Who decides if sex work is legal?

The courts, the public, or the politicians. Who should get the final word on legalization?

After spending a summer debating statistics and registries, Canadians have something a little racier to argue about now that an Ontario judge has ruled the country’s prostitution laws unconstitutional. It’s a debate that will stretch for years, with a planned government appeal expected to reach the Supreme Court sometime mid-decade.

But “even the Supreme Court should not have the last word on this issue,” says an editorial in the Toronto Star. The social implications of decriminalizing prostitution are “far too complex to be off-loaded onto the courts (which get relatively little public input or publicity).” The editorial argues that Parliament has to take up this issue so that citizens, at least by proxy, will get to have their say.

The National Post’s Jonathan Kay argues that letting the public in on the debate may not be such a good idea. “The problem with a public debate about the sex trade is that what most people know about it comes from movies and furtive glances at the prostitutes who work the streets,” he writes. As a result, the common perception of prostitution is overwhelmingly negative. But Kay says that there are women who willingly and professionally sell sexual services, and they should have the right to do so. “Of course the social conservatives are entitled to their offence. They’re entitled to talk about it and evangelize for their presumed superior morality. But hands off the law.”

The Toronto Sun’s Christina Blizzard takes the opportunity to take a run at the country’s politicians. “Compared with how some politicians wheel and deal, the way hookers operate is pure philanthropy,” she writes, reveling in the irony that “those politicians living off the avails of your taxes, off liquor taxes, off tobacco taxes, off the money raked in from casinos and lotteries are suddenly confronted by hookers who merely want to sell their own bodies … This government is addicted to the wages of sin. If prostitution-related laws are struck down, you can bet governments will be first in line to license brothels.”