GEORGE M.
ANDERSON
Prostitution:
Old Problem, New Conflicts
Some local and national governments have legalized
certain forms of solicitation, and a question inevitably arises
as to the relative merits and drawbacks of this arrangement
Over the past few years, there has been
increasing pressure from liberal groups
to decriminalize prostitution. This
pressure is in part the result of altered
views toward sexuality and the growth
of the feminist movernent. It also
stems, however, from a belief that
prostitution laws as they now exist not
only do little to ease a problem that
has troubled cities since Roman times
but also burden with criminal status
some half a million women in this
country alone.
The proponents of decriminaliza-
tion range from organized groups of
prostitutes, such as COYOTE (Cast
Off Your Old Tired Ethics), to city
councümen, members of the clergy
and university professors. Thus, the
range runs from the still disreputable
to the ultra-respectable. The argu-
ments they advance are also broad in
scope. Margaret Mead, for example,
regards prostitution laws as the at-
tempt of one segment of society to
impose its moral values on the whole.
Seeing the issue at another level, a
committee of the American Bar Asso-
ciation claimed in 1974 that such
statutes represent a direct form of
discrimination against women, because
prostitutes are stigmatized and subject
to punishment whue their customers
are generally left undisturbed. The
committee's resolution urging decrim-
inalization was later defeated at the
bar association's assembly in Hawaii,
but, 10 years before, even to suggest
such a proposal would have been
unthinkable.
350
The question has also been ap-
proached from the standpoint of allo-
cation of community funds. Last year
in Pennsylvania, the Joint Councü of
the Criminal Justice System recom-
mended to the Governor that laws
prohibiting prostitution be repealed
because their enforcement diverted
limited public resources that could be
better used against more serious types
of crime. By the same token, in San
Francisco, a commission appointed by
the Mayor and the Board of Supervi-
sors issued a Report on Nonviolent
Crime in 1971 that spoke critically not
only of the cost ($375,000 just to
arrest and transport over 2,000 people
to the station house), but also of the
difficulty of antiprostitution enforce-
ment. It concluded that the justice
system should not be cluttered with
unenforceable laws, and therefore
urged that "discreet, off-the-street
prostitution should cease to be crimi-
nal."
A principal contention of oppo-
nents to decriminalization, however, is
precisely that eliminating the laws will
make prostitution not more discreet,
but more offensive, especially in neigh-
borhoods that have witnessed a
marked increase in sex-related com-
mercial activities. Thus, a young priest
at a church on West 51st Street in
Manhattan is concerned about the
growing sense of fear among residents:
"It's not à moral question about sex-
ual values; it's a question of the civil
rights of everyone in this neighbor-
hood. A woman from around here said
she was on her way to the store, and a
prostitute told her she'd tear her eyes
out if she ever walked that way again."
West 51st Street is one of several
sections of Manhattan that have been
engulfed by the multiplication of por-
nographic movie theatres, bookstores,
massage parlors and street prostitution
which have radiated outward in the past
decade from the area around Times
Square. Last November, residents held
a rally on nearby Eighth Avenue to
publicize their grievance. A similar
rally was held the preceding spring by
Chicago residents who complained
that prostitutes were plying their trade
in vans parked next to the yard of the
Amelia Earhart School on the South
Side.
The very fact that rallies of this
kind are being held would seem to
contradict the belief of the more
outspoken decriminalization propo-
nents like Marilyn Haft that there is
"little evidence that the general public
is offended by a prostitute's soliciting
her client." Miss Haft is a lawyer with
the New York Civil Liberties Union
and director of its Sexual Privacy
Project. It is the various local branches
of the American Civil Liberties Union
that are responsible for many of the
current court challenges to the consti-
tutionality of prostitution laws.
