If the American public wants to know what the ultimate goal of the Radical Right is in terms of abortion, contraception, and the rights of all of those who aren't white males, ask a prostitute, or as I prefer to call them, a professional sex provider. They have been dealing with the problem for 4000 years, and uptight feminists like Andrea Dworkin and Catherine McKinnon won't even talk to them.

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Mary Magdalen in Ecstasy by Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio Public Domain

Making Sex a Crime

By Richard Girard

"The question of sexual dominance can exist only in the nightmare of that soul which has armed itself, totally, against the possibility of the changing motion of conquest and surrender, which is love."

James Baldwin (1924--87), U.S. author. The Price of the Ticket, "The Devil Finds Work," section 2; (1985; first published 1976).

The recent furor over President Obama's compromise solution on the matter of employers and their insurers providing women's contraception as a part of their health care plan would be laughable if it were not so dangerous. By attempting to deny one-half of the American people the right to the full spectrum of health care upon the basis of the belief system of one person or a single soulless organization by whom they are employed is insane. The direct influence of all established religions and their dogmas should end at the door of the church. Any attempt to extend that direct influence beyond the door of the church to the workplace, even if that workplace is controlled by that religious institution, I believe violates the separation of church and state.

The only influence that a church should have beyond its doors is in the hearts and minds of its parishioners, not in the laws and actions of our pluralistic nation. In the United States of America, forcing the laws of Moses, the Catholic Church, Luther or Calvin upon the American people is just as wrong as forcing Sharia Law on them would be.

This is simply the most recent means by which this nation's Radical Right wing is attempting to force women into remaining second class citizens here in the United States. Without the control over their bodies that contraception, as well as abortion, gives women--control which the men already have in a similar if form under those self-same health care plans, including vasectomies and access to Viagra and other drugs for erectile dysfunction--women are forever limited in their choices both of lives and livelihoods in this country.

The real basis for the opposition to abortion and contraception in this country is denial of equal rights to women, just as the privatization of our public schools is a covert means to create a permanent underclass, and re-establish segregation . Privatization has never been about the teaching of Creationism, or prayer in school. The oligarchs simply do not want equality in any form, or a broad-based, well-informed electorate, or any of the other trappings of modern representative democracy. Any semblance of equality--whether between the races or the sexes--interferes with the oligarchs' ability to control the economic life of this country, and through it, our nation's political life. The oligarchs want control over the process of government in a manner that does not cost these would-be puppet masters too much money.

As Camille Paglia observed twenty years ago, "We should teach general ethics to both men and women, but sexual relationships themselves must not be policed. Sex, like the city streets, would be risk-free only in totalitarian regimes;" (Sex, Art, and American Culture; Introduction, 1992). The war against both contraception and abortion are simply a further attempt by the oligarchs--using the Radical Right--to take control of the heart and soul of America, as part of its program to end our liberties. For oligarchs like the Koch Brothers, and their puppets like Karl Rove and Rick Santorum, Supreme Court decisions like Roe v. Wade, Griswold v. Connecticut, Brown v. Board of Education, and Texas v. Hernandez, represent obstacles standing in the way of their taking control of this nation. The only ethics which the oligarchs wish to have taught is that of unthinking obedience to one's plutocratic betters, no matter how foolish those "betters" may be.

Even that most sexually uptight of feminists, Kate Millet, in her book Sexual Politics (Chapter 2, 1970) noted that, "Coitus can scarcely be said to take place in a vacuum; although of itself it appears a biological and physical activity, it is set so deeply within the larger context of human affairs that it serves as a charged microcosm of the variety of attitudes and values to which culture subscribes. Among other things, it may serve as a model of sexual politics on an individual or personal plane." An exposure of the Radical Right's ongoing war against any sort of psychologically healthy sexual outlook by the American people, an outlook where sex is more than a means of procreation, where the discussion of sex has evolved beyond the tawdry remarks of teenage males, as well as the power-based objectification of women by their fathers and other older males, is long overdue.

Ed Schultz, on his February 24, 2012 radio show, put a name to the purpose of the Radical Right in their war on abortion, contraception, and sex in general. Mr. Schultz stated that the Radical Right's object is nothing less than the reassertion of male control of women in this country, in order to once again make them second-class citizens. In other words, "their goal is 'vaginal management'."

