Taking a poll on prostitution is probably the least helpful exercise by the government in assisting themselves and others to understand the issues. Top of mind response to polls can trivialize the topic. And that is what you get to telephone surveys. It is also why you get very different answers to the same questions in research focus groups.
In a group setting, skilled researchers can break down barriers to discussing the issues and then you can start getting thoughtful answers from people. Nobody in research work pretends that focus groups are representative of the total population. It just enables the researchers to be sure the respondents understand the questions.
That thoughtfulness can help avoid embarrassment such as the seeming ignorance of our Minister of Justice who said his new prostitution law is going to put an end to prostitution. It was a top of mind answer that he had to later recant.
Prostitution is known as the oldest profession because the sexual urge in humans is always with us. Let us hope that collectively we should never lose it. And what occurs between consenting adults in private is nobodies business but theirs. If favours or cash are exchanged, it is nobodies business but theirs. The state has no need to interfere in a free society.
And that is what the Conservative government does not seem to understand. The Supreme Court proved that they understood it when they ruled that the state was putting prostitutes in harms way with our foolish prostitution laws.
What can never be strong enough are the penalties for people who exploit the sexual services of others for profit. To sell the services of others for sexual purposes is reprehensible. There is no place for non-participants in the transaction.
It is because sexual transactions should be private. They are as private between a husband and wife as they are between two mutually attracted strangers in a pick-up bar. They can be a man and a woman, two women or two men or some combination of three or four or more. Do we have some need to condemn others for what we might not understand?
Canadians want and deserve a free society. We have a long way to go to really achieve that objective. Losing the stigma of legal censorship of our morals and sexual needs can be a good start.
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Copyright 2014 © Peter Lowry
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