Another argument raised by those
against decriminahzation concerns the
alleged relationship between prostitu-
tion and crime. A columnist for The
Chicago Tribune, Bob Wiedrich, claim-
ing that prostitution is often accom-
America / April 16, 1977
panied by muggings and other forms
of viol nee and therefore is not victim-
less, expressed his support of a crack-
down by Chicago police in August of
1976. Even a feminist like Dr. Jennifer
JamesJ an assistant professor in the
Départi Tient of Psychiatry and Behav-
ioral Sciences at the University of
Washington, who has done extensive
research on the question of prostitu-
tion, admits that "ancillary crimes" do
sometimes occur. Writing in The Poli-
tics ofi Prostitution, a handbook for
activistes seeking to 'change present
laws, she adds, though, that despite
publicity about prostitutes and their
accomplices attacking customers, "sta-
tistics on assault indicate that it is the
prostitute who is more likely to be
beaten by the customer," Regarded as
she is' as a criminal, the prostitute
rarely reports assaults and even if she
did, she could "correctly expect that
her complaint would not be taken
seriously by law-enforcement offi-
cials."]
It is the street prostitute who is
most subject to assault, but it is also
she whose overt soliciting has caused
residents of New York's Upper West
Side, traditionally supportive of liberal
causes'! to press for stronger, not more
lenient!, legislation. Indeed, it was
State Senator Manfred Ohrenstein,
from that area, who introduced an
antiloitering bill last year calling for
manda^tory jail sentences for convicted
prostitjUtes. The bill was passed just
before the opening of the Democratic
convention, but once the convention
ended!' few arrests were made because
of qu'estions as to its vahdity. A
Manha^ttan judge has since declared the
law unlconstitutionally vague.
In search of surer solutions, some
cities are trying to deal with the
situatisn by means of zoning. Boston
has designated a 12-block area south
of the Boston Common as a "combat
zone,'! ^ modern carry-over of the
red-light district. But the section has
been marked by violence, and the plan
to isolate sexual activity there is now
deemed a failure.
A different approach to zoning is
being tried by Detroit. Instead of
"zoning in" adult entertainment activi-
ties, it is attempting to do the oppo-
site, to disperse them. Detroit's plan is
being considered for use in New York.
America / April 16, 1977
If implemented, it would ban massage
parlors entirely, eliminate adult book-
stores and X-rated movie theatres from
residential areas, and limit their num-
bers in commercial districts by permit-
ting no more than three within
1,000-foot-wide zones. Predictably,
the New York Civil Liberties Union
has announced its intention of fighting
the ordinance if enacted, but support-
ers are hopeful that the Supreme
Court will uphold the new law, as it
did last June in the case of Detroit's.
Whether or not they survive present
and future court tests, zoning ordi-
nances are a tacit admission by city
governments that commercialized sex
is too entrenched in the current scene
to be eradicated. The admission is
indicative of the change in sexual
mores that has taken place in the past
15 years, but it also points to a certain
"out-of-sight, out-of-niind" attitude
that proponents of decriminalization
are quick to label as hypocritical. Dr.
James notes that society "does not
demand that sex for sale be nonexis-
tent. It need only be invisible." The
comparatively greater public tolerance
of call-girl and massage-parlor opera-
tions lends support to her statement.
Nevada, too, is a case in point. It is
the only state with licensed brothels in
two of its counties. The brothels, or
"ranches," cause no community con-
sternation because they are located far
from any town. In a three-part study
that appeared in The Los Angeles
Times early in 1976, the writer cited
as typical the remark of a housewife in
Virginia City: "The way it's handled
here is fine because all of them are
quite a ways from residential areas. . . .
We're never exposed to the girls."
Public acceptance is also based 'to
some extent on the considerable tax
revenues the two counties receive an-
nually from their licensed houses. Ly-
on County is enriched by nearly
$50,000 a year in taxes from its four
brothels, and Storey County, not
much of a tourist attraction otherwise,
derives most of its income from the
much publicized Mustang Ranch run
by Joe Conforte.
The situation in Nevada resembles
that of some European countries. In
West Germany, there are a series of
government-regulated brothels called
' Eros Centers. Begun in 1967, they
were intended to provide both con-
trols and geographical limits for prosti-
tution. But since the majority of pros-
titutes disdain the centers and work
independently of them, the results of
this form of legalization have fallen
short of official expectations. Nor has'
there been any reduction in violent
crime in areas like the St. Pauli section
of Hamburg, where one of the centers
is located.
