Prostitution

PROSTITUTION. - It is sexual activity exercised outside of marriage, especially by women and usually for profit, with anyone who requests it. It is said "especially by women," because examples of men are not lacking; "usually for profit" because this is the principal motive. Not infrequently such activity presents itself in public forms and is even organized as if it were a normal provision of services. To such organized activity the name of p. is more properly given. Its fundamental characteristic is professionalism.

By virtue of this characteristic of its own, p. leads to quite different results. On the moral plane it facilitates, especially for the young, incontinence in the exercise of sexual activity; at the same time, however, it removes the dangers of seduction. On the health plane it can easily be a vehicle of venereal diseases.

I. PROSTITUTION AND PUBLIC AUTHORITY, PARTICULARLY IN ITALY

With regard to it, public authority has historically assumed the most diverse attitudes: from the most complete and drastic prohibition to explicit recognition.

In recent centuries the most widespread attitudes among civilized peoples were two: tolerance and regulation of the "house," and abolition of the same. To the second group belong: Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Great Britain, Yugoslavia, Luxembourg, Malta, Gibraltar, Norway, Holland, Poland, the U.S.S.R., Sweden, Switzerland, Hungary, Argentina, Brazil, Canada, Mexico, the United States, Japan, various States of India, South Africa, New Zealand, etc. To the first, among others, Italy. The surveillance service over prostitution was regulated primarily in Italy by the regulation of 15 Sept. 1860, then by ministerial decrees of 1888, by a regulation approved by royal decree of 27 Oct. 1891, by the new Consolidated Text of the public security law, approved by royal decree of 18 June 1931, no. 773, and by a regulation approved by royal decree of 6 May 1940, no. 635.

Current Italian legislation does not forbid the "house," but regulates it. First of all it controls its opening, reserving the right, for example, to prohibit it "whenever it deems it opportune in the interest of public morality, good morals and public order," and in particular it does not permit the use of "premises which, by reason of their location and particularly because they are near buildings destined for instruction, or for education or worship, or else near barracks, markets or other places of public assembly, may offer, in the judgment of the public security Authority, occasion for scandal" (Consolidated Text cited, no. 773, no. 192). Furthermore, it regulates the very life of the "house." Minors may not be admitted to it; for those of age it must be established that they are free from contagious manifestations of venereal diseases; for this purpose they must be examined periodically; moreover, no woman may be detained there against her will (art. 198). Males may not be admitted there before the age of 18 (art. 196); even afterward, they may not enter with weapons of any kind, or pointed or edged instruments, capable of causing injury, or in a state of drunkenness (art. 196); finally, in the house one may not organize "games, dances, festivities of any sort, the sale of food and drink" (art. 195). Above all, it is forbidden to keep or administer narcotic substances (art. 204).

The legislation of the various States - or at least of many of them - is notably changeable. Thus, by virtue of the law of 13 Apr. 1946, France passed from regulation to abolition: now, however, perhaps exaggerating the antigenic consequences, due more than anything else to a hasty application of the law, proposals for reopening have been presented to the Assembly.

In Italy too the abolitionist tendency counts numerous and determined supporters. The bills of Merlin of the P.S.I. and of Caronia of the D. C. are well known: although disagreeing on not a few points and points of no small importance, they agree in proposing the abolition of the "house," either in absolute form as would be desired in the Caronia bill ("The operation of brothels is forbidden in the territory of the State" [art. 1 of the bill]), or in a more mitigated form as Senator Merlin would wish ("The operation of houses of p... is forbidden throughout the national territory and in every territory subject to the administration of Italian authorities, 'house of p...' being understood as any building, apartment or other enclosed place in which two or more women practice prostitution" [arts. 1 and 2 of the bill]). The Merlin bill, partly modified by the rapporteur of the law Senator Boggiano-Pico, was approved by the Senate on 5 March 1952: approval by the Chamber is now awaited.

II. THE ATTITUDE OF THE MORALISTS

Even the attitude of the moralists has not always been (and perhaps is not yet) entirely uniform. Or more precisely: moralists usually distinguish two questions, that of the licitness of prostitution and that of its tolerability on the part of the State.

