Sex, love and commerce: The debate over prostitution

I was alone when the bell rang at my internship site, a church in a gritty neighborhood on Chicago’s South Side. I opened the door just a few inches, but the woman outside pushed her way in with ease. She introduced herself hastily as “Ms. Bliss” and asked for someone who wasn’t there. As I talked to her she started to push on the front of my pants with her hand. I pushed her hand away. She said, “It’s OK. It ­doesn’t matter that you’re a pastor.” Taken wholly by surprise, I ushered her quickly to the door and back onto the street.

It was an unthinking response. I regretted it instantly. The experience of being solicited was new to me, and I had no faithful, mindful script at hand—only fear and a shadow of hostility. I was afraid of the situation we were in, offended by her forwardness, even embarrassed by the fact that I had literally no money on me and could not have given her any for either charity or lust. Her humanity really struck me only as she turned south on Sangamon Avenue, into a world where cold calling potential johns looked like dangerous and desperate work. Who was she? How had she come to do what she was doing? Why, after welcoming all of the odd tendrils of humanity that reached toward the church door for something, did I have no kindness or patience for her?

Prostitution in America is about to get its close-up. This summer, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that Congress can’t require groups that receive funding to combat HIV/AIDS to oppose prostitution. Canada’s Supreme Court is about to decide whether to allow a commercial structure for prostitution, which is already legal in very narrow terms. Some European countries are years or decades into regimes of regulated prostitution.