Legalized prostitution inhumane? - letters to the editor

In the January/February 2003 issue of the Humanist, Alice Leuchtag ("Human Rights, Sex Trafficking, and Prostitution") denigrates prostitution and calls for stronger laws to crack down on it or stamp it out. Yet I find considerable cause for skepticism.

Leuchtag captures our imagination with the tragic tale of a Thai girl named Siri. By article's end, we are very tempted to think with our hearts instead of our brains. However, we know that slave trafficking is responsible for many other evils besides prostitution. There are sweatshops where women are forced to work in intolerable conditions manufacturing garments. The same tragedy plays out in the agricultural industry where immigrants are forced into slavery picking crops. The tragic tales of all of these people are no less horrific.

So I tested the logic and conclusions of Leuchtag's attack on prostitution by substituting the garment industry and agriculture in place of the sex industry. From this I couldn't avoid the idea that steps must be taken to shut down garment manufacture and crop harvesting worldwide. Such a solution is, of course, absurd. Manufacturing garments and picking crops aren't the problem. Neither is prostitution. Trafficking in slaves is. The prescribed crackdown should be on slavery not on prostitution.

Leuchtag goes on to argue that legalization and regulation of prostitution isn't a viable answer. She cites as evidence the "Amsterdam model" of legalization and regulation. But if the abuses she alleges under regulation are real, regulation isn't real and her argument falsifies itself.

Prostitution won't go away no matter how much tyranny is applied to suppress it. Prohibition simply drives it underground where human rights advocates have no oversight of conditions or voice in the process. We have many examples of communities where prostitution has been driven underground. Can these communities credibly demonstrate that the prostitutes in their midst are suffering fewer abuses? As a humanist, I think not--and I think it anti-human to take that approach.

James A. Young
Lithia, FL

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