My Project

Wednesday, August 27, 2014

Free to Prostitute?


Phoenix, Arizona, which has some of the nation’s severest laws against sexual solicitation, has put into place a controversial project that has drawn both praise and condemnation. For two days out of the year, undercover police officers go online and travel to red-light districts, in an attempt to snare and detain women suspected of prostitution. The police handcuff suspects and place them in custody, although law-enforcement officials delay arresting those suspects who have no pending warrants and no drugs in their possession. To those who qualify, officials offer an alternative “diversion” program that, if successfully completed, spares them from legal charges. During their detention, they are offered a variety of health and housing services, as well as a hot meal, clean clothes, and toiletries. Thereafter, they are required to complete a social-retraining course that can last up to six months.

This essay weighs the and benefits of the Phoenix program, in an attempt to determine its impact on the dignity and rights of those apprehended. Ultimately, this essay considers prostitution itself. Lurking throughout is the question of whether or not the program serves the interests of the individuals concerned and the society they inhabit.

************************************************

The police, prosecutors, and Arizona State University social workers who designed Project Rose (Reaching Out to the Sexually Exploited) defend it as an innovation in ameliorating the misery associated with the selling of sex. They recognize that sex workers are victims as much as criminals, they say, and so they offer suspects a rare opportunity to change their lives. The project’s designers hope that histories of violence, drug addiction, poverty, and sex trafficking can be reversed through timely, comprehensive intervention.

Detainees are not hauled to a police station. Rather, they are brought to Phoenix’s Bethany Baptist Church and questioned in a prosecution room where a cross hangs prominently on a wall. The social retraining course that follows is overseen by Catholic Charities of Phoenix. The project exemplifies the sort of “faith-based initiative” lauded by many American citizens and government officials over the past twenty-five years.


************************************************

Detractors of Project Rose raise three basic objections. One is that detainees are denied the civil liberties constitutionally guaranteed to criminal suspects. Although the women apprehended are not initially arrested, they are handcuffed and confined within the project’s “command post,” where they are confronted by a project volunteer and a city prosecutor. They are prevented from consulting with a defense attorney, even though they have been denied the constitutional right to leave freely. Those who refuse to undergo the diversion program face criminal charges of “manifestation,” which bring a mandatory minimum prison sentence. With these conditions in mind, Dan Pochoda, legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Arizona, complains that the project tramples over detainees’ civil rights. 

The second basic objection is that the program violates the Constitution’s prohibition against a government establishment of religion. Some observers find it objectionable that detainees are brought to a church facility to decide whether or not to accept the social services being offered, and that, if the detainees agree to accept those services, they must specifically authorize Catholic Charities to enroll them in its diversion program.

“Phoenix is essentially telling criminal suspects that they can go to church or go to jail,” charged Rev. Barry W. Lynn, executive director of Americans United for the Separation of Church and State. “The government has absolutely no right to force anyone into a position like that. These suspects shouldn’t be coerced into participating in a program that might not reflect their own beliefs.”


The two objections raised above are legitimate and point to fatal flaws in Project Rose. It is unacceptable for law enforcement to apprehend and detain suspects as if they have been arrested while failing to extend the constitutional protections that attend arrest. Moreover, to detain suspects in a church and then coerce them into undergoing a program carried out by a religious organization is tantamount to establishment of a government-sponsored religion. This violates everything the First Amendment implies. As soon as suit is filed against Project Rose, the courts must find it—at it now exists—a blatant violation of civil rights.

************************************************

The third and more complicated concern is that any program aiming to constrain or reprogram sex workers violates their basic human rights. This was the view of an editorial in Affilia: The Journal of Women in Social Work.  The authors, two Portland State University social-work scholars, argued that Project Rose deprives its targets of their dignity and rights as individuals. "We challenge the assumption that arresting (or participating in the arrest of) people 'for their own good' constitutes good or ethical social work practice," the authors claimed. "Rather, we believe that targeting people for arrest under the guise of helping them violates numerous ethical standards, as well as the humanity of people engaged in the sex industry."


