Somebody's daughter, somebody's friend...

The horrific murder of five young women in Suffolk is headline news. It has also re-opened the debate about prostitution. There is a real change, it seems to me, in the public's reaction to the murders of these vulnerable and marginalised young women. If you compare the news reporting and reaction to the Yorkshire Ripper case, notorious for comments such as ' he may now move to innocent victims' to today it is clear that there has been something of a sea-change in attitudes to the murder of prostitutes.

I checked the comments at the Daily Mail and found little condemnation of 'vice girls' and chunterings of 'well, what do you expect if you are a street prostitute'. Instead I found compassion and sympathy and people raising the issue of decriminalisation and legalisation, recognising that these women have little protection and lead desperate lives. And that thinking has been seen across the board. There are still some however who are saying that we cannot legalise prostitution because 'that condones it.'

I wanted to understand more about the argument for legalisation so I read the entire International Union of Sex Workers website today, which makes a compelling case for decriminalisation. Sex workers pay tax and national insurance, yet they have very little protection, especially street sex workers who often have chaotic lives with few choices and struggle with drug addiction, abusive pimps, beatings, robberies, rapes and worse. The international traffic in women and children is a modern day slave trade. It strikes me that it is an expensive and hypocritical morality that purses its lips at prostitution whilst sex workers suffer in dangerous working conditions. Like the drug trade, the sex trade has always been with us, and prohibition only serves the interests of organised crime and quadruples the damage done.

I have little patience with 'Christians' who condemn out of hand those whose lifestyles do not match their own high standards. As we approach Christmas, I am remembering the stories told of the son of an unmarried mother, whose family sought political asylum in a foreign land and were refugees during his babyhood, the man whose birth was attended by shepherds, the unclean outcasts of Jewish society, and by pagan foreigners, who as an adult sat and ate with the hated and the despised tax collectors and 'sinners', whose feet were washed by a prostitute who loved him, who said 'set the prisoners free, feed the hungry, clothe the naked', who condemned hypocrisy and who told those without sin themselves to throw the first stone. I wonder what Jesus would have said to those who say 'we are a Christian country' and who so saying turn their face away from a debate about how we can care for the poor, the dispossesed, the desperate, the terrible lives of those who we look past and do not see, until their thin bodies are found naked and dumped, and their young faces look out of the pages of the papers.

And while we are at it: legalise drugs as well. More on that later.

UPDATE: Oh dear, just when I thought sanity had struck the Mail, AN Wilson comes out with this bilge, one of the most stupid pieces I have ever seen. Kate Moss is to blame for the murders?

UPDATE 2: Much more sensible stuff from Archrights and NotSaussure