegal. Why? Well, maybe some of our politicians would feel a little hypocritical about debating the legality of prostituting oneself.

So, our elected representatives have only passed the type of laws that regulate the business aspects of prostitution, such as running a bawdy house or living off the proceeds of prostitution, and word of mouth advertising (“communicating”). But the act of human prostitution itself has long been legal in Canada. We haven’t seemed to care if people prostitute themselves as long as they haven’t been able to run a regular business that easily and legally profits from sexual fiddle-faddle.

But now, with this judgment by the Ontario appeal court, all this changes. Now, the judges proclaim, Canada is open to fully exploit exciting business opportunities in prostitution. I wonder how long it will be before some big corporations get into the sex business, opening franchises throughout Canada. It’s probably an easy fit for the hospitality business. Talk about room service! Why Canadian prostitution pros could easily recruit a steady stream of new cheap whores from among the pool of secondary school girls, who are over the legal age to give consent for sexual intercourse (maybe 16 rather than 18 since prostitution is now a legal business), by offering to pay twice as much as competing employers like fast food joints and retail. What a great new Canadian business model. Perhaps, I need to pitch my idea to the Dragon’s Den producers!

Now, you might ask, how does this new profitable business model fit in with other Canadian cultural stakeholders like the Churches, Synagogues, or Mosques? The answer lies in the fact that Canada is officially multi-cultural. It’s been generations since we’ve thought of ourselves as a Christian nation. So if all religions are the same, why shouldn’t Canadians adopt the old Canaanite Fertility religion to go along with our new progressive take on prostitution? If we do this, then the whorehouses could do double duty and serve as house of worship as well as a business.

Prostitution was a big business in the ancient Grecian and Roman empires. But mostly the whores back then were enslaved women or boys. So the trick for the modern prostitution business model will be to get young women and men to voluntarily debase themselves for the least amount of money possible. Who knows? Maybe social media could be a useful tool?

Can you tell I’m angry!? I’m so disgusted with our making black white and white black. It is abhorrent to call prostitution a “career choice” or a “charter right.”

The Bible’s God has something to say to parents when advising their daughters about a career choice:


“Do not profane your daughter by making her a prostitute, lest the land fall into prostitution and the land become full of depravity (Leviticus 19:29 English Standard Version).

To our nation’s parliamentarians and judges the ancient prophet calls out a warning:

Woe to those who call evil good 
and good evil,
who put darkness for light 
and light for darkness,
who put bitter for sweet 
and sweet for bitter!…. for they have rejected the law of the Lord of hosts,
and have despised the word of the Holy One of Israel. Therefore the anger of the Lord was kindled against his people, and he stretched out his hand against them and struck them,
and the mountains quaked;
and their corpses were as refuse 
in the midst of the streets.
For all this his anger has not turned away,
and his hand is stretched out still. (Isaiah 5:20, 24-25 ESV)

And Isaiah adds:

Woe to those who decree iniquitous decrees,
and the writers who keep writing oppression… What will you do on the day of punishment,
in the ruin that will come from afar?
 To whom will you flee for help,
and where will you leave your wealth? Nothing remains but to crouch among the prisoners 
or fall among the slain.
For all this his anger has not turned away,
and his hand is stretched out still (Isaiah 10:1, 3-4 ESV).

Has the Bible’s LORD God changed His mind about what nourishes the human spirit and what crushes it? Do you think God has changed his mind even a little bit about prostitution? Or the personal consequences incurred by those who promote and profit from what He hates? As the Apostle Paul once wrote:

Unjust people who don’t care about God will not be joining in his kingdom. Those who use and abuse each other, use and abuse sex, use and abuse the earth and everything in it, don’t qualify as citizens in God’s kingdom (1 Corinthians 6:9 The Message).

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Objecting to a culture of sexual meaninglessness

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:

Many people object to the trade [euphemism] based on personal views on the role of sex in life and relationships. While those views should be respected, so should the right of adults to make their own choices and to be either customers or suppliers in the trade.

Further, on Feb. 9th, the newspaper chose to publish a letter to the editor entitled “Film fest offered tremendous riches.”  That letter writer quotes “Mia Bella,” a self-acknowledged prostitute, as proposing after the screening of the Brothel Project documentary, “The exchange of money changes everything. It means that I am not a slut.”

Now, I am flattered the TC editorial writer should assume that what I wrote last week was strictly my, Jeff Patton’s, point of view. But the editorial writer wasn’t calling objections to the “trade” as being “personal” in order to flatter or praise me. He/she wrote it in order to dismiss me—and to dismiss my objections about transforming prostitution into: 1) acceptable human behaviour  2) a legitimate business model/profession for our community’s young women and men.

