I realize I’ve been posting a lot of “issues” pieces lately but these things are bearing on my mind quite a bit.
Just a few minutes ago I read something I wouldn’t have believed possible in 2010. According to Alternet.org:
New Orleans city police and the district attorney’s office are using a state law written for child molesters to charge hundreds of sex workers like Tabitha as sex offenders. The law, which dates back to 1805, declares it a crime against nature to engage in “unnatural copulation” — a term New Orleans cops and the district attorney’s office have interpreted to mean anal or oral sex. Sex workers convicted of breaking this law are charged with felonies, issued longer jail sentences and forced to register as sex offenders.
How can this be? Oral and anal sex are “unnatural copulation”? What’s next? Arresting people who are engaging in the same “unnatural” acts in their homes? So.. the DAs, the chief of police, the police officers – none of those people are participating in these heathen activities?
According to Alternet’s article, many of the convicted are among the poorest of the poor. Most cannot receive assistance or food stamps to aid with their plight because of these felony convitions. If these women are forced to evacuate to a shelter because of hurricane warnings, they are required to go to a special “sex offenders” shelter where there is no separate space provided to shield them from male sex offenders. I would assume this means they also may not stay in any shelter under normal conditions. Their driver’s licenses have a label affixed labeling them with this status, and they must send out cards to all the neighborhood notifying them of their presence in the community.
Many of these street workers have been turning tricks since they were young teenagers. Whatever their age or circumstance when they began, I cannot imagine many, if any, of these women are working the streets because they want to do so. How are they ever to walk away from prostitution if they not only have no help, but they are branded in a way that must make it almost impossible to get a job?
Surely there must be a better way – a hundred better ways – to deal with this issue. I can’t even imagine how this is Constitutional. I, for one, consider it cruel and unusual punishment.
Heartbreaking.
No related posts.
I don’t understand why prostitution is a crime. Just ridiculous. What two consenting adults do is no one else’s business.
It is sad. If it is a law there is nothing to stop them from arresting people from doing it in the home.
I don’t suppose they convict the “Johns”. Probably not. Just the sex workers. Probably an easy conviction for the prosecutors. Helps wit their quotas.
New Orleans is a city of double standards. You can go to the French Quarter and get any type of “service” you like. Every knows it, but nobody says anything because too many people are making money. I am sure they pick on the people in the story because they don’t have clout or enough bribe money.
It’s a shame that those in authority try to make themselves look better by beating upon the downtrodden and those unable to defend themselves. I hope there is a public outcry against these authorities and their shameful behavior gets them voted out of office and removed from appointments ASAP.
This reminds me of Vancouver recently. In order to make the city “pretty” for the upcoming Winter Olympics the city took Draconian measures to get rid of low income renters, sex workers, and the homeless. Canada is mostly below freezing in the winter so Vancouver, being much warmer cause it’s next to the Pacific, has always had a high number of these people. Several tactics were used. The low income renters in the downtown core were simply pushed out when the cheap hotels they were living in were to be torn down. Little alternative housing was offered. More homeless. Sex workers and homeless people could suddenly be arrested on the grounds that they were mentally ill. Previously a person could only be committed if two independent psychiatric doctors signed a paper. Now only one is needed and that shrink works for the cops. In most cases the person being committed is never even seen by this so called doctor. Off to the funny farm, which in this provence is not so funny, more like something out of the middle ages. Once committed a person here has almost no rights of any kind. They no longer count in the eyes of the law and thus the law can do whatever it wishes with them. This practice only slows down when the psychiatric holding bins become full to overflowing, and then, more homeless.
Human “civilization” has long practiced branding undesirables. It is my opinion that in doing so those doing the branding really brand themselves.
Arafin
That seems to be really unreasonable and cruel for those women to be put in the same group as pedophiles . :(
(or did I misunderstand something?)
No, Manet, you did not misunderstand at all.
Sad.
Freemann
If I had to hazard a guess, I would say those taking such an approach believe that what they are doing is just.
Based, most probably on “moral” grounds that are justified by a twisted interpretation of Christian values.
How very ignorant, heartless and unChristian.
That is too sad for words. :( On a similar note, I’ve heard of actual *couples* in that region getting into trouble for practicing these so-called “perversions” on each other. Really. A man was actually *arrested* for going down on his girlfriend. (This girlfriend was actually setting him up for something else, but when he admitted to police that he performed oral sex on her, he was actually charged. With a crime!) Most states, unfortunately, still have these archaic sex laws on the books (eg. I think it’s actually illegal for Massachusetts couples to use any position other than missionary).
But, seriously? Is this really the US, or George Orwell’s version of the US?
The hypocrisy is staggering. New Orleans is rich in culture and history but let’s not pretend the city fathers actually think everyone is visiting their fair city to drink a Hurricane and enjoy some jazz.
They’ve made a lot of coin over the years not so subtly promoting an image of debauchery.
What’s really heartbreaking is that many of these teens that live on the street were victims of physical and sexual abuse and have no other place to live. Others were just basically thrown away by their “families”.
Ok, where to begin with my two cents or more? First old laws on the books around the country are a danger to us all.
Mike not everyone knows about any type of service available in the Quarter (guess some of us are a bit sheltered). Hers it is common for power to be abused, or misused which seems to be the case here. Jay I am not sure it is Christian values, but rather the politics that is pushing this. The DA, and out going police chief are under pressure for crime stats to appear a certain way. Leslie we are far closer or beyond George Orwell than most of us ever realize.
Susan true there has been an image fostered of laissez bon temp roule’ meaning any and everything goes, truly this is not a universal sentiment. Common sense has to exercise some control. (end of tangent). And it seems they are not exercising common sense, but exercising power.
Not directly related to the problem of the sex workers but on those rare occasions that I have sex in a public space I really worry about being caught by the police and prosecuted as a sex offender. It would impact my ability to work and to care for my family. This is an issue that affects all of us that enjoy sex regardless of our position in society.
It appears that crime with true victims is so low in New Orelans that the police and the prosecutors have to find something else to occupy their time.
I have never had use for laws against “victimless crimes” regardless of their nature. If any of the “Johns” or, rarely, “Janes” have filed legitimate complaints after they partook the plesure, maybe there would be a reason to harrass these people. But I doubt that there were complaints. Entrapments most likely.