Bring Back Brothels, Says French Lawmaker

(March 19) -- An ally of President Nicolas Sarkozy is battling for brothels to be made legal in France once again -- almost 65 years after the country shuttered its famous bordellos.

Parliamentarian Chantal Brunel, who was appointed head of the country's sexual equality watchdog last month, argues in a new book on violence against women that the reintroduction of bordellos would protect prostitutes from exploitation, trafficking and physical attack.

"Women selling sex should be allowed to do so legally on special licensed premises," she told the daily Le Parisien. "This would free thousands of women from the exploitation they suffer at the hands of pimps and criminal gangs and offer them much more security than they currently have on the streets. It would give them a legal taxable income, and they would not be handing over large sums of their earnings to a pimp."

The French public seems to support her demand for decriminalization. A poll published Thursday by Le Parisien found that 59 percent of the population backed the reopening and regulation of maisons closes (closed houses). More than two-thirds of men and almost half the women questioned were in favor of the proposal. Just 13 percent of women opposed the idea, and 38 percent were undecided.

If Brunel's recommendations are approved, Paris could regain its reputation as the original sin city.

Napoleon Bonaparte made bordellos legal in the French capital in the early 19th century. By 1939, the city center was home to some 200 brothels. Those high-class whorehouses attracted illustrious clients, including artists such as Picasso and Rodin, Hollywood royalty like Cary Grant and Humphrey Bogart and genuine royalty such as Britain's King Edward VII. He frequented a brothel at 12 rue Chabanais when he was the Prince of Wales. As a thank you for his joyful memories, he donated a love chair to the bordello.

The maisons closes were finally outlawed in 1946 by President Charles de Gaulle, whose strict Catholic wife was outraged by French prostitutes' acts of "horizontal collaboration" with occupying Nazi troops.

Brunel has said she doesn't want to return to the "situation before 1946." Instead, she envisages a system of "open houses" where women are provided with shelter and medical care, and are not reliant on a "landlord" who would take a cut of their earnings.

But it's uncertain if Sarkozy, who has previously taken a tough line on prostitution, will back her proposals. In 2002, Sarkozy -- then interior minister -- made "passive soliciting" an offense, allowing police to arrest any woman who appeared to be seeking customers in public, even if she hadn't approached any clients.

Brunel voted for that law but says it has made prostitution only more dangerous. She says many of the country's 90,000 prostitutes have been pushed out of city centers and are "now hidden in woods and on the Internet, where it is far easier to harm someone." Hundreds of women are also believed to have quit the country for work in legal brothels just across the border in Germany, Italy, Spain, Switzerland and the Netherlands.

Before sex workers can legally set up shop, Brunel will have to win over anti-prostitution activists, who have loudly condemned her policy suggestion.

"What kind of a society locks up its women for the pleasure of men?" Bruno Lemettre, president of the Mouvement du Nid, which campaigns for a prostitution-free society, asked Le Parisien. "No woman chooses such work of her own free will. Those who say the opposite are shielding themselves to avoid talking about their suffering."