Canada’s Bill C-36 proposes the oddly asymmetrical arrangement of criminalising the buying and advertising of a prostitute’s services but not criminalising selling them. This, we are told, will help protect “exploited persons” and “communities”.
I’m not particularly convinced that it will work – if it’s illegal to buy something, how can it legal to sell it? – but it seems to me that at least the intention behind it is benign.
According to a collection of over 30 Anglican clergy, nuns and academics, though, the bill itself is the immoral component in all this: not the prostitutes, the customers, the pimps or the act of prostitution itself, but the bill. They have written an Open Letter, the most potent agent of social change known to man – especially when it’s signed by clergy. Read the whole thing but, to summarise: the bill infringes on prostitutes’ rights; it will drive prostitution “underground” – by that argument everything should be legal; no-one asked prostitutes what they wanted – better not ask this ex-prostitute, and – now we get to the nub of the matter – poverty compels women to become prostitutes, so it’s all the Harper government’s fault for not ushering in Instant Utopia.
If anyone is wondering what the ecclesiastical solution is, it’s to legalise all aspects of prostitution:
Rev. David Opheim, who runs a drop-in centre for women and transgender sex workers at the All Saints Church-Community Centre in Toronto, says that prostitution must be legalized in order to make the sex trade safer. “You don’t bring about change by over-regulating and over-legislating and not listening to people,” he says.
How in heaven’s name legalising prostitution with its attendant horrors of sex trafficking makes any sense from a Christian perspective is entirely beyond the reach of sanity and reason – just like the signatories to the open letter.
The real problem, apparently, is that we are uncomfortable with talking about “unconventional types of sexual expression”, although “we like to do it”. By “we” Rev. Opheim must mean his fellow clergy:
One of the main reasons for the differences of opinion among Christians is that they aren’t typically comfortable with unconventional types of sexual expression, Opheim says. “It’s one of the tragedies of the ways Christian theology has unfolded through the ages. We like to do it, but we don’t like to talk about it.”
Those who have signed the letter all adhere to a dogma-free version of Christianity, particularly, in this context, any discernibly coherent standard of sexual mores – we well know how the clergy loath them:
“There’s a large number of people who follow a particular Christian doctrine who feel they must impose all of their dogma on everybody else. From my perspective and the friends of mine who have signed this letter, we don’t come from that place.”
As a rector friend of mine likes to remind anyone who will listen, the ’60s were not about principles at all: they were about everyone screwing around. The Anglican Church of Canada has finally caught up to the ’60s.
