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Sex Is Sex
Our story begins in California,
in a store catering to "adult" clientele. In addition to a wide variety
of "marital aids" and "educational" videos and books, the store featured
viewing booths. If you are unfamiliar with the concept of viewing booths
I suggest you re-visit the Madonna video catalogue. In the video for Open
Your Heart the Material Girl worked as a dancer in a viewing booth.
In this story however, instead of a singing and dancing bleached blond
pop diva, the booths housed women engaged in activities one is more likely
to find in, say, Madonna’s Truth or Dare.
The state of California has
become involved in this situation, claiming that the store was engaging
in prostitution. That is, the women were paid to engage in sexual acts
for the entertainment of a paying audience. This begs the question, shouldn’t
the patrons of the booths be named in this case? The audience is in fact
the "Johns" in this scenario, whereas the store acting as a go between,
is in fact pimping. Accepting this, is it right for the state to press
charges against the pimp and the prostitutes, while ignoring the Johns?
Soliciting a sexual act for money is a crime as well, and if there were
no demand for these services the supply would surely diminish.
Needless to say, our story
doesn’t end here. The store and the women it employs are of course defending
themselves. Their defense: It isn’t sex. Though they may be scantily clad
and frolicking like a pair of randy co-eds from my editor’s wet dream,
the women in question are heterosexual, and claim that they are not sexually
aroused. They were faking it.
[Insert your own woman-faking-it-during-sex joke here]
Should the state of California
choose to pursue this case, they will be opening a can of legal worms that
will haunt them for decades. The first of their troubles will be, for once
and for all, to define "sex" and/or "sexual activity". This could prove
difficult as the Congress of the United States has, as yet, been unable
to define pornography (I know it when I see it), and the President,
recently had a hard time defining sexual relations…. But I digress.
Should they choose to include
"play acting" or pantomiming sexual acts as part of the definition, there
is a monumental problem facing them. It’s a little town we like to call
Hollywood. If they choose to take the other route, and require that sexual
arousal be inherent to the "act", they will in effect be decriminalizing
most prostitution, as sex professionals rarely enjoy their job.
The obvious answer is for
the state to drop its case. Even if this was prostitution, and frankly
that’s a honking big IF, it is the most benign form imaginable.
Plexiglas separates the prostitutes and the johns after all. One would
be hard pressed to find a safer form of sex. Surely the police, the prosecutor
and the court system have something better to do with their time and taxpayer
dollars. At least I hope they do.
JM
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