I believe that most Americans have never had an honest and frank discussion about sex and its real effect on their own, their children's, or their community's lives, even with their spouses. To quote Oriana Fallaci (The Egotists, "Hugh Hefner;" 1963), "We do not understand these Americans who, like adolescents, always speak of sex, and who, like adolescents, all of a sudden have discovered that sex is good not only for procreating children." Almost fifty years later, very little has changed, except network television has gone from ignoring the issue of sex in America, to making it a generally sordid and regrettable comedy of errors .

This mindset has prevented any attempt at honest or realistic discussions, even at the most basic level of the married couple--let alone society--on teen pregnancy, venereal disease, rape, and the objectification of women. I want to approach the subject of these ongoing attempts to repress and regulate American sexuality from an entirely different direction: that area in our society where, in the always tumultuous relationship between sex and society, sex has already lost, and where the cost is most obvious. I am speaking of course of the shadowy realm of the sex worker, especially prostitution.

There are preconceptions about sex work--and by the term sex work I include phone sex operators, live web cam sites, exotic dancing, pornography, but most of all prostitution--which color and distort the American view of sex workers. These preconceptions have so far--because of our nation's Calvinist/Puritan heritage --been almost impossible to dispel. One of these preconceptions is that no intelligent individual who was not addled by drugs or alcohol (or both), would ever engage in any form of sex work unless they literally had a gun to their head.

In Love Ranch, a movie with Helen Mirren and Joe Pesci that is the semi-fictitious story of the early years of the Mustang Ranch Brothel in Nevada, there is a scene where religious protesters come out to the Ranch (carrying signs that say "God's Law not Man's Law," which encapsulates the Radical Right's position on the entire subject of "vaginal Management" perfectly), demanding its closure, because it is an unfit occupation for women, and a blight on the community. Helen Mirren's character--who is playing the titular Love Ranch's madame and part owner--steps out of the building with her "working girls." Ms. Mirren then makes a declaration that is the most publicly sympathetic reason ever stated by Hollywood for why every non-coerced sex worker in the world does what they do: "Do you think any of these girls dreamed of being hookers when they grew up. They are doing the very best they can with the hand they've been dealt."

Many of the worst parts of every sex worker's life in America, and particularly prostitutes, or as I prefer to call them professional sex providers, are directly attributable to the barrier of government's laws and society's attitudes that are imposed, directly and indirectly, between every sex worker and any hope of their ever finding a place within society. This barrier is particularly imposing for the professional sex provider. Public condemnation, as well as the ingrained indifference, if not outright hostility, of law enforcement and parts of the medical establishment--especially mental health social workers and some members of the psychiatric community--places barriers in the sex workers life that are currently impossible to overcome. One example is law enforcement's infamous special descriptive term for crimes where certain individuals--including sex workers, and especially professional sex providers--are the victims: NHI-no human involvement.

Human trafficking and all of the other coercive problems which the public associates with sex work has as their underlying cause the fact that prostitution has been criminalized. Every business needs protection from theft, fraud, and violence by its customers, and sex work is not an exception. Some sex workers--exotic dancers for example--in theory at least, have limited protection provided by law enforcement agencies. However, most of them could use protection from the predation and fraud inflicted on them by the owner or managers at their workplace.

Because prostitution is illegal, professional sex providers cannot call the cops if a customer doesn't pay, or beats her up (yes, I know that there are male and trans-gender professional sex providers, but I will refer to all professional sex providers in this article as "her" for the sake of simplicity) and/or robs her. In fact, at times law enforcement are the worst exploiters of professional sex providers, demanding "freebies" in exchange for turning a blind eye (The Commercial Sexual Exploitation of Children in New York City; John Jay College of Criminal Justice, Center For Court Innovation, 2008; p. 93; http://www.courtinnovation.org). While the popular stereotype of the pimp exists, he is in reality such a small factor in prostitution today that he can almost be ignored.

No sane person--including professional sex providers--wants to see the television archetype of a thirteen or fourteen year-old runaway being forced into prostitution by some pimp who broke their will by having them gang raped for a week while being fed a steady stream of booze and drugs. As relatively rare as this phenomenon may be in real life , any form of coercion, any type of sex trafficking of individuals who are below the age of consent (18), should open the perpetrator of this crime against the child to charges that puts them away for decades. These coercive crimes, even when perpetrated against individuals who are of consenting age (18+)--especially in the case of individuals brought across state lines or from outside the country--should warrant long stretches in prison, say five years plus per count.