T
tion
.hose pressing for decriminaliza-
Xhcsee legalization as unworkable
because of this reluctance on the part
of most prostitutes to be confined to
state-run houses that would deprive
them of theii' independence. Even in
the Nevada "ranches," despite the high
pay, strict rules with regard to leaving
the premises only at certain periods
tend to produce an atmosphere of
semi-incarceration. There are also neg-
ative results in terms of diminished
capacity for human affectivity. One
woman interviewed for The Los An-
geles Times study said she had left the
Mustang Ranch because she could no
longer tolerate the split in her life, "I
became two people," she told the
reporter, the emotionally detached
prostitute at the ranch and, when
away for month-long vacations, a
young woman seemingly like others,
except that she found herself incapa-
ble of forming a meaningful relation-
ship with a man.
On the other hand, countries in
which houses of prostitution were
formerly condoned and subsequently
outlawed, have merely found them-
selves with a different set of dilemmas.
After years of crusading by Senator
Angelina Merlin, Italy closed its
"houses of tolerance" in 1958. Sena-
tor Merlin saw the move as one of
liberation for prostitutes working in
houses. She established a number of
facilities for their social reeducation.
Most refused to be reeducated, how-
ever, and simply took to the streets
instead. Italian police now estimate
that prostitution is an annual $3.5-
billion business.
France banned its bordellos soon
after World War II, and instituted a set
of statutes whereby, although prostitu-
tion itself is legal, soliciting is not (an
351
 arrangement similar to Britain's). The
police attitude has generally been one
of leniency. In April 1975, however,
there came a series of unexplained
crackdowns in Lyons. In protest, 60
street prostitutes occupied a 14th-
century church in the center of the
town. Sympathetic to their situation,
the priest closed the church against
police and had food brought in. Word
spread, and other sit-ins began in
churches in Marseilles and Paris.
The Lyons protest lasted nine days,
until police forced their way into St.
Nizier and threatened the women with
a police-dog attack. While nothing has
since been changed in the laws, the
demonstration was significant because
it rriarked the first attempt by French
prostitutes at organizing against both
the arbitrariness of police actions and
against what even the Mayor of Lyons
publicly called hypocritical ordinanc-
es.
France is one of the few countries
in the world with a strong, private
organization dedicated to helping pros-
titutes on a national leveL Le Nid (the
refuge) was founded in the early
194O's by a priest. Abbé Talvas. In
addition to providing practical help in
halfway houses. Le Nid, through its
publication. Femmes et Monde, is out-
spokenly critical of government atti-
tudes and gave its support to the
prostitutes at the time of their sit-in. It
also opposes the legalizing of prostitu-
tion, a suggestion made after the dem-
onstration by the Minister of the
Interior, Michel Poniatowski, who pro-
posed that something similar to the
German Eros Centers be established in
France. In Abbé Talvas's opinion, as
expressed in a Femmes et Monde
editorial, legalization would simply
mean that the "state would become
the foremost pimp in France."
The outlook of Le Nid resembles
that of feminist and libertarian groups
in its criticism of present statutes, but
it differs from them in seeing prosti-
tutes as victims whose profession is
mainly the result of poverty, unem-
ployment and family problems. Its
goal is to help these "disinherited" to
reintegrate themselves into society
along commonly acceptable lines.
More radical groups like COYOTE,
though, would see this viewpoint as
somewhat paternalistic, and indeed.
352
have as one of their aims the improv-
ing of the prostitute's self-image as
prostitute. Thus, Dr. James, at the
Second Annual Hookers Convention in
San Francisco in 1975, stated that
prostitution is not only harmless, but
socially beneficial. She argued, for
instance, that because of age, physical
disability or other reasons, many men
feel sexually rejected, and that the
prostitute is paid not to reject.
Much of Le Nid's as well as
COYOTE'S thrust is directed toward
street prostitutes. Because of their
visibility, it is they, rather than their
more expensive and better-shielded
counterparts in call-girl and massage-
parlor enterprises, who find themselves
most subject to public disapproval and
to arrest.
