PalfreyDear Douchebags,

Last year you pursued (and last week convicted) Deborah Jeane Palfrey (pictured), a Washington DC escort service operator for several crimes including running a prostitution service. An hour ago, police announced that she hung herself in a shed near her mom’s house.

Those of you who made, uphold or support the laws against prostitution, of which Palfrey fell short, should feel utter disgrace upon hearing the news.

First, the rampant hypocrisy among you who legislate against normal human instincts and the rightful privacy of your constituents’ sex lives, under the public facade of being men of ‘faith’ and ‘family values’ and ‘integrity’, all the while permitting yourselves the very human liberty of sexual companionship of the variety you deny to those who elected you, is disgusting. And now, the woman who you contacted to provide you those services, and who you left in the lurch when the shit hit the fan, is dead. If life were fair, it would be you instead.

I can think of little more contemptible than to inherit a bastardised theology-turned-politic which robs human beings of the value of their own sexuality by daring to suggest that only one form of sexual relationship should be tolerated in society, and then to implement and uphold such regressive ideology in the legislatures and courtrooms of a ‘free’ nation against the spirit of a bill of rights like the fucking US Constitution, which strove to ensure that the government would protect natural human rights rather than stamp on them.

God forbids prostitution, you say. Well, I’m glad that you’ve been able to make that conclusion. Now can we be trusted to make it too, for ourselves? God forbid that two individuals should exchange money and sexual intimacy; God forbid that a man be in charge of where he spends his money and that a woman be in charge of who she sleeps with; God forbid that others don’t get to decide how individuals spend their money or time; God forbid pleasure. God forbid even only that the government abstain from dictating the terms of morality to the citizens who elect it.

Shame on you.

John Wright