Right now, prostitution is at its lowest point in terms of percentage of the female population who are professional sexual providers in our nation's history. According to Nickie Roberts' book Whores In History (1992), historically five to ten percent of the female population throughout human history--varying by time and location--has engaged in prostitution at least part-time. Up until the early Twentieth Century, prostitution was often the only alternative women had to starvation and homelessness for themselves and their children if their spouse abandoned them. The social safety net that was established under the New Deal and the Great Society programs has done more to reduce these numbers than any moral crusade.

One source gives the total number of active, declared professional sex providers in the United States as 443,323 . The total number of professional sex providers in the United States that is usually given by law enforcement is 203 per 100,000 , and supposedly includes streetwalkers, message parlor workers, and escorts, based upon a study done by law enforcement in El Paso County Colorado in the 1970's and 1980's ( American Journal of Epidemiology Copyright - 2004 by the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health Vol. 159, No. 8 DOI: 10.1093/aje/kwh110). If that report is correct, that would mean that there are approximately 631,000 full-time professional sex providers--female, male, and trans-gender--in the United States at this time.

I believe both of these numbers significantly underestimates the total number of sex workers who work as professional sex providers in this country in a given year.

First of all, El Paso County's major city is Colorado Springs, with an average population of 300,000 during the time of the study. Colorado Springs is a city with a large number of military bases (Fort Carson, Falcon Air Force Base, NORAD, etc.), as well as being the "Vatican" of the evangelical Christian movement. Those three facts mean that El Paso County is not exactly a realistic or representative sample for estimating the scope of prostitution for the entire nation. It is too small and specialized of a sample, in an area where the largest proportion of professional sex providers will be streetwalkers (to satisfy the needs of the military in the area), and the pressure by the evangelical Christians in Colorado Springs is likely to cause an under reportage of professional sex providers by governmental authorities.

When I look at these figures from El Paso County--with their reports of high incidence of STD's, drug use, and other negative statistics about prostitution--I am led to a single conclusion: whoever it was who collected this data and then converted them into these statistics, concentrated on the poor drug-addled streetwalker in order to give the most negative view of prostitution that they could.

I believe that the 631,000 professional sex providers figure that is arrived at using the El Paso County's study numbers is only between forty and sixty percent of the number of active professional sex providers in the United States today. This would mean that there are somewhere between 1,052,000 and 1,578,000 sex workers working as professional sex providers--full or part-time--in our country today.

I base my estimate on the fact that there are higher numbers of professional sex providers per 100,000 in Western Europe and Canada than there are officially admitted to in the United States, a number that equals one percent ( http:/ / www. amnestyforwomen. de/ _notes/ FInal Report TAMPEP 8 BRD 2009. pdf, ) of the female population in Germany.

This is a number at least two and one-half times that given by Maggie McNeill on her "Honest Courtesan" website at the low end, and roughly two and one-half times the number arrived at using the El Paso County figures on the high end. Ms. McNeill at least qualifies her statement by saying "declared," full-time professional sex providers. I believe that there are at least twice as many "undeclared" professional sex providers, i.e., part-timers, than Ms. McNeill's estimate.

Before we have any discussion on professional sex providers and their legal status, we must have a serious discussion of sexual slavery. There is increasing evidence that the stories of large scale sexual trafficking--especially of children--in the United States and elsewhere, are exaggerated , and that the numbers that are being used by governments, religious leaders, and radical feminists to further their own agendas are wildly inflated . The estimated number of children being exploited in sex trafficking in America varies according to sources from 1,400 to 2.5 million (Crimes against Children Research Center, University of New Hampshire; Fact sheet written by Michelle Stransky and David Finkelhor, 2008; http://www.unh.edu/ccrc).

I believe that the first number is almost certainly too low, probably by a factor of ten. The best number (from Ms. McNeill's Honest Courtesan website) I have seen for the total number of professional sex providers under the age of 18 in this country is 15,694 . Not all of these are trafficked, exploited individuals; very few ( 8% according to one study by New York City Police) may have been coerced into the world's oldest profession. A 2008 study estimates that the total number of trafficked individuals in the United States, of all ages and employment types, including that of sex worker, at somewhere between 14,500-17,500 . The second number (2.5 million) is obviously impossible. It is at least fifty percent higher than my highest estimate of the total number of professional sex providers in this country. It is nearly four times the figure arrived at using El Paso County's 203 per 100,000 population estimate for all professional sex providers in this country, which is the number most commonly used by law enforcement, and nearly six times Ms. McNeill's number.