According to a study by Charles
Winick and Paul Kinsie, The Lively
Commerce, street prostitutes tend,
contrary to popular conception, to be
poor and often physically unattractive.
Since most depend on pimps^both for
emotional reasons and for the sake of
protection from the law, from clients
and from other prostitutes—compara-
tively little of what they earn remains
their own. The pimps' demands, more-
over, can be severe. An expectation of
$200 a night in most large American
cities would not be uncommon, and to
meet it a woman might have to accom-
modate 10 customers. Since they are
faced with possible reprisal if their
pimps' demands are not met, the
boldness of many street prostitutes in
their search for trade is perhaps the
more understandable.
What is not understandable at all to
activist groups is the fact that few
"Johns" are arrested, and still fewer
prosecuted. Only in the past eight
years have some local governments,
pressured by accusations of sex dis-
crimination, begun to consider the
customers who demand the illegal serv-
ices as guilty as the prostitutes who
supply them. But even in cities that
theoretically enforce solicitation laws
in an unbiased manner, far more wom-
en than men are charged under prosti-
tution statutes. When men are arrest-
ed, it is a newsworthy item.
Among the more notable recent
arrests was that of Representative Alan
Howe last summer in Salt Lake City,
by two policewomen acting as decoys.
The use of women decoys seemingly
lends greater equality to arrest proce-
dures for sohcitation, although it also
raises the question of entrapment.
Nevertheless, in 1976, a Washington,
D. C, judge found four men guilty of
soliciting a policewoman, and fined
them. It was the first time in the city's
history that a judge had exercised his
authority to sentence men who solicit
for sexual purposes. But Judge Hamil-
ton was an exception. Since most
"Johns" are middle-class men with
families, steady jobs and no prior
involvement with the law, few judges
are anxious to render a verdict of
guilty which would result in a criminal
record. The double standard does not
die easily.
ecriminalization might remove
the inequity of discriminatory and un-
equally applied laws, but proponents
themselves see the necessity for con-
trols of some type to provide protec-
tion for minors. In the past five years
particularly, there has been an increase
in the number of teen-agers, both boys
and girls, caught up into prostitution.
Many are runaways froni out of state
who gravitate to cities like Chicago
and New York, where they are intro-
duced to prostitution by new
"friends" who then become their
pimps. Often there is a background of
rejection and alcoholism in the home,
as in the notorious case of Karen
Baxter, a 15-year-old from Cambridge,
Mass., who was strangled by a client in
a cheap Manhattan hotel. Her father
deserted when she was five, and there-
after she Was neglected by her mother.
At the time of her death a few years
ago, she had been in New York only a
month, already living with a pimp and
posing as a woman of 20.
Realizing the need, a Franciscan
priest, Bruce Ritter, is opening a
round-the-clock drop-in center, called
Under 21, near the Times Square area.
Father Ritter began working with run-
away and otherwise homeless teen-
agers in 1968, and gradually estab-
lished a series of live-in facilties in
Manhattan known jointly as Covenant
House, "intensive care units for dying
children," as he referred to them in an
interview. The goal of Under 21 is to
America / April 16, 1977
offer a way out for those who want to
escape from a life style of prostitu-
tion: 'Sfirst by providing the basics of
food, 'shelter, education and accept-
ance; and then a sense of permanency
through a job and living in a Covenant
House group home or with a family as
long as necessary."
Jhe group homes received licensing
as cliMd-care agencies in 1972 and now
have funding from the city. But the
funding is never adequate to meet the
growin'g demands, and much of the
work is consequently done by volun-
teers who donate a year of their time
to the' undertaking. With the opening
of Under 21 in the spring, it is these
volunteers who will go out into the
streets to establish contact with teen-
agers in danger of recruitment by
pimps
Besides Father Ritter, there is an-
other ||Franciscan, in New Jersey, De
Paul Genska, who works with street
ij ' tion of the country to another ac-
prostitutes; and in Philadelphia, shelter
and other forms of assistance are made
available by Br. Jim Kennedy at Naza-
reth House for young male hustlers.
