Point of View : In Era of ‘Sex Sells,’ Why Penalize the Buyers? : What’s the point of prostitution prosecution? If a woman truly owns her body, she should be able to sell it.

S an Diego police continued a crackdown on men who solicit prostitutes by conducting their second vice operation in as many weekends. On Friday night, police arrested 20 men for soliciting women officers posing as prostitutes near the 2200 block of El Cajon Boulevard.

--Los Angeles Times, May 31, 1992

In San Diego, we accept that the police usually can’t spare the manpower to find the thief who took our car or the burglar who took our property. We accept that the police can’t come running each time a woman calls and says her ex-husband is threatening her.

After all, there are just too many requests and not enough police to handle them all. The underlying assumption has always been that the police are busily engaged in battling more substantive dangers in our society.

But, watching the local television news recently, I learned that the police’s idea of what does merit manpower is, to be polite, idiotic. The newscaster first reported that, since there was more room for felons because of the new Otay Mesa jail, the police are conducting a “sweep” to arrest those who solicit prostitutes. Then, we go live! (After all, this is important stuff), to the on-the-scene reporter who solemnly informs us that she cannot reveal precisely where she is (I told you this was important) but that, even now, as she speaks, the police have arrested three men for trying to buy sex from undercover policewomen. We then flash to a representative of the San Diego Vice Squad who jubilantly declares that those arrested will have to post bail of $2,000 each or spend the weekend in jail. Maybe, he adds sententiously, they--and future buyers--will learn that “we mean business.”

What “business?” Is my safety or anyone else’s threatened by a private exchange of sex for money? Some women have sex with those they love or those they want. Others have sex in exchange for a heavy date or a good dinner. And still others decide to sell sex for hard cash. Isn’t this their decision? There is much talk about a woman owning her own body. Well, if she owns it, she can sell it.

It’s strange that, as a woman, I can give sex away but not sell it. Because of this puritanical hangover, we have spawned an infrastructure of drugs, crime, brutality, disease and pimps--all necessary underpinnings when one makes the purchase of sex illegal.

(A moment here to reflect on consequences of another American legislative monument to self-righteousness: prohibition. Those consequences--the rise of organized crime and the lack of respect for law--are still with us.)

In a society that is engaged in avidly selling sex in all the media--commercials, advertisements, movies, videos--it is amazingly hypocritical to then penalize someone who tries to buy it.

What is the point of such prosecution? Is this really what the public wants their police and courts to be spending time and money on?

If we do have empty space in a jail, I don’t want it filled with people who are trying to buy sex.