The extremists in the United States are not alone in their excessive estimates. In Great Britain a bill was passed to stop the influx of trafficked individuals ( Police Bill of 2009 ), by making it a crime to purchase sex from an individual who had been trafficked. This was in answer to the " Poppy Report ," and other research papers that estimated there to be tens of thousands of trafficked women in Great Britain, perhaps as many as 80,000 .

However, newspaper investigations have called into question both the numbers stated by the Poppy Report, as well as its methodology . A six month investigation by British police of 800 brothels turned up only 167 possible victims of sex trafficking .

Even these smaller numbers I have given are horrific. Sex trafficking of human beings should be opposed by anyone with even a hint of moral self-worth. Slavery is wrong. To quote Georg W.F. Hegel from his Philosophy of Right (p. 67), "If we hold fast to the side that man is absolutely free, we condemn slavery. Still it depends on the person's own will, whether he shall be a slave or not, just as it depends upon the will of a people whether or not it is to be in subjection. Hence slavery is a wrong not simply on the part of those who enslave or subjugate, but of the slaves and subjects themselves. Slavery occurs in the passage from, the natural condition of man to his true moral and social condition. It is found in a world where a wrong is still a right. Under such a circumstance the wrong has its value and finds a necessary place."

Pedophilia is worse than slavery. It is a violation not only of the rights of the child, but of one the basic tenets that makes civilization necessary: the protection of the interests and well-being of future generations. Even the self-absorbed Friedrich Nietzsche pointed out, "It would be completely unworthy of a more profound spirit to consider mediocrity as such an exception"When the exceptional human being treats the mediocre more tenderly than himself or his peers, this is not mere politeness of the heart--it is simply his duty." (The Antichrist, No. 57; The Portable Nietzsche, translated by Walter Kaufmann.)

And children are never mediocre. I think even the narcissist Nietzsche would say that they deserve the protection of "a more profound spirit," the adult--especially the superman or as I prefer to call him (as Kung Fu-tze did) the superior man--until they can fully demonstrate their capabilities.

Discussion on the subject of sex work--especially prostitution--is not being helped by the de facto alliance of Feminist Extremists and the Radical Right. They provide a mass of misinformation concerning the subject of sex work that is both contradictory and self-serving. (Ronald Weitzer, "Flawed Theory and Method in Studies of Prostitution;" VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN, Vol. 11 No. 7, July 2005 p.p. 934-949; copyright 2005, Sage Publications.) This alarmist misinformation destroys any legitimate concerns they might have on the subject, in that you can only cry wolf so many times before you are ignored.

What the Extreme Feminists do not realize is that by maintaining the nearly identical position against sex work--including pornography and prostitution--as the Radical Right wing, they are undercutting their own arguments for equal rights for women. Porn star and third generation feminist Nina Hartley said it better than I did in "Feminists for Porn," Counterpunch , February 5, 2005 :

" For many years, right-wing ideologues have co-opted the language of feminism in their on-going, nefarious attempts to erase all forms of sexual choice. Prof. [Chyng] Sun plays into the hands of these enemies of women. Does she not know that making common cause with those whose most treasured ambition is the reversal of Roe v. Wade will always be suicidal? How is Prof. Sun different from Phyllis Schlafly? From Anita Bryant? From Beverly LaHaye? From Judith Reisman? From Lou Sheldon or Jerry Falwell? They all want to eliminate my choice in the disposition my body. If I have the right to choose abortion, then I have the right to choose to have sex for the camera. Sexual freedom is the flip side of the coin of reproductive choice. Make no mistake, Professor. When they've got rid of me, they're coming for you next."

