“I am shocked, shocked to find that gambling is going on in here!” Capt.Renault.

This line from the great movie classic Casablanca, uttered just before police Captain Renault collects his winnings, comes in handy in Washington politics because there’s a lot of things to be shocked, shocked about.

In the New York Times a Washington madam, Deborah Jeane Palfrey, is shocked, shocked to find that the women she dispatched to men’s homes and motels for a ‘high end erotic fantasy service’  might have been exchanging sex for money. Try reading the following quote out loud in a high, tremulous, shocked voice and not burst out laughing…

If any sexual activity occurred, she said, it was not authorized or intended by her but undertaken independently by her female subcontractors and male clients  “who disobeyed my directives, their signed contracts and participated in illegal behavior.”  In other words, she is stunned at accusations that sexual activity had taken place between the women who worked for her and the men who paid them about $300 for 90 minutes of their attentions.

So they disobeyed her? I’m shocked, shocked to think that Washington politicians, of all people, would be anything less than upright and honest.

This would really be private and personal behavior, reason for their wives to call a lawyer but no concern of mine, except that some of Deborah Palfrey’s clients had inordinate power over ordinary people, and used morality and patriotism as selling points for policies that are getting people killed. Randall L. Tobias, U.S. Global AIDS Coordinator, listened to groups that were shocked that some organizations were fighting HIV by educating prostitutes about disease prevention and distributing condoms. On the advice of lobbyists, many from religious right groups such as Focus on the Family, and Concerned Women of America, Tobias placed a ban on US funding for any organization that did not repudiate prostitution . Any organization getting US money was banned from giving condoms to prostitutes or working with any subcontractors that did. The conservative lobbyists vilified the ‘harm reduction’ advocates who argued that preventing HIV infection in those most at risk would buy time for other interventions. They instead follow a policy of ‘rescue and restore’, with ending prostitution altogether their ultimate goal. Tobias, who was too pure to tolerate his tax money being used to save a prostitute from HIV, resigned last week when he showed up on Deborah Palfrey’s list of clients.

Harlan K. Ullman, a Defense Department consultant, is credited with coining the phrase Shock and Awe– that horrible, arrogant slogan for the bombing of Iraq at the start of the invasion. He’s also been outed by Palfrey.

The men who used Deborah Palfrey’s service liked to believe that the prostitutes were all PhD’s and career women who — I don’t know, just craved their company or something. I supposed they would be shocked, shocked if they found out the women really needed the money, or had a drug habit or leeching boyfriend or something. And where is Deborah Palfrey’s heart of gold? She’s not going to go quietly to jail? What happened to the code of silence?

The most foolish fantasy in all this is a denial of the role of money and power. Randall Tobias could buy a fantasy that he thought he could keep private. He could buy the goodwill of the religious right by preventing condom distribution to poor people no one cares about. Poor people are low priority, prostitutes are even more expendable.

We have a situation right here in Providence, the evidence of raids on ‘massage parlors’ that are really brothels suggests that the women are not working there voluntarily. The Providence mayor’s office has a proposed bill, to deal with traffickers and pimps and johns, not just to arrest and deport the prostitutes. We could pass laws to push this problem underground, or over the state line, but that wouldn’t help victims of trafficking. The women in the brothels don’t have any Washington lobbyist, they don’t speak the language, are sometimes illegal. They don’t have money or rich lawyers. All they have is our sense of right and wrong. We need a good law that doesn’t criminalize victims, and the will to enforce. We can prosecute the crimes of deception, coercion and fraud, and we can try to reduce the poverty and inequality that leaves so many of the world’s people vulnerable to exploitation by traffickers for labor and sex.

(For more information, check out the Polaris Project human rights organization.)

UPDATE: 2010– Our legislature passed an anti-trafficking bill and revised it to provide more protection to minors, but it sits on the shelf. Enforcing that law would require political will to find and protect people who are not a voting block. Some of the women from the ‘spas’ testified late in the process that they were only trying to support themselves and their families and did not see themselves as criminals or victims. The police and the conservative members of the legislature achieved their goal of criminalizing indoor prostitution. The ‘spas’ still exist, as they do in other states. If the women are caught selling sex they can now be arrested and charged.