Rescue Operations: Prostitutes and the Gulf Oil Spill

Time to get myself in trouble again…

Have you kept up with the gulf oil spill? Seen the pictures of oil coating plants and animals in the marsh areas? Read stories of the various clean-up operations? Held your breath at the latest attempt to stop the leak (which fortunately seems to be working!)?

What would you think if BP and the U.S. Government had said that the leak could not be plugged? That there was no way to stop the flow. That best they could do would be to capture some of the oil, perhaps as much as 90%, but the remainder would continue to leak in to the gulf forever. ‘Instead of trying to capture the oil we’re going to put all of our efforts in to clean-up operations and we believe that in any month or year we’ll be able to clean up as much as 10% of the oil that spills during that period and we’ll be able to help 10% of the birds and other animals impacted.’

Dumb idea?

This is kind of what we’re doing with rescue operations to help enslaved women. All of the focus is on the clean-up and none on stopping it at the source – preventing it from happening in the first place. We save 20 girls, but 400 (4,000?, 40,000?) others are enslaved during the same period*.

The answer, according to many, is that we simply need to end prostitution. Good luck.

In this post Tom Davis talks about ‘Sex divorced from the Love that created it.” This is perhaps a dangerous (and ignorant?) perception. Especially if you want to help girls enslaved into the sex industry. It’s all nice and everything to think about sex and love together, but it’s not reality.

If you ask a woman about sex and love you’ll get a long dissertation on love and romance and maybe a brief mention of sex with the man she loves. If you ask a man you’ll get “I Love Sex.”

For women, sex and love (and emotions) are all intertwined. For men they are pretty much completely separate**. And you know what? This is the way God made us. He made women to desire sex only (or primarily) with the man she loves. He made men to desire, and I mean really really really desire, sex with every cute girl that walks by. And God didn’t stop here, he gave men a nearly unquenchable desire for variety in sex partners.

This is why we have a prostitution industry. Why we’ve had one since the beginning of time. And why we’ll likely have one for at least another year or two.

In his 5 level Hierarchy of Human Needs, Abraham Maslow lists sex twice (and it’s the only thing listed twice btw) ***. He includes Physical Sex as a Physiological need at the base of his pyramid along with air, water, food, and sleep. He lists Sexual Intimacy in the 3rd level of Love and Belonging. In discussions on this, more than a few women ask why it’s included on the 1st level. Men know why. However, as intimacy, both male and female can relate.

Many well-meaning Christian men very vocally disagree with me on all of this. Of those who have done so publically, several have later been caught with their hand in the nookie jar.

I don’t know why God made men and women the way he did. Why he didn’t give men a sex drive similar to women. It would have made life in our society much easier. He didn’t though and there’s not much we can really do about it.

At this point I want to interject something. If your husband’s sexual monogamy is important to you and he is sexually monogamous in your marriage – you are extremely blessed! The title of a popular book by Stephen, Fred, and Mike, ‘Every Man’s Battle’, is quite an understatement for many men.

Reality isn’t very romantic, and we ignore it at our own peril.

Do you believe that we can ever eliminate prostitution? Reduce it? If you answer yes to either of these I’ve got some miracle holy water I’d like to send you (for a small donation of course).

As long as we have men in society we will likely have a huge demand for prostitution. It won’t abate. It won’t go away anytime soon. We can call for an end to prostitution all we want, but to the average horny male, that doesn’t mean a lot. We can spout all the horrifying statistics we can come up with legitimately or illegitimately, but they’ll either get lost in the din of other such horrifying statistics about a host of other issues or, more likely, dismissed as exaggeration and lies.

So what do we do? With this reality how can we more effectively alleviate women being forced to work as prostitutes, effectively raped, in the first place? Instead of saving 20 after they’ve been enslaved and raped, how can we prevent 200 (or 2,000, or 20,000) from being enslaved or raped at all?

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Note: None of the above should be construed as support for men visiting prostitutes - just as pointing out traffic fatalities should not be construed as support for someone intentionally causing a traffic fatality.

* I am not saying that we shouldn’t be helping women caught in bondage. We should certainly continue these efforts.

** Men do enjoy sex (and air, food, and water) more with a woman they love than with a stranger - but they still very much enjoy them, including sex, otherwise. And ‘very much’ is rather an understatement.