Project Rose comes under similar attack by the Sex Workers Outreach Project (SWOP), which describes itself as “a national grassroots movement that focuses on improving the lives of sex industry workers by promoting safety, dignity and diversity in sex work, and fostering an environment that affirms individual choices and occupational rights.” SWOP rejects Project Rose’s claim of providing services to those it targets.  “Project ROSE and programs like it violate ethical standards in social work and perpetuate the idea that individuals who sell sex are not human. Further, Project ROSE frames its work as saving sex workers—who are stigmatized as scarred victims— rather than people with civil and human rights (the right to work, the right to be free from violence, the right to due process and much more).”


This third objection—that constraining or reprograming sex workers violates their basic human rights—proceeds from fundamental conceptions of sexual behavior.  These begin with the inherent dignity in all consensual sexual acts and the inviolable liberty due sex workers. Their dignity is violated, the argument goes, not by their livelihood, but by efforts to squash their livelihood and to remake their values and desires. According to this third objection, Project Rose could not pass ethical muster even if its church-state and criminal-rights infirmities were remedied. To be defensible, the project—indeed, any effort at thwarting sexual commerce—would need demonstrably to honor the humanity of the sex workers it apprehends.

************************************************

Officials who oversee Project Rose defend it as an innovative approach to saving women from a self-destructive lifestyle. By offering suspects basic human services (public health, public housing, a hot meal, clean clothes, toiletries, and a social retraining program), officials claim that they offer suspects a rare opportunity to change their entire lives.

Law enforcement officials such as City of Phoenix Prosecutor Aarón J. Carreón-Aínsa believe that prostitution is a scourge that society needs to try to eliminate. “If prostitutes are indeed victims,” Carreón-Aínsa concedes, “then let's treat them as victims.” But, “at the same time, they are doing things that are harmful not only to themselves but to society." To protect society as well as redeem individuals, he maintains, Project Rose is justified.

The law enforcement officials, prosecutors, and academics who designed Project Rose assume that the program can potentially cure prostitutes from the spiritual and psychological maladies responsible for their depraved lifestyle. This assumption rests on beliefs about free will. The designers seem to believe that detainees, in choosing to prostitute themselves, have already been deprived and perhaps become incapable of free choice, long prior to this intervention. After all, no one would choose prostitution. Although detainees do retain a degree of free will insofar as they can agree or refuse the diversion program, their life choices have been profoundly limited by sexual abuse, drug addiction, and the like. Ironically, it is only by circumscribing their remaining available choices that social workers acquire any chance at reversing the women’s hard and set lifestyles. Because these women have been brutally deprived of any meaningful free will, the program’s designers would likely claim, they cannot readily acquire it; rather, it can take root only if their thoughts and behavior are cured, so to speak—if their inner and outer compulsions have been removed and so no longer prevent them from making genuine choices.

************************************************

Proponents of Project Rose thus assume that it honors women’s humanity. They assume that prostitution itself, and not the intervention, violates women’s humanity. The project’s defenders thus proceed from three fundamental premises: that women who sell themselves do so because of abuse or harm suffered; that, in selling themselves, women behave out of compulsion rather than free will; and that, by redeeming them from the sex industry, criminal law, with all its force, is an optimal tool for restoring a measure of free will to the lives of sex workers.

More than just supporting Project Rose, these assumptions provide foundation for a wider attack on prostitution, its purported morality, and its legalization. Sprung from these assumptions, the project carries out more than an intervention. Essentially, it is an attempt to stem a social and personal malady by pressuring the individuals who carry out its most sordid acts. For its proponents, to defend Project Rose is to defend women’s dignity by trying to stem one of its most heinous threats.

************************************************

Andrea Mrozek, a conservative commentator and opponent of legalized prostitution, operates from these premises. In the Huffington Post, Mrozek responds to the Canadian Supreme Court’s December 2013 ruling striking down Canada’s criminal laws against prostitution.

