Editorial

By Paul Schratz

Now add prostitution to the long list of things we are being asked to keep an open mind about.

A group of Vancouver prostitutes who want to open a "co-op" brothel in time for the 2010 Winter Olympics are getting high-level support from people like Vancouver East MP Libby Davies, Liberal MP Hedy Fry, former Vancouver Mayor and Sen. Larry Campbell, and current Mayor Sam Sullivan, who predicts violence against prostitutes dropping if they owned and ran their own brothel.

"I believe we need to keep an open mind," he said of the suggestion that Vancouver have co-op brothels in time for the 2010 Winter Olympics.

Ah, yes, that famous open mind we're always being encouraged to keep. Of course it only stands to reason that to be truly open minded, one must keep an open mind about the wisdom of being open minded, and G.K. Chesterton and C.S. Lewis had some definite thoughts on that.

In The Abolition of Man, Lewis observed that "An open mind, in questions that are not ultimate, is useful, but an open mind about the ultimate foundations either of Theoretical or of Practical Reason is idiocy."

Chesterton compared a perpetually open mind to an open mouth that never closes. "An open mouth never bites down on anything in order to nourish itself. An open mind never closes on a definite conviction and so lives without any convictions at all."

Then there was Archbishop Fulton Sheen, who said, "The man who can make up his mind in an orderly way, as a man might make up his bed, is called a bigot: but a man who cannot make up his mind, any more than he can make up for lost time, is called tolerant and broad minded."

What are the open minded calling for? Prostitute Susan Davis wants to see "an exemption given to us along the lines of what was given for the Insite safe-injection site." Insite is the drug shooting gallery we've been told to keep an open mind about, despite the fact that it's an expensive way of trying to prevent overdose deaths, which actually increased after it opened.

Davis says tens of thousands of men who come to Vancouver during the Games will be seeking sex, and as a good host it's Vancouver's obligation to provide what they're looking for.

From a mere practical perspective, of course, the idea is sheer lunacy. Prostitutes who slave away in the brothels will be just as subject to abuse as women on the street are. Instead of helping them escape a life that is a prison sentence rather than a career choice, it will entrench the abuse.

From a moral perspective, to establish a structure built on the abuse of women is vile.

At the recent Vancouver workshop on human trafficking, journalist Victor Malarek warned about the high numbers of women who can be expected to be imported during the Olympics. He warned that legalized prostitution is merely institutionalized rape, and urged the creation of proper support services for women to reclaim their lives and dignity.

These women need our compassion, not a legalized brothel. As Father Tad Pacholczyk observes in his Page 7 column this week, true compassion means taking another's pain and suffering upon ourselves, not moving them out of sight.

Yet that's what the new pattern of compassion has become. Instead of helping people overcome their problems, we sanction them, which is why legalized drugs and euthanasia and drugs are now headed down the same expressway built for abortion and same-sex unions.

Jesus didn't have much of an open mind about certain things. In the case of the woman at the well, the woman caught in adultery, the money changers at the temple, or those who look at a woman with lust, He challenged each of them to a better way.

We are called to called to love our neighbour and to be perfect as our heavenly Father is perfect. That requires true open mindedness.