*** Maslow was, to the best of my knowledge, not in any way a believer in any Biblical scriptures and was likely a humanist. This is particularly evident with the top level of his pyramid, Self-actualization. However, his model does accurately portray basic human needs and behavior and does so even for Christians.

The Magic of 40,000 Sex Slaves

In the year or so prior to the 2002 World Cup in Korea and Japan there were sporadic predictions here and there about the numbers of women who would be enslaved and trafficked to meet demand for prostitutes during the games. About a third mentioned the number 40,000.

In the months leading up to the 2006 World Cup in Germany rhetoric heated up and there were thousands of headlines about the predicted 40,000 women who would be trafficked, against their will, in to Germany to work in Germany’s legal brothels. Churches, NGO’s, and other groups spent enormous sums of money to find and help these women. The German government allocated a large number of police, social workers, and others to help out.

Reality? They found 5 (4 women, 1 man). And the extent to which any of them were forced became questionable. The brothels all said that they had plenty of women willing to work and had no need of enslaved women.

Some don’t learn their lessons. Prior to the 2010 World Cup in South Africa a few groups, politicians, and one David Bayever, deputy chairperson of South Africa's Central Drug Authority, toted out the 40,000 number again. Some NGO’s, newspapers, websites, and ignorant Christians* picked up on it. A few NGO’s who work with children began their own twist saying that 40,000 African children would be enslaved into the sex industry to meet demand during the World Cup.

After being burned so bad in 2006 many groups and newspapers wisely shied away from 2010’s hyperbole so the number and placement of headlines was down significantly and many fewer groups spent money to do anything in South Africa.

But why is it always 40,000? Is there research to back this up in any way?

One Group, NotForSaleCampaign.org, founded by David Batstone took a better path with their ‘Red Card’ campaign. For 2010 they wisely steered clear of the 40,000 enslaved women hyperbole and focused on the global slave trade which unfortunately does have way too much basis in reality. They handed out their own version of red cards with quotes such as “The youngest pro footballer signed at 14, which is old if you're a sex slave."

Batstone has spent a number of years working with enslaved women and children around the world. Most of his hyperbole is, unlike that of someone like Melissa Farley, at least based in reality. While in his book ‘Not For Sale’ he ignores the numerous studies that indicate countries with legal prostitution, such as The Netherlands, appear to have significantly lower levels of enslavement or trafficking than countries such as the U.S., at least what he does include is generally factual.

While David and I may disagree about the impact of legalizing or criminalizing prostitution, we do agree on the harm of human slavery and I fully support everything he does.

And the final reality for the 2010 World Cup? Pretty much the same as 2006. Brothels reported more willing sex workers than they needed. Initial reports indicate no known enslavement or trafficking of adults or children.

CNN just reported similar findings in their interviews with brothel owners and prostitutes in South Africa. The prostitutes said that they were looking forward to the end of the world cup so that their regular customers, who’d stayed away from the crowds, would start coming back.

So, what is it about the number 40,000? Has someone somewhere done a study and determined that no matter what and where, the number of enslaved women for prostitution will really be 40,000? Is it some weird axiomatic number? Maybe some study determined that 40,000 was the number to garner the best emotional response in people? Big enough to get people worked up, but not so big as to seem unrealistic – at least without thinking about it? It’ll be interesting to see how often we see 40,000 with the 2014 World Cup.

One final note: Both Japan and Korea, hosts of the 2002 World Cup, have a Tier 1 rating by the U.S. State Department when it comes to human trafficking. This is the best rating any country can get. HOWEVER, my own research would seem to support a much higher rate of human trafficking in both countries than in most Tier 1 countries. I would find it believable that there was a significant increase in human trafficking for the 2002 World Cup. 40,000? Not even close. 1,000 or 2,000? Possibly.

* Amazing how a wild and unsubstantiated prediction one place became "The Facts Remain" that "40,000 HAVE poured in...". And we wonder why Christians are held in such low esteem. As Christians we should be the purveyors of truth not the creators of lies. Note added 15 July: The author of the blog I linked to works with a respected organization. I'm hoping that he will be able to substantiate his claim.

A cops death.

