Today on Listen Up – Sex for Sale – a new court challenge aims to have prostitution decriminalized.
It’s
been called the world’s oldest profession – and
while most
societies stigmatize prostitution; cultural attitudes towards the
selling of sex range from the death penalty to sex workers being
licensed, unionized, and even paying taxes.
In Canada,
prostitution is, technically, legal. But communicating for the purposes
of prostitution, living off the avails of prostitution, and keeping a
common bawdy house are not. And that makes sex-for-sale unnecessarily
dangerous according to a new group that’s mounting a
constitutional
challenge to decriminalize prostitution.
We’ll look into the grim
realities of the sex trade today, and hear from people who work with
prostitutes and sex workers and also hear from a woman who left a
lifestyle of drugs and prostitution.
THE ELIZABETH FRY SOCIETY
– HAMILTON BRANCH www.elizabethfry.ca
Toll Free: 1.866.216.3379
Leanne Kilby is the Executive Director of the Elizabeth Fry Society
Hamilton Branch.
Maggie Smit is the STARS Coordinator at the Elizabeth Fry Society
Hamilton Branch.
Amit Thakore is an Osgoode Hall/York University Law Student and part of
a volunteer effort - The Safe Haven Legal Team - bringing a
Constitutional challenge to Ontario's Supreme Court regarding the sex
trade. While prostitution itself is technically legal in Canada, almost
everything surrounding it is not. Amit and his colleagues say that
decriminalizing prostitution will help keep sex trade workers safe.
When Winnipeg Police and Manitoba Justice established a John School
Program for the clients of local prostitutes, they approached the
Salvation Army to administer the programme. A year later,
they launched the first Prostitution Diversion Camp. Dianna Bussey ran
both programs, and today works as part of an international anti sexual
trafficking task force.
Listen Up went to Vancouver, BC where Sue Todd and Jennifer Harmenzon
are creating a “sacred space” amidst the brokenness
that surrounds them in the Downtown East Side.
“To create sacred spaces and invite a broken world
to experience God’s extravagant love and grace.”
The heart of Linwood House Ministries (LHM) is sacred space. Whether we
are creating a home for women transitioning out of a lifestyle of drug
abuse and prostitution, bringing women to our ministry home on the
Sunshine Coast, taking teams of women around the world to minister to
other women, or creating a place of rest and beauty in the downtown
eastside (dtes)…….we believe and know that beauty
draws the heart to hope. And where there is hope, there is healing and
transformation.
We also believe that healing and transformation happens best in
relationship with others who are willing to walk the journey of life
with you. And so we are a ministry that is not program based, but
rather relationship based.
Three years ago, LHM partnered with The Salvation Army and Union Gospel
Mission to begin something called The Journey. Every other month we
take up to ten women from the dtes, many caught in drug addiction and
prostitution, to our ministry home on the Sunshine Coast. For three
days we shower them with love, grace, warm beds, wholesome nourishing
food, we share the stories of our lives with each other, we build
friendships that last beyond the Journey. Through art, music, nature,
prayer and other creative outlets, we give opportunities for the women
to share and process the pain of their lives and dare to dream of
something different. And we covenant, in relationship, to walk the
journeys of each of the women we meet. We spend time with them in their
community, going for walks, coffee, movies, and simply just nurturing
friendship with them. We have in fact named ourselves
“Friends for the Journey”.
In the past couple years, we have felt leading from God on several
occasions for LHM to create sacred space in the dtes.
Isaiah 61:4 says this: “They’ll rebuild the old
ruins, raise a new city out of the wreckage. They’ll start
over on the ruined cities, take the rubble left behind and make it new.
You’ll hire outsiders to herd your flocks and foreigners to
work your fields, but you’ll have the title
‘Priests of God’, honored as ministers of our
God.”
Just as we are committed to the healing and transformation of women, we
are also committed to the healing and transformation of a community.
And we believe that it is the residents of the dtes, as they begin the
process of healing in their own lives, who will rise up to bring
healing and hope and new life to their community. And so not only did
we feel called to invest in the lives of women, but we also felt called
to invest in the community, called to be part of bringing light and
hope and love to a place of darkness.
Last year that door opened up, and we were given the opportunity to
take over a second floor space in a run down building in the heart of
the dtes. We would name it The Great Room, after the sacred space of
the same name at Linwood House. It is the place where so much of
relationship happens at the Journey and so we thought it was fitting to
bring that, in both name and spirit, to our new space in the dtes.
After several months of solid work, painting, donations of furniture
and time by hoards of volunteers, the Great Room opened its’
doors just last December.
Like Linwood House, The Great Room is a cozy warm space with comfy
chairs and couches, soft lighting and candles. There are books and
magazines and coffee and music and art supplies and a prayer labrynth
all created to inspire rest, to draw out beauty in ourselves and each
other, and to help nurture relationship. Our dream is that it will be a
gathering place for women from all communities to connect through the
stories of their lives. Currently we are open Monday to Friday, 10-2.
We are expanding our network of volunteers who want to come and hang
out at the Great Room, spend time with the women who may drop in and
share their own particular giftings. We have had several special events
at the Great Room, and are in the process of scheduling some regular
activities. Every Wednesday afternoon, we are hosting Freedom Dance, a
time of creative movement led by two women from a church in North
Vancouver. We also hope to have a weekly sewing circle starting in the
next month.
Missions remains an important focus of LHM. Last October we led a team
of five women to Bangkok, Thailand where we spent two weeks working
alongside the Home for New Beginnings, a ministry to women working in
the red light district sex trade of that city. It was an awesome
experience to have one member of our team a single mom who, four years
ago, was a drug addicted prostitute on the streets of the dtes and who
today is clean and on an amazing journey of healing herself. We first
met her through the Journey, and having her join us on a mission trip
to minister to other women was truly a full circle moment and one we
hope to experience more and more with other women we are in
relationship with.
This May, we are leading a second team of women, this time students
from Trinity Western University, back to Bangkok to continue our work
with the Home for New Beginnings.
As always, we are in need of financial donations to support our work.
People can donate by cheque, or on-line on our website.
As we dug into this
week’s topic, I had to ask myself, why should I
help make sin less dangerous? Because if
you decriminalize sex for
sale in Canada, that is what will happen. People
who prostitute their
bodies will be safer. So do I love my rules and morality
ideals about
sex more than keeping a prostitute safe? The dilemma strikes
at the
very heart of legalism. Jesus avoided legalism –
I’m thinking about
the Bible story where Jesus encountered a woman caught in sexual
sin.
He protected her from those who would have killed her, and said
“I
don’t condemn you. Go now and leave your life of
sin.” (John 8:9)
Could that apply to the constitutional challenge underway to
decriminalize sex for sale? We stop the condemning,
but do we gain
the voice to say leave your life of sin?
ORGANIZATIONS & RESOURCES
HELPING in VANCOUVER’S DOWNTOWN EASTSIDE
Here
are agencies and ministries that try and bring healing to 16,000 people
who live in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside – helping
the most
marginalized – women and children :
Kids Help Phone
(1-800-668-6868 or www.kidshelpphone.ca)
is Canada’s only toll-free, 24-hour, bilingual and anonymous
phone and
web counselling, referral and information service for children and
youth.
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On April 30, 2005 Lorna was privileged to receive an honorary Doctorate of Christian Ministries from Canada's largest Christian university, Trinity Western University. Lorna was recognized for the witness and leadership that Listen Up TV has provided in public messaging: "a leader in the voice of evangelical life in Canada."