Apart from these and an effort in
Houston, little is being done in this
country by way of providing concrete
help for prostitutes, either teen-aged
or older, whether male or female.
withAmong the fewthere
iprostitutes, religious working
are differing
opinions as to decriminalization. Fath-
er Riiter opposes it. "Without laws,'-
he maintains, "there would be more
impetus to open brothels, more girls
on the street, more Johns who'd no
longer be afraid of arrest, and it would
be easier for kids with false I. D.'s to
work in joints. Laws help keep the
growth in check." But others'would
hold that the problem of teen-agers
drawn into prostitution is different
from the question of adult prostitutes
and should to some extent be treated
as a separate matter. In a research
paper done for the National Institute
of Mental Health ("Not the Law's
Business"), the author. Dr. Gilbert
Geis, IIstresses that few adult prostitutes
have peen tricked or led into their way
of life, but rather haVe chosen it with
an "awareness of the options available
to them."
And yet, even with adult prostitu-
tion taken as an issue in its own right.
there is general agreement by propo-
Amei ca /April 16, 1977
nents of decriminalization themselves
on the need to protect not just minors,
but also un consenting passersby from
harassment, or temptations wliich
might, for some, amount to an intoler-
able stress. Jean Withers, another femi-
nist writer, proposes, in The Politics of
Prostitution, that regulation be effect-
ed through the civu code "as it is for
other businesses." There would still be
criminal laws regarding public nuisance
and assault to protect citizens from
the more blatant forms of solicitation.
This approach would at least lessen for
most prostitutes the heavy opprobri-
um that has traditionally been theirs.
Should decriminalization ever come
about, it would almost have to be on a
national level. Otherwise, if some lo-
calities eliminated their statutes while
others did not, the former would be
deluged with an influx of prostitutes.
As it is, the variation in ordinances and
enforcement procedures from one sec-
counts for the high concentration of
prostitutes to be found in certain
areas. Washington, D. C , for example,
is considered lenient, and since it is
also a center of tourism and affluence,
it attracts prostitutes in large numbers.
'After an examination of both
positions, the arguments
in favor of decriminalization
seem to emerge
with compelling force.
Yes, prostitutes are unfairly
treated under the law in terms
of their being given virtually
automatic criminal status'
But there is little likelihood that
decriminalization \yill become a reality
in the near' future. In its defeat of the
1974 resolution calling for elimination
of antiprostitution statutes, the As-
sembly of the American Bar Associa-
tion expressed the opinion that remov-
al of these laws would cause what it
terms a lowering of national moral
standards. As if anticipating this judg-
ment, Pennsylvania's Joint Council of
the Criminal Justice System, whue
recommending decriminalization, also
recognized in a note of some disheart-
enment that the chances for repeal of
existing laws are slender, because of
the traditionally conservative approach
of its legislature toward matters relat-
ing to sexual mores. This traditional
attitude tends to prevail in most other
state legislatures and among governors,
too. Governor Ella T. Grasso of
Connecticut recently expressed her op-
position to a bul favoring decriminali-
zation sponsored by New York State's
Permanent Committee on the Status
of Women.
No matter what changes may even-
tually take place in terms of its legal
aspects, one wonders whether prostitu-
tion wül ever come to be regarded
even by the most liberal-ininded as
merely another business transaction.
Advocate though she is of repealing
laws that to her mind are "cruel and
barbarous," Margaret Mead neverthe-
less sees prostitution itself as inherent-
ly exploitative, not just of women by
men, but of men by women. The latter
is a factor seldom touched on by
feminists, but, as she remarks: "The
exploitation goes both ways, as wom-
en exploit men's loneliness, shame,
fears and social ineptness, and as men
try to escape from love and responsi-
bility through the mere payment of
money in return for sex." It is doubt-
ful whether the commercialization of
relationships involving solitariness, fear
of rejection, a.sense of inadequacy or
reluctance to assume the obligations
which the deeper forms of love entail,
can be accepted matter-of-factly over a
long period of time without damage to
the sense of one's dignity and whole-
ness as a human being, both on the
part of the prostitute and the cus-
tomer.