A cop being killed in the line of duty, just like soldiers in our armed forces, has always given me serious pause. Their death was very likely a result of their doing something to protect me, and all of us, and to make where we live a better and safer place.

The newspaper articles and TV news coverage always talk about what a great cop they were, how many people they helped, how well liked they were, and multitudes of other platitudes.

What I wonder though, and what is ignored by the media, is how corrupt was he. Did he make a little money on the side letting the local drug dealer know when a sting was coming up? Did she over-reach with forfeiture of ‘criminal’ assets and take a few nice things home for herself? Was he a drug dealer himself? Did she sometimes smoke some of the pot confiscated in a drug bust?

Or did he not do any of these things himself but held to the blue code of silence and watched as others did?

An estimated 30% of cops are in the first group and nearly all of the rest are in the blue code of silence group. Only an estimated 1/10 of 1 % aren’t in either group.

When a cop is killed in our state I often see the funeral parade. The coffee café I spend many of my mornings in is not far from our state capital and the parades start in front of here. As I write this there’s a parade of an estimated 800 police cars lining up to honor a cop killed this past weekend.

What group was this cop in? Was he part of the 30%? The 69.9% who kept silent? Or was he part of the 1/10 of 1%, the 1 in 1,000 who didn’t keep silent?

Very likely we’ll never know.

A former prostitute I interviewed told me about a cop she knew. I remember his funeral about 8 or 9 years ago. Like the cop being honored today he was killed in the line of duty and the accolades of what a great cop he was filled all of the local media. There was a story of his saving someone’s life and another of his finding a young child who’d wandered away from home. He had put in considerable time coaching a softball team for underprivileged kids. There were pictures of his wife and kids at his funeral on the front page of the paper. The following May he was inducted into the police memorial in Washington DC.

Her experience with him wasn’t so good though. He and some other cops had setup a sting in a local hotel and busted 4 girls for prostitution. As best she could tell she was number 5, but they made her an offer. If she’d give them each a freebie, they’d let her go. Compared to having an arrest for prostitution on her record and paying a fine that would have required servicing the same number of clients anyway, this was an OK deal from her standpoint.

But that wasn’t the end. Occasionally he or one of the others would stop by her apartment with the same ‘offer’.

She said all of the media attention he got and everyone talking about what a great cop and person and husband and father he was made her ill. “If he’d paid me like any other client I would have liked him, but he didn’t. He raped me.” She said. Several months after his funeral she found out that another girl had a similar relationship with him from a different sting and apparently a different group of other cops.

Interestingly she said that after his death neither one of them ever heard from any of the other cops again.

Tiger Arrested for Prostitution

Interestingly, that is the one headline about Tiger Woods we haven’t seen in the past several months. Tiger, nor any of the women he paid so well to service him, have been arrested or charged with prostitution.

I’m assuming it’s not an issue of celebrity because Hugh Grant, Charlie Sheen, Sen , and thousands of other famous folk have been arrested for prostitution.

It’s apparently not that only transactions below a certain dollar amount count as prostitution because Tiger appears to have paid less than Elliot Spitzer on at least a couple of occasions.

The form of payment maybe? If payment is of goods and services rather than greenbacks it is no longer considered prostitution? This would seem to make the most sense since it is also the measure applied to the most ubiquitous form of prostitution – guys buying dinners and gifts for girls to get them in bed. If so then I predict a huge increase in purchases of jewelry from Target (of approximately $250 value) along with a corresponding increase in returns of these gifts. “Prostitution officer? I didn’t pay her, I just gave her a gift!”

Such a fuzzy line we’ve created…

Bill O'Reilly's Prostitutes

“Amsterdam is a disaster.” Bill O’Reilly said on his show last night, “And they’ve finally realized it.” O’ Reilly pontificated about Amsterdam finally realizing what a failure their city policies are and are finally doing something about it.

O’Reilly promoted an impression that crime and social problems are soaring in Amsterdam, that the city now realizes it, and is closing all of it’s prostitution and coffeeshops. He also made mention of the apparent failure of their safe sex programs for teens.

Well, that’s not exactly accurate. Not even remotely close. Bill must be learning journalism and honesty from his friend Geraldo.

