Judges Say Tax-Funded Groups Have ‘Right’ to Promote Prostitution

WASHINGTON — Two federal court judges have ruled that the White House can’t stop federal tax dollars from flowing to organizations that advocate the legalization of prostitution.

The decisions have thrown into question two 2003 laws that require non-governmental organizations (NGOs) seeking federal money for AIDS-prevention programs to pledge opposition to prostitution.

On May 9, U.S. Federal District Judge Victor Marrero issued an interim injunction in New York against the regulation requiring NGOs to pledge to oppose prostitution, on the grounds that it infringes their First Amendment free speech rights by mandating how they spend even the funding they receive from private sources.

On May 18, U.S. District Court Judge Emmet Sullivan delivered a similar judgment, the Washington Post reported. The regulation against supporting prostitution “casts too wide a net and is not narrowly tailored,” Sullivan said, forcing non-government organizations to “parrot the government’s policies.”

Austin Ruse, president of the Catholic Family & Human Rights Institute, called the decisions in favor of funding pro-prostitution groups “outrageous.”

Said Ruse, “This means U.S. funds may go to those who aid in sex trafficking. That’s problematic for us because it’s precisely prostitution that is instrumental in the spread of HIV/AIDS.”

The rulings affect the Global AIDS Act and the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act. While the court decisions do not challenge directly the provision that no federal funds may be used to promote prostitution, they find unconstitutional the requirement that non-governmental organizations receiving anti-AIDS funding adopt a policy that no programming, even privately funded, “promote, support or advocate” the legalization of prostitution.

Justice Department spokesman Charles Miller said May 16 that no decision has been made about appealing the interim ruling issued by Judge Marrero. Unless the administration does so, Marrero was to hold a second hearing before the end of May where he was to decide on a permanent order. At that hearing all parties to the dispute would be able to offer proposed orders.

Left-Wing Lobbies

Pro-prostitution groups hailed Marrero’s decision.

“We’re delighted that the court recognizes the pledge requirement as unconstitutional,” said Ricardo Castro, spokesman for the Open Society Institute, one of the organizations that sought the injunction. “The provision not only violates the First Amendment, but also hampers organizations in the front lines of the AIDS epidemic.”

The Open Society Institute is funded by billionaire investor George Soros. Along with promoting the legalization of prostitution, the institute supports abortion, condom distribution, distribution of the abortifacient “morning-after” pill, and the relaxation of drug laws.

Soros is also a major contributor to the Moveon.org lobby group.

Castro said that the suit against the anti-prostitution pledge was launched after the United States Agency for International Development, known as USAID, refused requests for clarification of how it would enforce the legislation.

“We produced a policy saying we were opposed to the harmful effects of prostitution and asked them if that was good enough,” Castro said.

The Open Society Institute spokesman said that USAID refused to say, instead advising that the proof of the acceptability of the institute’s policy would be in the programming it funded.

Castro declined to respond directly to the question of whether his organization supported prostitution.

“We work for harm reduction through outreach to the most marginalized groups most affected by AIDS, including sex workers,” he said. Open Society Institute staffer Sarah Miller-Davenport added, “If we are working with sex workers, it’s not effective for us to be condemning the people we are trying to help.”

The problem with USAID’s regulation, according to Miller-Davenport, is that it has a “chilling effect” on all of a non-governmental organization’s programming, partly because the agency has refused to clarify its scope. However, Miller-Davenport knew of no instances of the Open Society Institute’s being challenged by USAID on any of its programs.

Wendy Wright of Concerned Women of America suggested that Open Society and the other groups that are challenging the USAID regulation are far more supportive of prostitution than they admit.

“This regulation didn’t come from nowhere,” Wright said. “Groups like OSI have actively lobbied governments for legalization of prostitution.”

Wright cited the case of one USAID-funded non-governmental organization in Southeast Asia that sent a worker into a women’s shelter to persuade staff there to let in a pimp to persuade a prostitute who had fled there to return to the sex trade.

“These NGOs ignore the fact that women are coerced into prostitution,” Wright said. “It is not a choice.”

Wright said the Open Society Institute had used USAID money to produce AIDS prevention pamphlets aimed at third-world sex workers that de-stigmatized prostitution, “then distributed them in schools.”

‘Harmful Effects’

Wright’s complaints are heartily endorsed by a women’s studies professor at the University of Rhode Island who has been researching non-governmental organizations’ programs for sex workers for years. Donna Hughes confirms that “a number of NGOs, including OSI, have consistently treated prostitution as an economic opportunity for women without any discussion of harmful effects.”

The Open Society Institute, Hughes said, “put on several conferences for sex workers that were about empowerment and community building and said not a word in their agendas about helping these women get out of prostitution.” One USAID-funded program in Russia spent seven years, she said, “trying to build relations with pimps to get them to distribute condoms.”

Groups supporting legalization of prostitution are “very clever propagandists, and they claim they have to approach women in the sex trade in a non-judgmental way in order to get the AIDS-prevention message across,” Hughes said. “But in fact they want to de-stigmatize prostitution. They want to empower the prostitutes to negotiate with pimps for higher wages and clients for condom use. They are utopians who believe they can transform prostitution into a job like any other.”

The problem with that, Hughes said, is that prostitution destroys women’s lives. Quite apart from the risk of disease and assault by pimps and customers, she said, prostitutes are at great risk of depression and suicide.

“They can’t have sex with five to 40 men a day any more than you can without it doing permanent psychological damage,” Hughes said. “As for negotiating with pimps for better wages, it’s like negotiating with the Mafia.”

Steve Weatherbe is based in

Victoria, British Columbia.