As for the first question, no doubts or disagreements exist, nor have they ever existed, among moralists. All unanimously and without hesitation condemn prostitution. For Catholic morality it is indeed settled that the use of the sexual faculty is licit only in marriage, and even there under certain conditions; every other use of it, for whatever reason and in whatever form, is illegitimate. In particular they add these further reasons: 1) because of its character of indiscriminateness, the person who prostitutes herself and the one who makes use of her accept from the outset the possibility of having sexual relations even with persons previously bound by the marriage bond, thereby adding to the immorality of the abuse of the sexual faculty the specific guilt of adultery; 2) the woman who prostitutes herself places herself in the occasion of adopting contraceptive or even abortive practices, thereby adding to the malice of sexual abuse the specific malice of onanism and abortion; 3) bearing in mind how prostitution is practiced, even where a regulation is in force, the woman places herself in the occasion and almost in the necessity of compromising her own health, thereby adding to the guilt for sexual abuse that for her own physical impairment. For all these reasons moralists condemn prostitution in all its forms. Nor does it matter much whether it is public or private, whether it takes place in "houses" or clandestinely. These determinations may, at most, add other reasons for condemnation; they cannot suppress those indicated.

The agreement ceases, however, when one passes to consider the attitude that the State ought to assume. In this regard there exist - especially there existed in the past - two currents: according to some, in fact, the State can or even must tolerate prostitution; according to others, on the other hand, the State must prohibit it.

The first current, which has its major representatives in the professors of the ancient Carmelite College of Salamanca (cf. Cursus theol. moral., Venice 1728; tr. XXVI, ch. 2, part 4, § 2), and is not lacking even now in some supporters (for example, J. Bricout, Prostitution, in Dict. pratique des connaissances religieuses, V, col. 863) is founded above all on two orders of reasons: 1) the authority of the popes and of theologians such as St. Augustine and St. Thomas; it is well known in fact that the popes tolerated prostitution in their States; now if rulers so sensitive to moral values have held an attitude of that kind, how can it be prohibited to other rulers? It is well known also that both St. Augustine and St. Thomas were tolerant. Of the former a passage from the De ordine I, II, ch. 4 is usually cited (Aufer meretrices de rebus humanis, turbaveris omnia libidinis: PL 32, 1000); of the latter two passages of the Summ. Theol. are especially remembered (1a-2ae, q. 101, a. 3 ad 2: Sapientis legislatoris est minores transgressiones permittere, ut maiores cævantur; as well as 2a-2ae, q. 10, a. 11 c.: in regno humano illi qui præsunt, recte aliqua mala tolerant, ne aliqua bona impediantur, vel etiam ne aliqua mala peiora incurrantur). 2) The other reason is that by prohibiting prostitution greater evils would result.

The second current, which has its most illustrious representative in St. Alphonsus (cf. Theol. mor., I, III, n. 434, ed. L. Gaudé, I, Rome 1905, pp. 678-79) and counts among its supporters almost all recent moralists (cf., for example, C. Frassinetti, Comp. della teol. morale di s. Alfonso, 8th ed., Genoa 1882, n. 154, p. 237; P. Scavini, Theol. mor. universa, I, 16th ed., Milan 1901, n. 768; L. Wouters, Tract. dogmatico-moralis de virtute castitatis... ed. altera, Bruges 1932, p. 26; J. Aertnys - C. A. Damen, Theol. mor., 11th ed., tr. I, n. 603, Turin 1928, p. 411; L. Piscetta - A. Gennaro, Elem. theol. mor., VII, 2nd ed., Turin 1934, n. 146, pp. 121-23 etc.) points out that, by admitting the "house" and regulating it, the State procures greater evils than those it avoids, when indeed it does not become the accomplice of "an organization which assumes the appearance of a public service to which male youth would have a right in order to satisfy an irresistible appetite without danger of venereal contamination" (J. Salamans, L'abolitionnisme, in Nouvo. rev. théol., 52 [1925], p. 553 ff.). As for the authority of St. Augustine and St. Thomas, they point out that the former had in view only clandestine prostitution: hence his words are abused when they are transferred without further ado to the meticulous organization of tolerance; St. Thomas, moreover, in the two passages cited, does nothing but enunciate the general principle of tolerance without the least application to prostitution; here too his authority is abused, by attributing to him an application that he did not make at all. Reflecting on the different positions of the theologians, one cannot dispel the impression that the object examined by the opposing currents is not always the same. It seems in fact that what the so-called tolerationists do not wish to exclude is prostitution pure and simple; in their view some form of prostitution seems historically ineliminable and therefore the State can and must tolerate it. On the other hand, what the so-called abolitionists seem to aim at is a determined form of prostitution, that of the "house" regulated by the State, that admitted in some way as a legitimate, however dangerous, form of activity, juridically protected and fiscally pursued. Beneath the apparent diversity there is perhaps greater coincidence than might appear at a first hasty comparison. Even the most ardent abolitionists admit that clandestine prostitution "will always be practiced and must be tolerated to some extent" (J. Salamans, op. cit., p. 553). In any case, if there is a divergence, it is not in the principle, but in the evaluation of the concrete circumstances that determine and vary its application. Both the one and the other hold that one must seek the greater good and tolerate the lesser evil; they would not agree in identifying where the lesser evil and the greater evil lie.