Article on Court Ruling

Mrozek defends the coercive power of criminal law. She contends that law, at its best, morally instructs those it affects. It can teach either that the buying and selling of sex is destructive and intolerable or that it is healthy and acceptable. Mrozek argues that, whenever law sanctions sexual transactions, it licenses impulses stirring inside perhaps all of us. In particular, it stokes stirrings in those among us whose upbringing lacked adequate love and attention—those whose stirrings most need to be dampened. Law that sanctions sexual transactions causes at-risk women to “play with fire.” “By the time they realize where precisely they are,” those who give in to the temptation to sell themselves can no longer “turn around in the middle of the blaze and come back.” The blazes of destruction can be extinguished only by laws that staunchly prohibit such behavior.

Mrozek Essay 


Mrozek’s argument gets at the core of what, I believe, the project’s designers really intend—and what some of its graduates report. One, Elisa Cordova, believes that the intervention literally saved her life. “I had been beaten, I had been tortured, and I had been raped," she reported. "I finished my classes, and I focused mainly on what I wanted out of life, because I was going to die out there."

************************************************

Like Mrozek, the project’s designers believe that human dignity is protected rather than breached by the diversion program. So valuable to them is the program that they would probably, if required by the courts, agree to rectify its first two infirmities. In all likelihood, they would insist that they could accomplish their goals without violating the rights of those apprehended. And, without question, the project could be thusly reformed. This much was admitted by the legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Arizona, Dan Pochoda, who conceded that diversion programs shorn of coercive elements can offer sex workers useful services. Moreover, if those apprehended were not threatened with criminal charges, and if they remained free to walk away from the intervention, then the program’s church affiliation would be voluntary and not in violation of the First Amendment.

We could then question the virtues of a reformed Project Rose based on this question: Is it prostitution or its suppression that violates the dignity of sex workers? Behind that is the question of whether prostitution is the product of circumstances that compel sex work, or whether prostitution is a freely chosen career path. Compulsion is the absence of free choice. An individual whose behavior is compelled has been stripped of dignity, whereas freely chosen behavior is dignified behavior.

************************************************

Arguments about the cause and nature of sex work are legion and are often in mutual conflict. Given that proliferation and contestation, our view of the practice necessarily rests on our underlying beliefs rather than on indisputable data or argumentation. My own view resonates with the qualitative research recently conducted and published by Shahid Qayyum. His article, “Causes and Decisions of Women’s Involvement into Prostitution and Its Consequences in Punjab, Pakistan,” discusses the factors that lead women into prostitution. Foremost among the factors he discovers are poverty, debt, family and personal illness, parental neglect, drug addiction, marital violence, rape, and sexual trafficking.

"Causes and Decisions of Women’s Involvement into Prostitution"


I provide no social science findings of my own. Like anyone having done no research and gathered no direct experience, I can only surmise. I can say only that Qayyum’s findings support my presuppositions. My inexpert belief is that prostitution is the result of past suffering and the cause of further suffering. Most of what I have heard and seen anecdotally suggests that those (mostly women) who perform sex for money or drugs have previously surrendered their capacity to choose how to live, and that any free choice they might retain is only further circumscribed by their selling of their services.

I am not surprised that some sex workers claim to enjoy their work and the freedom of choice purportedly behind it. Dealing with one’s own dire lack of freedom must be unbearable. Denying such circumstances must be an attractive, if ultimately deceptive, means of coping.

While I might well dissent from most of Andrea Mrozek’s positions, I concur with her stance on prostitution. Like her, I believe that sex work is a horrifying practice that anyone would do well, if at all possible, to avoid or escape. No one should be coerced, but everyone deserves the opportunity to get out. Now, I don’t know how reliably law actually helps victims avoid or escape the profession’s clutches. I would assume that, in practice, law-enforcement efforts to wipe out prostitution—efforts such as Project Rose—sometimes treat suspects harshly and tread on their civil rights. On those grounds, Project Rose is intolerable. But a remedied Project Rose would stand as an example of law helping to restore dignity to human beings whose lives lie in tatters.