Let’s make sure we all understand exactly what Amsterdam is doing. They plan to close approximately 30% of the prostitute windows in the city center area and 22% of the over 200 coffeeshops. The bulk of these are in the relatively unknown areas of The Singel and Pijp. While they are closing some windows along the perimeters of the more famous Walletjes RLD the city said that they plan to leave at least 200 windows and very specifically said that they do not want to close any more as they believe that a legal industry is better for everyone than an illegal underground industry under prohibition. In total the plan represents about a 4% overall reduction of prostitution locales in the Amsterdam area (windows make up less than 15% of legal prostitution in Amsterdam) though likely no reduction in activity as many of the displaced prostitutes are expected to move elsewhere and continue working. This move by the city is aimed more at simply reducing visibility.

Now, back to Amsterdam realizing how screwed up they are.

As we’ve already discussed, Amsterdam appears, from every report published, to have significantly less human trafficking and underage prostitution than the US. The Netherlands has 1/5 the teen pregnancy rate of the US (34/100k in NL vs. 176/100k in the US) and also has about 1/3 the per capita abortion rate. The US has about 2 to 3 times the incidences of AID’s as The Netherlands and over twice the incidences of other STD’s. (I believe in abstinence until marriage, but the results of safe sex programs in The Netherlands and elsewhere cannot be ignored.)

We also know that about 50% more kids smoke pot in the US than in The Netherlands. Adult use of pot in the US is higher by an even greater margin.

As O’Reilly pointed out the government says that one reason for taking these measures is to cut down on crime. Let’s get some perspective on this. ALL of the following is based on per capita rates per 100k population as per the World Bank and US Justice Dept. The Netherlands has less than half the theft rate of the US and 15% less fraud. The US has 12 times (yes, twelve) the arrest rate for drug offenses as The Netherlands. The US has 3 times as many murders and 4 times as many assaults, most of these related to our war on drugs that doesn’t exist in The Netherlands. (And these don't include numerous deaths and assaults such as Tarika Wilson.) The Netherlands has 20% fewer robberies. The US prison population is 9 times that of The Netherlands. And The Netherlands has 32% fewer law enforcement personnel than the US. If the FBI, border patrol, state SBI’s are included they have 69% less and if military personnel used for drug interdiction are included they have 82% fewer.

Organized crime is very difficult to measure but according to what I’ve been able to quickly pull together it appears that the US has about 2 - 3 times as much organized crime as The Netherlands. More research is needed on this one though.

What O’Reilly also didn’t mention is that this past summer when Conservatives in the national government were looking at a law to close all prostitution and coffeeshops throughout the country that over 85% of the mayors, including Amsterdam, Maastricht, and all other major cities, very strongly protested this effort saying that this would increase crime and other problems. And many of these mayors are Conservatives. Nor did he mention that they also hope to close over 50% of the mini-marts and souvenir shops.

The ignorance of O’Reilly and his guests on this issue is a new level for him.

An accurate statement is that Amsterdam is very slightly tweaking their already successful prostitution and drug policy in hopes that they can further reduce crime (that overall is already about 1/6 that of the US crime rate) without increasing social problems (that are overall about 1/3 that of the US).

Amsterdam: Messing up a good thing?

Recent news of Amsterdam’s plans to close a number of brothels and coffeeshops (that sell pot) in the central district raise some interesting questions. Their purpose according to the plan is to clean up the unappealing aspects of their city center to make it more appealing to tourists and clamp down on organized crime.

The Netherlands, and Amsterdam in particular, have for decades been known for their very open tolerance towards personal vices that many other countries have, over the past 90 to 100 years, tried various prohibitions against. Many people, particularly religious groups, have been very vocal in criticizing these policies and have for years put pressure on The Netherlands to repeal these policies and institute prohibitions.

The standard critiques have been that The Netherlands policies promote human trafficking and drug use among teens and others.

As far as drug use The Netherlands is actually below average. According to a UNICEF study of OECD countries conducted in 2007 about 21% of 11 – 15 year olds in the Netherlands had smoked pot in the past year while 31% of these kids in the US have. 35% of this age group in the UK have and 40% in Canada. The Netherlands scores equally well or better in other studies. It would appear that the coffeeshops may actually have a bit of a deterrent effect. This sometimes attributed to Dutch teens seeing people stoned in coffeeshops and finding it unappealing or the knowledge that they can always try it later if they want so there’s no need to rush to do it ‘while I have the opportunity’.

