Today in prostitution punditry

Should Canada ban prostitution outright, or go Swedish and target the johns?

There’s no preamble to the Deep Dive today, because we’re assuming that by now you’ve heard an Ontario judge declared the country’s anti-prostitution laws unconstitutional this week. Here are the latest thoughts on the decriminalization debate.

According to Sun Media’s Brian Lilley, there’s actually not much to debate. In a column bluntly titled “Prostitution just wrong,” he argues that the sex trade should be outlawed in its entirety, writing “The easy argument, from those that … is that you can’t do anything to stop the ‘world’s oldest profession.’ Well murder has a pretty long pedigree in human history and we still try to stop that.” He also says that no one wants their daughter to grow up to be a prostitute, which incidentally is also an argument for banning careers in advertising.

In an excellent column in the Ottawa Sun, Michael Harris equates Canada’s existing prostitution laws with Frankenstein: “Various parts of things that have been stitched into a monster.” Canadian society has no real objection to some one paying for sex, and that’s why prostitution itself is legal, but “as if to wipe a stain off the communion dress for bailing on the associated moral issue, we’ve put contradictory laws on the books” that make it illegal to live off the avails of prostitution or communicate for the purpose of selling sex. Harris says that in appealing the ruling the federal government would be saying prostitution is immoral, and if they’re not prepared to follow through and ban it altogether they should drop the issue.

Canada should look to Sweden for guidance, writes Benjamin Perrin in the Globe and Mail. There, the government has had success in aggressively prosecuting johns instead of prostitutes, and launching a program to help women free themselves from sexual exploitation. This model “recognizes that there is an undeniable link between human trafficking for sexual exploitation and prostitution,” writes Perrin. He says the Ontario judge erred when she blamed Canada’s laws for harming women, “rather than on the violent johns and traffickers who are the real cause of physical violence, rape and murder.”