Wednesday, August 13, 2014

Praying for Peace

Perfect Whole is a smart, witty blog written by Julie Goldberg Springer. Reading Julie’s posts is a joy. The blog is always worth a visit.  

Perfect Whole 

About two weeks ago, Julie wrote a thoughtful piece, “Don’t Pray for Peace,” which succinctly considered what might be needed, and might not be so needed, in trying to reduce violent conflict in the world. In that post, Julie expressed ideas that echo many people’s sentiments. They are important ideas, and I wish to respond to them on a personal level. I hope that I am interpreting Julie accurately. If I am not, then I stand ready to be corrected.

Don't Pray for Peace

Julie’s post suggests that prayer is essentially a private action, one carried out in pursuit of “inner peace.” Prayer does not help generate solutions to political conflict, Julie posits; to the contrary, prayer offers “manna,” a sent-from-elsewhere miracle substance that convinces people—correctly or not—that their problems have been solved. Easing violent strife requires painful nuts-and-bolts negotiation, and an emphasis on prayer might well distract interested parties from that gruesome work. Prayer, like a drug, tempts belligerents to abandon the “excruciating compromise . . . that forces one group or another to let go or something they’re sure they need to survive.” Only excruciating compromise, and not grace, can propel one down the long, tortuous path toward peace.

I agree that prayer can distract from nuts-and-bolts negotiation. Some people use prayer to escape from worldly difficulties. But, I believe, to reduce prayer to escapism is to distort its nature and shortchange its transformative effects. Prayer’s most powerful effect is to connect us to the Source of All, to prompt us to surrender to the magnificent force of love that is the one true reality. Such surrender humbles us. It strips us of pride and ego and reveals to us the full humanness of the other.

Because intergroup conflict is ego writ large, fostering humility can only assuage intergroup conflict. Genuine prayer, as I understand it, in no way breeds tribalism and its resulting intransigence; to the contrary, heartfelt prayer enables us to recognize that we are one with our opponent. Negotiation requires patient, open listening, which depends on humility—the very sort of humility that comes from genuine prayer. Prayer should not be equated with the self-satisfied, “Godly” ethnocentrism in which many Jews, Muslims, and Christians wrap themselves. These “true believers” are but a small—if especially visible—fragment of those who pray.

How might the prayer of Americans equip belligerents in the Middle East to negotiate more openly and faithfully? Even with their hearts melted and their spirits humbled, Americans remain at safe distance from the Middle East conflict and so can easily afford its luxury. How exactly can our prayer impact them?

It can impact them in two ways, I believe. First, if love could somehow come to inform the attitudes of the rest of the world, then it would help pressure both sides of the conflict to cease hostility and begin conversation. The world is a small, interconnected place. Parties to the conflict cannot help but respond to outside pressure.

Prayer affects conflict in a more direct way. To take seriously my assertions here, you the reader must engage my beliefs about reality open-mindedly or share them already.

I believe that prayer—like meditation, lovingkindness, and service work—opens channels to the divine and brings it more fully and palpably into the lived experience of all humanity. Those who know the power of prayer generally believe that it does far more than bring them personal, “inner peace.” They know, quite literally, that the prayers of some people cause the divine force to impact the circumstances of all people. Prayer doesn’t humble only those who pray; prayer humbles humanity by bringing ultimate reality—peace and love—to bear directly on the human condition.

If one believes in the transformative effects of prayer, then my assertions are unnecessary; if one does not, then my assertions are worthless. To the skeptic, my remarks may seem idealistic, foolish, or perhaps even dangerous. Belief in such “magic,” the skeptic might say, can only lull us to sleep and divert us from the real work of solving conflict. The skeptic is likely fated to see prayer only as part of the problem rather than part of the solution. I would respond, respectfully, that most of us who pray in no way see ourselves as escaping from the world. Quite the opposite. Prayer’s utility, I suppose, remains in the eye of the beholder.






