Police Attack Consensual Sex
Picture this: 70 police officers, many heavily armed, assemble in a residential neighborhood. A police chopper hovers above a house in a suburb of Vancouver, BC. Months of investigation have prepared them for the raid they are about to conduct.
What is going on inside the house? A terrorist cell? A drug lab? A child porn studio?
No! Only adult men and women having consensual sex.
The home is owned by a 42-year-old woman, “Pinky” who employs several assistants to provide sex for money to about five men a day .
There are dozens of home-based brothels like this all over the lower mainland.
At a time when police complain about a lack of manpower and property crimes are out of control in the region, what worthwhile social outcome did this show of force achieve?
There is no evidence that the business caused any nuisance. Five clients a day on average is not a lot of traffic.
There is no evidence of drugs, outlaw gangs, underage workers, or even unsafe sex.
True, the madam’s assistants were Koreans working without immigration permits. But a few immigration officers could have arrested and then deported them. No police militia was required for that.
In any event, the Koreans were not the target of the operation. Instead, the police wanted Pinky. Why? The cops felt she was making too much money! That is what they said.
Clearly, preventing any real and demonstrable social ill did not motivate the police.
But the raid itself caused harm. Consider the various victims.
First, the poor taxpayer. Imagine the cost of the operation. Seventy cops at $180 a day with several days to prepare. Add the cost of a helicopter, and months of investigation. Total hit: $50,000-$100,000.
Second, the eight customers in the house when the police battered their way in. Their privacy was grossly infringed while they were at their most vulnerable; likely naked; maybe performing sexual acts. What a violation!
Third, the seven women involved. Their privacy rights too were wantonly destroyed by the operation. However their alleged immigration offences disentitle them to much sympathy.
Other than her financial success, and her use of foreigners, Pinky’s business was not unusual. In every major neighborhood in the greater Vancouver area women and men provide sexual services for a fee to willing clients.
For example, noted local madam Scarlett Lake has openly run a brothel for many years, giving interviews to national television shows and local newspapers. A highly articulate and passionate defender of sex worker rights, she is the subject of a recently released documentary film.
The cops allow some people to carry on their business, but not others.
Such arbitrary law enforcement is contrary to the rule of law, the basic principle of justice in a free society.
The federal statute defining the crime is partly to blame. Enacted over 100 years ago it prohibits all indoor sex businesses. The same way the law then prohibited all women from voting, all Chinese from free immigration, all homosexuals from having sex.
The idea that all sex work is deserving of prosecution is a false stereotype. No different than false stereotypes about women, Chinese or homosexuals. Only some sex work businesses cause harm, as anyone knows who is familiar with Scarlett and her operation, or the dozens of other problem-free brothels in Vancouver.
What causes the legal intolerance against indoor sex workers to persist when such irrationality aimed at others is now largely absent from our law? That is a complex question, but one fact is clear: law enforcers perpetuate the problem.
The police commonly spend big resources fighting people who are really harmful, like murderers, rapists and robbers. When they undertake a massive raid on a simple brothel, the natural inference is that a brothel is something really harmful. Only such harm could justify the police attack.
But the idea that simple sex work harms anyone is false.
The provincial Attorney General has the constitutional power to administer the enforcement of federal criminal law. He controls the police. He could start to dismantle the toxic system aimed at all sex workers by formally announcing that the law will henceforth only be enforced against indoor sex work businesses that cause specified harms, such as brothels that cause a public nuisance through noise or excess traffic, or employee illegal immigrants, or even where sex without condoms is performed.
Such a formal policy would eliminate the existing capriciousness in law enforcement and the waste of social resources like occurred in the raid on Pinky. The policy would have other beneficial effects too.
No longer fearing the type of raid that came down on Pinky, sex workers might feel secure to, like Scarlett, “come out of the closet.” They might demand social respect, organize into associations, fight for and obtain the same privileges as other workers.
Such a policy would also help the community. It would send the message that not all sex work is problematical and that indoor sex workers deserve the same rights as any other person.
Why have generations of provincial AGs failed to take the simple step to formally confine the enforcement of the law to sex work that actually causes harm?
Because the politicians fear powerful sex-negative pressure groups like the Catholic Church, Focus on the Family and others who have peculiar emotional needs that require the stereotyping of sex workers and other sexual non-conformists (like gays).
Sex-negative people have largely lost their battle against gays. The homosexual community stood up to them. But that required organization, affluence, and the absence of laws criminalizing gay behavior.
Sex workers have no such status. Their work is a crime. They lack any organizational might. Few activists defend them.
So indoor sex workers must still cower in the closet exactly like homosexuals had to do fifty years ago. And the sad raid on Pinky shows this tragic victimization will continue.