On the prostitution front the city’s plans to close down some brothels is even more interesting. Every study I have read on the harmful impacts of prostitution in The Netherlands indicates that The Netherlands has far fewer problems than other countries. Numerous studies by DSP- Groep, WODC, Regioplan Beleidsonderzoek, and Intraval have found extremely low incidences of human trafficking and underage prostitution. Across a broad spectrum of other issues these reports say that continuing the current policy of legal and open prostitution is far superior to the problems caused by prohibition.

Some, including Saint Augustin and Saint Thomas Aquinas, believe that legal prostitution is necessary to reduce problems of rape. Per capita The Netherlands has about 9 rapes per 100,000 people while the US has 33 per 100,000 (all OECD countries with legal prostitution average 11.3). Since Sweden criminalized prostitution in 1999 their incidences of rape have increased twofold. Will this clamping down also ratchet up rapes in The Netherlands?

The authorities in The Netherlands want to trade in a real society that has very few social problems for a veneer that they think will be more appealing to tourists. They want their city center to look better and cleaner and they’re willing to risk their very successful and strong social fabric to do it.

One of the more perplexing aspects of this plan is that Amsterdam is already one of the top tourists spots in the world, particularly relative to its size. People come not just because of the coffeeshops and prostitution, which is for better or worse a popular draw, and not just because of other equally or more popular attractions such as Amsterdam’s architecture and museums or the Anne Frank House. People come to see a society that has so very successfully integrated all of these things. As one travel agent pointed out to me this morning, take away the intriguing Red Light Districts and Coffeeshops and Amsterdam will become second fiddle to a number of other popular tourist cities.

Will a 22% reduction in coffeeshops, which is the plan, reduce or eliminate the apparently positive impact on illicit drug use among Dutch teens? Will clamping down on legal prostitution drive more of the industry underground and increase human trafficking and underage prostitution?

I'm in no way a supporter of prostitution or illicit drug use, but I do believe in a certain level of pragmatism, especially when the harms of policies such as social prohibitions are so detrimental to societies.

Stay Tuned…

$4 Gas: Much Ado About Nothing ?

We're all atwitter about gas costing $4/gallon. The major network news shows this morning have all covered it. They and much of the rest of the media are hyping it as this awful terrible thing that will ruin our country. President Bush MUST open up the strategic petrol reserves to help bring prices down. We MUST increase production from our own fields.

Really?

In 1976 gas was about $1/gallon. Based on standard US inflation it should now be about $3.85/gallon. $4/gallon or even $5/gallon is well within a reasonable tolerance of inflation. Just for comparison, an in-call escort has risen at almost twice the rate of inflation - in 1976 she charged $40/hr yet today she gets $300/hr. Gas would be $7.22/gallon at that rate.

If only our Federal Government Spending had increased the same as gas. In 1976 we spent $371 billion. In 2007 we spent $2.8 trillion. If gas had risen as fast as our politicians spending it would now be almost $10/gallon.

Bad days for vice

Today came word that J. Palfrey, the DC Madam, appears to have committed suicide after being found guilty, not of prostitution, but of using the mail service to, well, mail things. Had the money she mailed been earned making porn films or telling old folks that they needed to send in $50 for a bottle of miracle water all would have been fine, but since the money was believed (she was never convicted of prostitution) to have come from prostitution (of consensual adults), well... Hers is the second apparent suicide from this same investigation as a woman who worked for her and was also a University professor apparently killed herself as well when her extra job was revealed.

Conspiracy theorists waisted no time claiming that Palfrey had not committed suicide but was killed to keep her from revealing names as part of a sentencing plea deal. She had over 15,000 customers in a 10 year period and many are believed to be fairly high ranking government and related folk.



This follows by a day the story of Susan LaFevre who, when she was 19 in 1974, got busted for Heroin and was sentenced to 10-20 years. This after she'd been told a guilty plea would likely result in 1 year probation since this was her first offense. Well, after a year in jail she managed to escape, moved to California, reformed her life, and over the past 32 years got married and had a number of children. By all accounts she did reform herself and has led a production life ever since. The authorities are saying that she now needs to serve at least 9 years of her original sentence though may get a few more tacked on for her little escape. Is this the best thing for society or her children?