Saturday, August 9, 2014

Marriage in Utah


This past Tuesday, Utah became the first state to seek a U.S. Supreme Court ruling on a law banning same-sex marriage. That state’s attorney general is hoping that the Court will reverse a ruling by the Tenth’s Circuit Court of Appeals. That ruling had struck down an amendment to Utah’s constitution limiting marriage to opposite-sex couples.

Let us consider how Utah explains its underlying position. And, as generously as possible, let us consider what to make of it.

In its petition seeking Supreme Court review, Utah appeals to the political prerogative of its citizens and their elected representatives to legislate marriage policy. The petition contends that the Tenth Circuit’s ruling “deprives Utah citizens of the ‘fundamental right’ to ‘act through a lawful electoral process’” to enact a statute reflecting their moral convictions. In that stance, we can hear echoes of the centuries-old assertion that, because of their distinctive moral views, Utahns deserve a measure of political autonomy. To the federalists on SCOTUS, this claim may be compelling. Who are the federal courts to tell the people of Utah that their moral convictions may not be encoded into law?

Utahns’ moral views are at the heart of the complaint, the petition asserts. What are those views? Purportedly, that the vast majority of Utahns understand marriage differently from how others do. According to the petition, the underlying issue is not quite what it seems. The issue is not that one or the other side of the marriage issue favors equal treatment under law, but that the sides hold divergent concepts of what marriage is and what it does. Allegedly, Utahns’ view of marriage does not hinge on the exclusive validity of opposite-sex unions per se. To be valid, they believe, marriage needs to do something more than bring together a man and woman.

What is it that renders a marriage moral and legitimate? According to the petition, morality and legitimacy are matters of how marriage functions in society. The function of good and genuine marriages is not to bring happiness or wellbeing to adults. Marriages do not exist to make people’s lives fuller and richer. Utahns allegedly reject the idea that “mere loving relationships” of any sort are the rightful basis for state-sanctioned union.

In rejecting this so-called “adult-centric view,” Utahans supposedly insist that marriage be “biologically based, primarily child-centered, and [possessing] a conjugal meaning.” The “primary purpose” of their concept of marriage lies in “uniting every child to his or her biological mother and father.” The brief maintains that Utahans have historically and consistently subscribed to the “child-centric” concept, while the adult-centric view has remained foreign to Utah’s culture.

The core of the state’s constitutional claim is that “the people of the state of Utah retain the right to create laws recognizing their own deeply-held beliefs.” And, more specifically, the petition insists that “Utah has long exercised its power to define marriage.” Because “the definition and regulation of marriage” historically “has been treated as being within the authority and realm of the separate States,” the state of Utah is entitled to make marriage policy consonant with the values embraced continuously by its popular majority—values that preclude the legalization of non-conjugal marriage.

Utah's Petition for a Writ of Certiorari 


Let’s put aside Utah’s claim that sexual minorities do not deserve constitutional protection, that the Fourteenth Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause does not apply to marriage, and that there is no fundamental right to marry an adult of one’s choosing. Let’s instead open-mindedly consider Utah’s celebration of “child-centric” marriage. How might marriage conform to that principle? Does it ever actually do so? Might Utahns possibly adhere to it?

Creating an optimal family setting for any children present seems like a good thing. But how can we anticipate the conditions that would best serve children? Having two parents present would seem useful, but single parents often provide wonderful upbringings, especially with other loving adults around. Perhaps we could require an examination for mental fitness. Perhaps we could demand that prospective parents demonstrate a history of responsible behavior. Perhaps a minimum family income is in order. But none of these seems either necessary or sufficient for providing a loving, caring upbringing. Nor does the presence of a mother and a father, despite religious conservatives’ claims to the contrary. Anyone who has spent time with same-sex parents and their children knows this first hand.