This divergence should not be surprising. The social repercussions of the tolerance and the prohibition of prostitution are many and changeable; they vary from place to place and from time to time; in the same place and at the same time they present different and complex aspects; they depend on the degree of moral evolution and on the economic and sanitary conditions of individual societies. It will not be surprising that theologians who lived in different times and places gave such disparate judgments: each looked to his own time; each considered things from his own point of view, with the limitations and imperfections proper to human nature, limited and wounded even in the most refined theologians and the most erudite scholars. This must oblige us to pose the question with great precision and not to bind ourselves a priori to this or that school of theologians. The question should be posed thus: what is better today, in Italy, with regard to organized prostitution? To continue in tolerance and regulation, or to abolish it? And the answer should come not from the authority of a group of theologians, but from a careful consideration of present-day Italian reality. From such consideration it seems that tolerance of the "house" can no longer be admitted even in Italy. Undoubtedly the house offers advantages for the common good: a certain protection against the spread of venereal diseases and against the sharpening and widening of sexual provocation; but it generates very serious drawbacks. First of all it contributes notably to weakening the moral sense: for many, in fact, it is not easy to distinguish between "tolerating" and permitting, between permitting and approving; whence they are easily led to regard as approvable what is merely tolerated in order to avoid worse evils; moreover the house enormously facilitates, especially for the weak of will, the violation of the norm of conduct; finally it makes almost inevitable the commercial organization of sexual abuse and the white slave trade.

In any case, however the question indicated may be resolved, it is absolutely necessary to distinguish between the individual question and the social question, and within the latter between clandestine prostitution and organized prostitution, and with regard to the latter between the principle of tolerance and its application; and in the application, between one time and another, one place and another.

Finally, it can never be repeated enough that not everything is resolved by the fact that a decree is approved or a law is promulgated. There remains to be carried out a whole work of vigilance and moral disinfection of the radio, the press, advertising, etc., so as to create the smallest possible number of obstacles to the correctness of ideas and to the realizations of the will. It is not seen why certain measures of protection should be imposed for the poisons of the body and neglected for those of the spirit. Still less can it be said that a State has seriously eliminated prostitution when normally almost all young people cannot marry at a suitable age, or when a woman left alone — through the chance crossing of events or the malice of men — has no other way to procure bread for herself and her children than theft or prostitution.

Giovanni Battista Guzzetti

III. ETHNOLOGY

Prostitution does not exist among the ethnologically most ancient peoples; among those of later civilization it exists only casually and sporadically.

1) Among certain totemistic peoples a kind of prostitution of women is connected with the so-called young men's houses; those retreats, that is, which in most cases are established precisely to keep the youth away from the women of the tribe, to whom access is severely forbidden, are the place where, among certain peoples, an unbridled commerce takes place of all the girls, or of a determined part of them, with the young men of the clan. Ordinarily this case occurs, as Father Schmidt notes, when, wishing to keep the young men free for warlike enterprises, marriage is delayed as much as possible, often until the thirtieth year of age. Prostitution is thus joined with the young men's houses among the Nandi of East Africa, the Bororo of South America, and among several tribes of the Dravida and the Munda in anterior India, among the inhabitants of the islands of Santa Cruz, Yap and Palau in Micronesia, where even married men and women take part in these excesses. Among the Masai and the Zulu of Africa this kind of prostitution exists moreover even without the institution of the young men's houses.

