Manuel L. Quezon III
Philippine Daily Inquirer

MANILA, Philippines – We are living in days when the Catholic Church has set out to basically nullify the Philippine Revolution, by making government the instrument for the propagation of the Faith. In all things related to sexuality, the hierarchy wants a return to innocence.

But when were we ever so? Take prostitution.

Prostitution is everywhere in our land, and this has been so since time immemorial. In the 1970s Nick Joaquin even wrote a short history of prostitution combined with a travelogue of the best places to find female flesh, circa pre-martial law Manila (he called it “Manila: Sin City?”). No success has been met in eliminating it. Perhaps the option left is to put women in control—not only of their bodies, but of the fruits of their labor should they decide that sex is to be their trade.

Samuel Johnson wrote that “In all countries there has been fornication, as in all countries there has been theft; but there may be more or less of the one, as well as of the other, in proportion to the force of law. All men will naturally commit fornication, as all men will naturally steal. And, Sir, it is very absurd to argue, as has been often done, that prostitutes are necessary to prevent violent effects of appetite from violating the decent order of life; nay, should be permitted in order to preserve the chastity of our wives and daughters. Depend upon it, severe laws, steadily enforced, would be sufficient against these evils, and would promote marriage.”

An obscure writer named William E. H. Lecky also wrote “Herself the supreme type of vice, she (the prostitute) is ultimately the most efficient guardian of virtue. But for her, the unchallenged purity of countless happy homes would be polluted, and not a few who, in the pride of their untempted chastity, think of her with an indignant shudder, would have known the agony of remorse and despair. On that one degraded and ignoble form are concentrated the passions that night have filled the world with shame. She remains, while creeds and civilizations rise and fall, the eternal priestess of humanity, blasted for the sins of the people.”

Now there is a commonly repeated and scurrilous piece of conventional wisdom that says a certain town in the Bicol region produces only two types of people: priests and prostitutes. This is, of course, not true, but it is useful to repeat it here because it calls attention to a disturbing duality in our country: we are famous for our Catholicism (in fact we seem to be held in special affection by Popes who see our nation as the cradle of a New Counter-Reformation) and our piety, and we are notorious for the plenitude of our prostitutes.

And, since this is the era of globalization, foreign prostitutes have been arriving in appreciable numbers, particularly Russians in the Ramos years, said to be much sought after by the Chinese community: one Russian prostitute in Davao did so well that she retired and set up a beauty parlor from which derived a prosperous—and impeccably honest—living. South Americans from Colombia and Brazil have made it to our shores, as have gigolos from the Middle East, reportedly favored by matrons.

Some might echo the philosopher Schopenhauer, who wrote that “Prostitutes are human sacrifices on the altar of monogamy,” and rightly so: in our local experience alone, most men find themselves in bed with a prostitute as part of an essential rite of passage subsidized by uncles and godfathers (again, a strange mixture of the sacred and the profane, what with sexual initiation probably farthest from the mind of the Church when it considers godparents), so as to prepare them for the rigors of the marriage bed.

And it can lead to a lifelong addiction. Wrote Simone de Beauvoir: “Marriage … is directly related to prostitution, which, it has been said, follows humanity from ancient to modern times like a dark shadow over the family.” As with forbidden drugs, is society best served by punishing prostitutes, their customers, or the pimps? With the same regularity as the passing of the Church’s liturgical calendar, politicians file bills in Congress to punish prostitution, or at least the pimps; policemen raid nightclubs when they’re not busy taking in protection money; and once in a while a person of note is hauled in to jail after having been accused of trying to solicit sex by offering women money.

Some police officials previously took up the cudgels for rehabilitation and not punishment as the official line. This was in the Ramos years when officialdom wasn’t as terrified of the clergy as they are now. A Western Police District officer was recorded as having grumbled to the papers that the perpetual roundup of prostitutes was achieving nothing because, unless they were caught in the act, prostitutes could only be charged with vagrancy under our antique Revised Penal Code—a charge that only results in a small fine and instant release of the offender.

The solution seems to be, as most successful solutions are, a pragmatic one. Questions of morality put aside, some (not all) women’s groups have proposed that prostitution be legalized so that women engaged in the profession at least have the full protection of the law and access to insurance and health benefits, and can operate in an atmosphere less likely to foster victimization and brutality. This is, naturally, a highly controversial proposal, but not one that hasn’t worked more or less successfully in places like Holland. A great deal of the abuse and tragedy that surrounds prostitutes and prostitution stems from the fact that so many people—policemen, pimps—make themselves indispensable for a prostitute to scrounge a living; remove these people and at the very least the prostitute could reap the benefits of her earnings.