To what degree the matter should
be subject to legal intervention, how-
ever, is another question. After an
examination of both positions, the
arguments in favor of decriminaliza-
tion seem to emerge with compelling
force. Yes, prostitutes are unfairly
treated under the law in terms of their
being given virtually automatic crimi-
nal status. Yes, society's out-of-sight,
out-of-mind attitude, which makes
brothels, massage parlors and the caU-
girl business less objectionable to the
public than streetwalkers, is hypocriti-
cal. Yes, statutes against soliciting
may, as the A.C.L.U. contends, be
violations of the right to freedom of
speech as guaranteed under the First
Amendment. Yes, law-enforcement
353
resources, being limited, might be bet-
ter used against graver types of crime.
Yes, efforts to control prostitution,
whether through strict measures aimed
at suppressing it entirely or through
tolerating it in the form of legalized
outlets, have historically met with
scant success anywhere.
With so many arguments, how
could the need for decriminalization
be denied? But still, there comes to
mind the painful awareness of neigh-
borhoods into which prostitution and
its related businesses have increasingly
forced their way, bringing changes that
have been overwhelming. The conse-
quent resentment and fear of families
and shopkeepers are understandable.
They have watched the whole tenor of
life in block after block changing, or
L. A. O'DONNELL
Should We Repeal
14B?
The crux of the question is this: Is it wise public policy
to give unions freedom to negotiate a union-shop clause
that requires employees to join a union so as to stay employed?
Politics has once again focused atten-
tion on the Taft-Hartley Act's Section
14B, which acknowledges the right of
states to prohibit agreements requiring
membership in a union as a condition
of employment. Section 14B provides
the foundation for right-to-work laws,
presently on the books of 20 states;
repeal of 14B would invalidate right-
to-work laws. A new Administration
elected with essential support from
organized labor and enjoying com-
manding Democratic majorities in
354
decaying, as most would call the alter-
ation. The residents of Chicago's
South Side who objected to prosti-
tutes operating in vans next to a
schoolyard were insisting on their civil
rights as much as the women who
heckled them during the rally, and
who is to say that their right to
maintain a quiet, family-oriented
neighborhood is not as much to be
defended as the prostitutes' right to
earn a living? Father Ritter claims that
if the New York Civil Liberties Union
had its offices on Eighth Avenue in
mid-Manhattan, thus obliging its attor-
neys to have first-hand (and unwant-
ed) contact with the area's heavy
concentration of prostitutes, its advo-
cacy of decriminalization might be less
fervent..
both houses of Congress has an un-
paralleled opportunity to repeal 14B.
But Jimmy Carter's position, that he
would sign a bill repealing 14B but
would not actively seek its passage in
Congress, has been equivocal at best,
and the substantial majorities delivered
to him in the South, where 11 states
have such laws (Alabama, Arkansas,
Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississip-
pi, North Carolina, South Carohna,
Tennessee, Texas, Virginia)' would
hardly incline him toward repeal. On
The issue emerges, then, as more
complex than might initially have been
suspected, and there are no easy solu-
tions. Nevertheless, since past and
present attempts in this country to
deal with prostitution by means of the
criminal code have produced many
negative results and little in the way of
effective control, a new approach, for
all the unknowns it would entail,
could in the end make possible a more
satisfactory situation, than currently
exists.
[George M. Anderson, S. J., who
regularly does chaplaincy work at Ri-
kers Island house of detention in New
York City, has written several articles
for America concerning issues of social
justice, e.g., "Illegal Aliens: Refugees
From Hunger" (1/29).]
the other hand, the sohd Ford vote in
Western states, four of which have the
laws (Arizona, Nevada, Utah, Wy-
oming), should not deter him. Nor
should his loss in each of the five
Midwestern states where these laws
exist (Iowa, Kansas, Nebraska, North
Dakota, South Dakota).
Yet, as a man of the New South
reflecting its changed attitudes on race
relations and other matters, Mr. Carter
can reasonably be expected to aban-
don the Old South approach to trade
America / April 16, 1977