2) There is furthermore sacred prostitution, which is twofold: casual and stable. In India it is connected with the cult of Durga, Kali or Parvati, the spouse of Siva; there are Hindu sects, such as that of the Sakti, which has followers in Assam and Bengal, and that of the Thug, prohibited in 1840, which on determined religious feasts perform veritable orgies. In the temples, however, there are also women consecrated to prostitution for the devotees, who were called by the Portuguese "baiadere", dancing women. There also exist wandering baiadere, invited to dance in public at the feasts. According to Strabo, in Armenia the daughters of certain families were consecrated to Anahita and gave themselves to her worshippers. Among the ancient Assyrians and Babylonians there existed various forms of sacred prostitution. Herodotus relates that in Babylon it was the custom that every woman once in her life had to give herself in the temple of Mylitta, and had to leave the money she received from it to the temple itself. With the cult of Ishtar, called procreating mother (= ummu alittu, from which perhaps comes the name of Mylitta of Herodotus) and prostitute of the gods, sacred prostitution was connected. In the temples of Ishtar the sacred prostitutes occupied special buildings. During the feasts of Ishtar of Assur orgies took place in a place called house of the women (bit aštamme), or house of love (bit ru'ōm).

The cult of Ishtar from the Valley of the Two Rivers (Tigris and Euphrates) had penetrated wherever the Assyro-Babylonian civilization had spread, as far as the microasiatic Empire of the Hittites. Similar to the cult of Ishtar was that of the goddess 'Asherah of the Canaanites. The sacred harlots sat in the temple. The gain of the prostitution exercised in honor of the goddess was devolved to the treasury of the temple or was spent in the sacrifices. The same happened in the cult of Aphrodite and of Venus of the Greeks and the Romans. It is said that in Acrocorinth, Aphrodite Pandemos had a famous shrine, where a thousand harlots served the goddess. In the valley of the Ganges the virgins, before marriage, were forced to give themselves in the temple dedicated to Jaggernaut. The same custom existed at Pondicherry and at Goa and among the ancient Phoenicians. Today it is held that all these cults are pre-Indo-European and pre-Semitic and moreover connected with a lunar mythology; their origin must be sought ethnologically, though not directly, as Koppers notes (v. op. cit. in bibl., p. 264), in the secret societies of primitive matriarchal agrarian civilizations. Also of the spring feasts among certain peoples, e.g. the Tai, the erotic character has been noted. They are feasts in which betrothals between the youth of two or more villages assembled for the occasion took place publicly, with songs alternating between the young people of the two sexes, with games and dances, but they also had a magical character, because it was believed that the sexual rites determined the fecundity of the year. Indeed even broader effects were attributed to the feasts. In fact, the Tai of the Chinese province of Kuang-si held, according to what Beauvais relates, that if these gatherings were impeded or prohibited for any cause whatsoever, the harvests of the year would not have reached maturity and numerous epidemic diseases would have afflicted the population.

3) Another kind of prostitution is that connected with hospitality. König in his study on the "Law of the Polar Peoples" calls it a custom according to which the head of the family or of the clan offers the guest not only lodging and sustenance, but also his wife or daughter. According to the same author this custom is very widespread among the Arctic peoples, but he found no traces of it among those of northern central Asia, with the exception of the Tungus (Udche). It has conversely been found among the tribes of the coast of British Columbia and in Madagascar, where the daughter is offered. Such prostitution would be a sign of great honor and affection toward the guest. The Eskimos regard such hospitality as generous. To the prostitution of hospitality is joined the so-called marriage with the belt, which exists among the T'u-jen, a Turco-Mongol people of the Chinese province of Kan-su, because it is occasioned by the custom of offering for the night a daughter or a woman to a passing guest. When the father offers his daughter to some passing guest, writes Father Schram, a missionary of the place, the guest must give his belt in exchange and leave it to the daughter. The guest departs in the morning and perhaps will never return. But if the girl becomes pregnant, new clothes are made for her and a hat and the hairstyle of a married woman. Some neighbors are invited, the belt is placed on the red felt spread on the ground; the girl kneels and makes the great prostration to the belt, to her relatives and to those present, calling herself the wife of the guest. Subsequently she will give her child the name of the guest and she herself will be called by the same name by all her neighbors. The children who will be born thereafter will continue always to be called by the name of the guest. It is strange, however, that these children are not recognized as having any right of inheritance in the family of their mother, being considered as children of a woman married to some individual of another family.