Extreme Feminists, by saying that women do not know what is best for themselves, as the reason that the laws against pornography and prostitution are kept in place to force women to "do the right thing," are defeating their own avowed purpose of establishing equal rights for women. They are using the identical argument put forward by the Radical Right for laws against abortion, contraception, and a host of other subjects (including civil liberties guaranteed under the U.S. Constitution) that are necessary to give women--not to mention gays, lesbians, trans-gender, African-Americans, Latinos, and others--even the semblance of equality with white males. It is in fact the argument that has been used against prostitutes--and the lower classes--by the One Percent throughout history.

The origins of the laws against prostitution historically start at the end of the third millennium B.C.E., when the hyper-aggressive hierarchical patriarch nomads conquered the agricultural matriarchal egalitarian societies in the Fertile Crescent, as well as the Nile, Indus, and Yellow River valleys. To these nomadic herdsmen, ownership was everything, including the ownership of women. As Nickie Roberts stated as one of the premises of her book Whores in History (1992), it was here that the dichotomy between the good girl and the bad girl, the owned virtuous women and the unowned whore, the virgin and the slut, began in human society. This is also one of the driving forces behind Creationism: if we go solely by the Bible, we can ignore that part of human history where women were equal and free to choose.

Decriminalizing prostitution is a necessary step to returning true equality between women and men, because it--even more than abortion and contraception--is proof that women and not men, or the laws of well intentioned, but morally constipated men and women, are actually in control of their bodies. It is also the final hurdle for men: if males--as well as trans-gender individuals--can freely offer themselves up as professional sex providers, then they have true freedom with their bodies as well.

For too many Americans, sex is the means to an end, an end that justifies whatever means are required to attain it. This is true of men who just want to feel the "power" of giving someone money to have sex with them, but also women who use sex to obtain everything from money, to business promotions, to the vaunted "Mrs." degree. As Marlene Dietrich wrote, "Sex. In America an obsession. In other parts of the world a fact." (Marlene Dietrich's ABC, "Sex;" 1962.)

It doesn't have to be that way.

Carol Leigh, aka Scarlot Harlot, in her 2004 book Unrepentant Whore (throughout the book, but especially p.p. 192-201), makes what is both a statement of belief about and a strong argument for prostitution: that those who are good at it, whose purpose is more than simply taking money from strangers for sex, are providing a sacred and necessary service which helps the sex worker and her client feel better about themselves. Studies in Great Britain, Canada, New Zealand, the United States, and Australia seem to back up her theory, at least concerning the self-esteem found in the non-streetwalker variety of professional sex provider (Weitzer, op. cit., p.p. 944-45).

This is not the poor, strung-out streetwalker, working eighteen to twenty hour days at the side of the road to satisfy her drug habit. Neither is it the illegal brothel and massage parlor workers who, under circumstances of coercion and/or fraud, are forced to work in less than ideal circumstances in this country. No, these are the escorts, bar girls, massage parlor and brothel workers, who are forgotten or ignored in the alarmist studies that one sees published in the mainstream media about trafficking, drug use, and STD's.

Most sex workers--including many of the 80-85 percent of professional sex providers who are not streetwalkers--are highly intelligent and have highly marketable skills, including college degrees, sometimes even advanced degrees. In fact, to be a highly successful escort in the long term, you have to be very bright, well read, and empathetic. At the level of escort, many men do not simply want sex; they want companionship, even if only for a moment . They want the conversation, excitement, and the intellectual challenge that is so often missing for them at home, not to exploit the professional sex provider. In other words, they want a hetaera, a courtesan; an Aspasia to their Pericles.

And it is in demeaning the professional sex provider that we reach the real nexus of many problems in American society: violence, especially against women ; equality, for women and everyone else in America; freedom, to live life as you want to, provided it causes no harm to others; basic human rights to food, shelter, clothing, medicine, education, a job that pays you a living wage that permits the attainment of these without having to work like a slave; and the right to better your own life as well as the lives of your children.

One of the worst parts of the current programs of fighting against prostitution in the United States is that they automatically assume the victimhood of the professional sex provider, making them a form of second class citizen. On top of that, and in a supreme piece of cruel irony, society in general, and both media and the government in particular, go out of their way to make the professional sex provider into a victim, even if they weren't one before.

Having prostitution legalized and controlled, e.g. Nevada (heavily regulated brothels in a very limited area) does not alone guarantee the professional sex provider will be shielded from many of the primary problems with prostitution that we see in America today: lack of protection from coercion, exploitation and other criminal acts against the professional sex providers.

