Prostitutes and Pillars of the Community

A few years back, a renowned Ottawa heart surgeon, Dr. Wilbur Keon, was picked up for soliciting a prostitute. Unfortunately for him, it was an undercover policewoman. Well, Dr. Keon was a sainted member of the community and his sanctimonious mug was everywhere. No charity event was too small for him up at which to show, no fund-raiser ever turned down. Yessiree, Dr. Wilbur Keon was a godly man 'round the Ottawa Valley. He and his family attended our parish church and the bowing and scraping that went on when he graced the pews was beyond the beyond. Too lofty for the lowly Knights of Columbus, Dr. Keon was a revered officer in the Knights of Malta and he was to be found at every fellow knight's funeral bejewelled and be-costumed as befitted a king.

The reason his follies were uncovered and hit the morning press was because every "john" is required to attend "john school" when they are caught hiring prostitutes. So, an attentive reporter attended and there he was, smack dab in the middle of the class! Being lectured by a host of experts about the evils of hiring prostitutes -- you know, disease, drugs, crime..........that kinda stuff. The thing that killed me was the outpouring of sympathy for poor old Dr. Keon. I mean, the poor guy was over-worked and just needed a little "relaxation" and "stress relief" after a few tough heart transplants. I remember being blasted at a Knights of Columbus dinner by an old Valley boy just because I wondered about the prosititutes he was hiring. Did anyone give a sh-t about them? You would have thought I'd maligned Jesus Christ himself! "Back in my day, the police chief would have had a little chat with him, bought him a coffee and driven him home. I mean the poor guy, there was no need to expose him to the humiliation of john school!," this chap raved.

Me being me, I wrote a letter to the editor after a tearful Dr. Keon held a press conference to express his Jimmy-Swaggart confession about how he had..."sinned just this once" and caused such harm to his wife and family. And there she sat, stony-faced beside him with a murderous look in her eye. Again, I kept thinking about the poor prostitutes he had used over the years (as if this had been his "first time"). No one gave a damn about them. So, I wrote a letter to the editor in which I expressed sympathy for the prositute. "No mother looks at her newborn daughter and says her burning ambition is for her to grow up to be a street prostitute," I wrote. Well do we? Of course not. Naturally, because it was the sainted Dr. Keon, they did not publish my letter.

This all came back to me with the striking down of the prositution laws. I never could figure out how it was legal to be a prositute, but illegal to solicit?? I guess that law was written because so many of us effectively are prostitutes -- we get money for sex, whether we are wives or lovers or friends. I mean, you can't say that a respectable wife and mother who exchanges sex with her husband, boyfriend or partner for money is a prostitute, so it had to be legal. But now soliciting is legal. Not that I think that's a great idea, but at least logic has now prevailed. What has prompted this blog was a column I read recently by a man who said exactly what I had said after the Keon affair......"No mother gives birth to a daughter and prays that her daughter will grow up to be a street hooker." Precisely and absolutely. Prostitution is very sad and very destructive to so many people. It will be interesting to see how this all plays out. Forgive the idiom, but 'A Pig in a Poke' comes to mind.