4) One may call sporadic or occasional prostitution that which would be a kind of ius primae noctis. Among the Masai of East Africa newly married men offer their own wife to one or two former comrades in war. According to Merker this custom is frequent, but not general; if, however, the husband refuses the concession, he is insulted and the companions steal some oxen from him, without his being able to bring a complaint. The ancient authors report that among the Nasamones and the Angili, two Libyan tribes, the ius primae noctis was granted to all the guests of the wedding. Garcilaso de la Vega says that in Peru, in the province of Manta, marriages were permitted on condition that the bride first give herself to all the relatives and friends. According to Diodorus Siculus, in the Balearic Islands the bride, during the first night, was considered the common property of all the guests, then became the exclusive property of the husband. Langsdorf speaks of a similar custom also in Nuku Hiva, where, however, the consent of the bride was required. It seems that such a custom also existed in China, where during the first night the bride is left at the disposal of the groom's friends, or if she is a widow, at that of the young men of the village. Among certain other peoples, such as those of New Wales, among the Riverina, and the Wa-taita of central-eastern Asia, the ius primae noctis is connected with the ceremony of the abduction of the bride, who is then placed at the disposal of her abductors. Among other peoples this ius was reserved to the priest, as for the Eskimos, the Caribs to the piache, in Nicaragua (within the temple); among still others to the chief or the king: thus it was among certain Brazilian tribes, among the Tahua of ancient Mexico, among the natives of Tenerife (in the 15th century), the Bagele in Adamawa; to the king among the ancient Adirmachidae (Herodotus) and on the coasts of Malabar, where the bride spent eight days in the king's palace; in Russia the great landowners claimed it until the 18th century.

Connected with prostitution is the custom of the said Masai, according to which sexual relations are permitted between the members of the same age class, whether they are married or not; a woman, moreover, may have relations with all the age-class companions of her husband. In any case her consent is necessary for these relations within the said class, except that if it is continually refused, the husband must pay a fine. Something similar is found in the pirraura in Australia (v. POLIANDRIA). Among the same Masai there also exists the custom of occasionally exchanging wives; the children born from these exchanges, although they belong to the mother's husband, also call the natural father "father." The custom has also been observed in North America, in Polynesia, in Greenland and elsewhere, as a sign of great intimacy of friendship, or of a noble character, or as an offering to obtain a favor from the gods (thus at Caindu in eastern Tibet).

Prostitution developed greatly in more advanced civilizations, for which reason it became the object of legislation. Among the ancient Mexicans houses of tolerance were not permitted and action was taken against public prostitutes, when these gave themselves mostly without payment, if this led to scandal. There was the penalty of infamy for whoever acted as an intermediary: his hair was burned with torches of pitch. In the graver cases, as when the part of intermediary was played by a married woman or by a noble person, there was the death penalty by hanging. At the time of the conquest of Mexico sodomy was very widespread and not only in the hospitable cities, but also in the neighboring regions, especially in the coastal provinces of the Gulf of Mexico. For those guilty of sodomy there was the penalty of hanging, that of the stake for priests. There was the death penalty for those men or women who wore garments not corresponding to their own sex, precisely in order to prevent sodomy. Although the crime of bestiality was rare, the death penalty was prescribed for it. The same penalty was established for the rapist, who, however, went exempt from every penalty if the rape had occurred with a public prostitute.

Prostitution had its origin and developed through a lowering of moral and religious values, a lowering that has been found especially in the civilizations called, in ethnology, secondary. Fr. Schmidt points out prostitution in the cultural cycle that he calls that of free patriarchy. From divorce, from the increase of successive and simultaneous polygamy and from prostitution, woman was the first and foremost to suffer, being degraded to a level unknown to primitive and even later civilizations.