In fact, the Nevada system effectively establishes the government as a "super-pimp," limiting consensual sex for money to a tightly controlled, over-priced, barracks-like environment more suited to the Nazi blitzmadchen of World War II than a modern democracy. Men like the late Joe Comforte ran the original Mustang Ranch as his personal fiefdom, exploiting the ladies working for him every bit as much as Al Capone did as a brothel manager in New York before he went to Chicago.

So, what is to be done?

First we must decriminalize prostitution, together with all other forms of sex work, and remove the moral stigma that is attached to the sex worker, from the exotic dancer to the professional sex provider. This means providing equal protection under the law--including civil liberties--for all sex workers. Eastern Europe's Sex Workers Rights Advocacy Network lists the benefits of decriminalization (I have edited it to make a rough English translation more readable):

By decriminalizing sex work, sex workers would:

1) Have legal recourse in the case of abuse by a client, police or criminal elements including street gangs and pimps;

2) Have access to social services including health benefits, unemployment, and retirement plans;

3) Have protection from sexually transmitted diseases by reducing the incidence of unprotected sex as well as having easy access to screening and other health services

4) Have their human rights protected under the law, and a better to have lives with dignity;

5) Last but not least, they would be able to choose sex work as their career of choice, or change to a different line of work later in their lives without bias if they choose.

Society would also benefit from decriminalization, because:

1. The incidence of HIV and STI [sexually transmitted infections] would decrease;

2. It would be a more just system, where everyone enjoying their human rights and civil liberties, including sex workers;

3. The corruption of police and judiciary would be decreased.

This means providing real equal protection under the law--including civil liberties--for all sex workers. Eastern Europe's Sex Workers Rights Advocacy Network (SWAN) has also provided a minimal framework for this idea with its Founding Principles:

SWAN Founding Principles

1. We understand sex work as the unforced sale of sexual services for money or goods between consenting adults. Sex work includes street prostitution, escort services, telephone sex services, pornography, exotic dancing among others.

2. Sex workers are human beings who have the same human rights as any other person. Sex workers should have the same rights and responsibilities as all other workers, and as every other citizen and resident of a nation.

3. Protection of the rights of sex workers is crucial for the effective reduction of harmful illnesses such as HIV/AIDS, hepatitis B and others STIs, and the efforts at prevention and treatment of these illnesses at all levels-individual, community and national. To ensure protection of these rights, sex workers should be able to work legally. [Author's Note: Bruce Lambert, "AIDS in Prostitutes, Not as Prevalent as Believed, Studies Find;" (New York Times, September 20, 1988). Numerous sources in the U.S. confirm the fact that prostitutes do not spread AIDS. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, HIV/AIDS Surveillance Report, 1993; 5(no. 3): pp. 7, 11, 17. 123 of 202,665 adult and adolescent males diagnosed with AIDS since 1981 denied any risk factor but sex with a female prostitute, or 0.04% (that's 4/100 of 1%) of adult/adolescent males diagnosed with AIDS. From " Prostitution in the United States; The Statistics. "]

4. Barriers preventing access to health, social, and drug treatment services need to be removed to improve the situation, quality of life, health and social well-being of all sex workers.

5. Activities related to sex work between consenting adults should be decriminalized. All national criminal laws relating to adult prostitution must be repealed. All regional and local laws and regulations targeting sex workers to prosecute the practice of their trade must be repealed.

6. Sex workers together with other community members should have an active role in designing commercial regulations of the sex trade.

7. Targeted, pragmatic, and comprehensive social programs must be developed in consultation with sex workers and implemented to improve relations between the police and sex workers as well as between sex workers and the community at large.

8. Targeted, pragmatic, and comprehensive social programs must be developed and implemented with the involvement of sex workers to raise awareness about safer sex, safer drug use, and HIV/AIDS prevention, treatment and support.

I think that the best way to empower and protect sex workers is to create unions--with health and pension plans--for the sex workers ( Industrial Relations Journal 38:1, 70--88 ISSN 0019-8692).

I do not think that sex workers should be required to join this union. But I do think that if you make it so advantageous for the sex worker to join the union--obstetrics/gynecological, blood screening, and other health care benefits for a small co-payment; union cards with the professional sex provider's last blood test result date for fastidious customers; child care; drug rehab, social and educational services, including those for battered women; political action committees to keep police and politicians honest, and provide sex workers with a united voice; legal services for use against exploitive club or brothel owners. The sex workers' union must not act as a super-pimp: the union does not command, it serves. If you make joining the union sufficiently advantageous--and relatively inexpensive--you will see large percentages of sex workers joining the union out of simple self-interest.