Our present culture of materialism and meaninglessness believes all opinions weigh the same. This assumption makes it easy for a media gatekeeper like the Times-Colonist to dismiss whatever opposes its harm-increasing editorial policy. However, being an ordained episkopos (elder/bishop/guardian) for the Church of God, what I wrote last week and this week are far more than my mere personal opinion.  It reflects the stated position of the One who defined at the very beginning what role human sexuality should play in our lives. Heaven’s official policy statement, as it were, says this about sexuality and prostitution:

There’s more to sex than mere skin on skin. Sex is as much spiritual mystery as physical fact. As written in Scripture, “The two become one.” Since we want to become spiritually one with the Master, we must not pursue the kind of sex that avoids commitment and intimacy, leaving us more lonely than ever—the kind of sex that can never “become one.” There is a sense in which sexual sins are different from all others. In sexual sin we violate the sacredness of our own bodies, these bodies that were made for God-given and God-modeled love, for “becoming one” with another. Or didn’t you realize that your body is a sacred place, the place of the Holy Spirit? Don’t you see that you can’t live however you please, squandering what God paid such a high price for?

….Remember that your bodies are created with the same dignity as the Master’s body. You wouldn’t take the Master’s body off to a whorehouse, would you? I should hope not. (1 Corinthians 6:16-20a, 15 Message trans.).

I find it extraordinarily sad that the editorial board of the Times-Colonist wants to downgrade our whole community into a second-class society of sexual materialism and meaninglessness. Forsaking the moral logic of the universe and our Creator-given ideals for a happy society will bring neither justice nor good in any real sense of these words.

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Selling Sex—just another business transaction?

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.”

But times change. One of the main personages in both the Brothel Project film and the TC newspaper article, Mia Bella, whose name translates loosely into something like Gollum’s “my precious,” says that she doesn’t mind being labeled a whore. “It’s not an insult,” she’s quoted as saying.

Well, the largest online dictionary says the origin of the word “whore” lies with the ancient “barbarian” Goths. As a noun, a whore is defined as:

“1) A woman who engages in promiscuous sexual intercourse, usually for money; prostitute; harlot; strumpet.”

Perhaps, given our present emphasis on gender equality, we should include a secondary meaning in the “whore” definition entry. Why not include something like this:

2) Also a man, especially a political or sensual animal sort of guy, who can be bought or controlled by some selfish, narrow interest or lust rather than being primarily concerned with the good of someone else or the community as a whole; immoral; despicable; a user.

Should gaining one’s livelihood by prostitution, by being a whore, be accepted as a legitimate form of business? Some 3,400 years ago, when framing the constitution for an ideal, family-friendly nation, Moses wrote this. He must have asked his Authority whether donation’s made from the wages of whoredom were just as acceptable to that nation’s only registered charity as those working in legitimate, recognized businesses like: herding goats, counting shekels, weaving cloth, selling used chariots, or working as a scribe for the Hebrew Times-Colonist:

18 When you are bringing an offering to fulfill a vow, you must not bring to the house of the Lord your God any offering from the earnings of a prostitute, whether a man or a woman, for both are detestable to the Lord your God (Deuteronomy 23:18, NLT).

Our present secular society changes all the time. The meanings of words in our vulgar language change. People can also change either for the better or for the worse. But the more things change, the more they stay the same. What makes an individual, a family, and a nation happy can be found in what is better known as “eternal truths” or perhaps the “spiritual wisdom” found in the Hebrew and Greek Scriptures—the divine narrative. Jesus of Nazareth said this:

I tell you the truth, the tax collectors [despised as greedy crooks like many of today’s CEOs] and the prostitutes are entering the kingdom of God ahead of you [the cultural elite who run society and who substitute human ideas for those written in the divine narrative]. 32For John [the Baptist] came to you to show you the way of righteousness, and you did not believe him, but the tax collectors and the prostitutes did [because they understood what they were]. And even after you saw this, you did not repent and believe him (Matthew 21:31 NIV).

Two women of the Bible, Rahab the Harlot and Mary Magdalene, had earned their living by presenting their bodies to the lustful desires of their paying customers. Men who use prostitutes are not interested in loving and caring for such women beyond tossing them a handful of cash. And the smart whore knows to get paid before the act, because it’s infinitely harder to collect afterwards. But the stories about Rahab the Harlot and Mary Magdalene recount that when they encountered what makes for true happiness and leads to a good life—leaving behind a career of prostitution was a no brainer for them.

Don’t kid yourself! When was the last time you heard a romantic love song about a whore and her multitude of Toms, Dicks, and Harrys? Selling promiscuous sex is not a good career choice if you want to achieve lasting personal happiness, whether we make it legit in this corrupt society or not. Do not be deceived!

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