It seems difficult at best to anticipate the optimal circumstances in which to raise children. Formulas for doing so are woefully inadequate. Utah’s formula certainly falls short, as it would—and historically has—permitted the raising of children in fundamentalist communities, with charismatic leaders, where personal boundaries are violated as a matter of course. Can we even take Utah at face value when it talks about “child-centricity”?

Exactly how far would Utah be prepared to go to ensure that marriages be “biologically based, primarily child-centered, and [possessing] a conjugal meaning”? Would the state be ready to require that wives be of childbearing age? Would the state require prospective couples to sign forms requiring them to attempt to bear children? Would the state dissolve infertile marriages? Would it set a mandatory minimum—seven, say—of children to be generated by every couple? Would it penalize couples who failed to meet these requirements?

Indeed, it is unlikely that many Utahns themselves would adhere to such a formula—as opposed to requiring others to conform to it. Indeed, would most residents of any state ever be willing honestly to forego marriage as a “mere loving relationship” and instead choose spouses solely for their reproductive capacity? Are many Utahns eager, all declarations aside, to ignore interpersonal chemistry and/or romantic attachment when choosing a partner? It seems doubtful. It seems much more likely that Utah is looking simply to ban same-sex marriages.

We owe it to Utah to take seriously its claims that its residents recognize a conception of marriage entirely different from what most Americans accept. But those claims, under scrutiny, prove spurious.

Monday, August 4, 2014

My Politics Problem


I have a problem with reading and processing politics. Its effects on me can be devastating.

I love to think about events in the outside world. I love to discuss politics, society, and law with friends, to write about them, and to teach about them. I tend to focus on worldviews different from my own, especially when I write. I seek to cultivate intellectual rigor and flexibility in my students. All this is worth my time, and I do it voraciously.

The health of the world depends on people thinking critically, I believe—breaking down ideas, considers counterarguments, and reaching provisional conclusions that can be amended or scrapped. Through teaching and writing about socio-politics, I guide others through this process. I contribute to the world by helping people learn to process ideas in ways that open up intellectual space. New socio-political opportunities arise when people think open-mindedly, rigorously, and creatively. I encourage students to approach history, including current history, with humility. By respectfully considering others’ conclusions, students fertilize their intellectual environment. They help change the world by thinking clearly and flexibly.

I am not a casual person. I respond to everything I do with emotional intensity. Observing politics and society is no exception.

Much as world events bring me pleasure, they also cause me distress. Political issues elicit powerful emotions in me, as they do in many people. Besides becoming inspired, I also become disgusted, desperate, and enraged. These emotions have value: they motivate people to repair institutions and achieve social justice. But, in teaching students to see beyond human differences, tumult harms me more than helps me.

I am an observer and converser, not an activist. Desperation interferes with humble reflection and discussion; it obstructs my ability to teach critical thinking. My writing, which focuses on belief systems different from mine, especially suffers when I feel enraged. Although these powerful emotions sometimes prompt spirited discussion, they can cause me to act in ways that hardly benefit me or the people who come into contact with me.

Moment to moment, I aim to cultivate serenity and flexibility, and my political rage drives me toward resentment and anger. Rage drives me to speak sharply and sow discord. Reading about political issues sparks my inner monster. I cannot teach effectively when I’m in monster mode.

My work in the world depends not only on broadmindedness but also on equanimity. Spiritual as well as intellectual wellbeing is paramount. Whenever I take in national and world news, I struggle to maintain gratitude and mindfulness.

To maintain equanimity, I periodically tune out the socio-political world. I’m not necessarily happy about this. My line of work depends on my reading and processing events in the outside world. But I am most dedicated to enacting love, and I love less when I argue more. And so, at times, I consciously remain unconscious of world events.

Still, I remain a compulsive consumer of politics. I cannot abstain for long.

My challenge lies in integrating my primary imperatives. How do I pursue excellence in all its aspects? How do I emotionally engage political and social events and still teach and write about them effectively? How do I consider national and international conflict in ways that open up space rather than shut it down?

To be sure, I do manage to integrate these tasks. My students and readers express satisfaction. But I could do a better job.