One of the areas where the union should be involved would be helping with zoning and other regulation, for areas where certain types of sex work can take place without causing "problems" for the general public. For example, we probably don't want streetwalkers plying their trade in front of public schools, or a brothel next door to a children's playground. Some degree of regulated decorum and restraint should be established in order to--in the words of science fiction fandom--"not freak out the mundanes." (See International Union Rights: Journal of the International Centre for Trade Union Rights; Volume 12, Issue 4, 2005; ISSN 1018-5908, for more on this subject.)

I am not nor have I ever been a sex worker in any sense of the word. Thus, any opinion I have about the subject is at best not fully informed. However, some sex workers I have known fairly well--exotic dancers--with whom I have broached the subject of a union for protection from predatory (both monetarily and otherwise) club owners, and benefits like health insurance and child care, thought it was a marvelous idea.

The largest problem that faces sex workers in terms of demanding equal protection under the law, as well as an end to persecution by society as a whole, is that there is strength in numbers, and that sex workers of every description need to organize on a large scale, across a broad spectrum of sex work, for it to work. The suspicion that too often exists between exotic dancers and professional sex providers must be overcome. A union needs to be created to start the ball rolling for decriminalization and the other necessary prep work to establish this new system.

As I said before, due to the social safety net provided by the New Deal and the Great Society, we have reduced the need for women to use prostitution as a full time profession. One source gives the number as four percent of the nation's women at the time of our country's founding (Larry Flynt and David Eisenbach, PhD.; One Nation Under Sex; 2011; p. 5). This number has fallen to between two-tenths and three-tenths of one percent today .

Exploitation of children--sexually and otherwise--is nothing new. It is only within the last century-and-a-half that children have been recognized as human beings under the law, rather than property of their parents or guardians to do with what they will. When I hear political dinosaurs like Newt Gingrich call for making the children of poor people work, rather than maximize whatever chance they might have to receive a useful education, I ask myself: Has Newt Gingrich ever read any history that has challenged his elitist, conservative weltanschauung. The answer of course is either no, or if he did read such a work, he ignored the information contained therein.

I've run into Gingrich's type of history professor before: and they drove me insane--in one case literally. After a major depressive episode, I dropped that class, because my integrity is worth more than a mere grade. I cannot in good conscience parrot a teacher and his prejudices for the sake of a grade. It brings out the rebel in me.

Rebels of every bent, those of us who refuse to fit into the nice little pigeonholes society has provided us for their comfort, know instinctively when something is wrong, even when we cannot put a name to what is wrong. It is the reason that we became rebels. We do not repeat the "party line" for the sake of convenience, or to advance our personal agenda. We express ourselves regardless of cost: whether we are Thomas Paine with the Rights of Man, Martin Luther King, Jr., marching to Selma, or Carol Leigh campaigning for the rights of sex workers, especially the professional sex provider. We live by Bob Dylan's maxim that if you are going to live outside of the law, you must be honest.

American society has always suffered from a deficit of intimacy, or anything that might hint of it. A firm handshake (offered with hand open to show you don't have a knife concealed, a habit retained from patriarchal pre-history) has been the American standard, even among male family members. Yet, there are studies that show that it is our deficit of intimacy, our inability to relate with one another emotionally, our fear of real bodily pleasure and what is required to obtain it , that may be at the heart of much of the violence in American society. We know from multiple studies that human babies that are not held , that are not provided with frequent touches and caresses and hugs by their parents and others , do not do as well psychologically as those children who receive that level of physical affection. There can be no doubt that this need continues into adulthood. At puberty, this need acquires a sexual component. Failure to satisfy this need lies at the heart of many of the neuroses that affects human mental health, and effects the overall mental health of the American people to a very significant, negative extent.

The lies and misinformation about sex work in general, and prostitution in particular, clearly demonstrates the need of the American people to "grow up" in matters of sex and intimacy. A lot of people point to Sweden and its new laws of punishing the customer rather than the professional sex provider as the solution. This seems strange--or perhaps not--when 10% of young women in Sweden admit to having accepted money for sex, and 81% percent of the Swedish populace report being angered about the criminalization of prostitution clients. We are beginning to see Sweden's liberal veneer stripped away beginning with the suicide bombing in late 2010 (see Rob Prince's excellent December 15, 2010 article in the Granville Post, " Is Sweden Becoming Rapidly Toxified? " for more on this subject, as well as Stieg Larsson's "Girl With the Dragon Tattoo" series, which, while fictional, gives an accurate view of Sweden's crypto-Fascist underpinnings), as well as these anti-sex laws.

New Zealand has gone the opposite direction from Sweden with prostitution, with very positive results. A 2005 survey reported that there were 5932 professional sex providers of all descriptions in New Zealand , although a 2008 follow-up report (Report of the Prostitution Law Review Committee on the Operation of the Prostitution Reform Act of 2003) by the New Zealand Ministry of Justice states that number may be inflated. This same study states that 77.7 percent of all professional sex providers interviewed feel that they have become more assertive and confident since choosing prostitution as a job, and 86.1 percent have more money (ibid., p. 72, chart 16).

A recent study out of Great Britain is showing a similar result among women in Wales. These were women who worked the sex trade indoors, not streetwalkers. According to the study, most of them had entered the sex trade from "respectable" career. There were no incidences of trafficking or coercion reported by the women surveyed. Most of these women were "independents," who advertised their services on the Internet.

Professional sex providers are the source of only 3 to 5% of venereal disease in the United States . The rate of sexually transmitted diseases is twice as high in the promiscuous segment of the general population as among streetwalkers , who are the source for nearly all STD's among professional sex providers. A decriminalized system of prostitution, where the professional sex provider could insist on condom usage, would probably eliminate prostitution as a major vector for HIV/AIDS within a few years, just as it has in Australia ( Apr./May 2003 HIV Australia article "Two Steps Back?").

Last year, I wrote an article for OpEdNews entitled " Dignitas ," whose primary subject was about wealth and human dignity. Let me quote my first three paragraphs from that article, because I believe those paragraphs are equally true about every attempt by the self-anointed ruling class--the One Percenters--to inflict their values, fears, and desires on the rest of us on every subject from work to civil rights to sex and beyond:

" Dignity lies at the root of all individual worth.

Dignity declares there is a difference between being truly humble and being humbled, and resists the latter with all of its strength; it allows one true humility, but never permits unresisted humiliation; it defines the difference between making a place for ourselves in the world, and accepting one's "place" in the world.

Dignity is the basis for all self-expression; conscious doubt; privacy in our persons, our thoughts, and our homes; our private beliefs; our public dissent. It is the cornerstone of freedom, and the foundation of liberty. Freedom and dignity are inseparable components of one another. To deny another human being their dignity is to surrender any claim you might have to it yourself. And with that forfeiture, all claim to any freedom of your own."

We all deserve to be treated with dignity and respect, no matter what our station is in life. To quote the original version of the Golden Rule, "As you would have others treat you, you must in turn treat others"--Rabbi ben Hillel, The Talmud. Or to quote Jesus of Nazareth (for those times you run into that evangelical Christian):

" Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of my brethren, you did it to me." --Matthew 25:40; RSV

(I would like to thank Maggie McNeill , Brandy Deveraux , and Dr. Brooke Magnanti in advance. Without connections to studies and reports provided by these three amazing women's blogs, I would still be flailing away at this article, rather than finally putting it out on the Internet.  I would also like to thank Ms. McNeill for her kind input and constructive criticism of this article before publication.)

Authors Bio:

Richard Girard is a polymath and autodidact whose greatest desire in life is to be his generations' Thomas Paine. He is an FDR Democrat, which probably puts him with U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders in the current political spectrum. His answer to all of those who decry Democratic Socialism is that it is a system invented by one of our Founding Fathers--Thomas Paine--and was the inspiration for two of our greatest presidents, Abraham Lincoln and Franklin Roosevelt, who the Democrats of today would do well if they would follow in their footsteps. Or to quote Harry Truman, "Out of the great progress of this country, out of our great advances in achieving a better life for all, out of our rise to world leadership, the Republican leaders have learned nothing. Confronted by the great record of this country, and the tremendous promise of its future, all they do is croak, 'socialism.'