I first spoke with Margo St. James in 2008 following the failure of Proposition K – a San Francisco city wide ballot measure to decriminalize prostitution and defund diversion programs. I was the proponent and qualified it for the ballot.
Someone had given me Margot’s phone number and said I should call her at her home in Western Washington. I called Margo and she started talking about Coyote v Roberts – which was a class action lawsuit litigated against the state of Rhode Island in 1976. Margo told me that four members of Coyote (Call Off Your Old Tired Ethics) had gone to RI to work and became the plaintiffs in 1976. She thought that the way forward was to bring a similar lawsuit in California.
So I started calling people in Rhode Island to figure out information about that lawsuit.
Because of the visibility that Proposition K had brought me, I was asked along with Veronica Monet, to participate in an event called Rebellious Lawyers at Yale Law School in Connecticut. This provided me with an opportunity to drive to the Rhode Island’s State Capital courthouse to search for information on lawsuit.
The Coyote v Roberts case claimed that Rhode Island’s anti prostitution law was bening enforcemed in a discriminatory way against women but not men. This eventually lead to the Rhode Island legislature removing the criminalization of indoor prostitution from the law books to settle the lawsuit out of court.
Because we’d had so much trouble raising money to support Prop K in 2008, because folks didn’t want their names, home addresses and work identified in associaiton with prostitution, I founded a 501(c) non-profit the Erotic Service Providers Legal Education and Research Project (ESPLERP) in 2010, so we could collect donations anonymously. I recruited a first amendment rights attorney, gathered plaintiffs and some money and in March 2015, we filed a groundbreaking court case, ESPLERP v Gascon [16-15927].
We asked the Federal courts to find that California’s prostitution statute 647(b), unconstitutional. George Gascon was San Francisco’s district attorney at the time – and so he ended up as the first named defendant, along with the District Attorney’s of Marin, Sonoma and Alameda Counties.
The case went all the way to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, which eventually dismissed it in October 2017 . But even so, in its judgement, the court did state that the State of California legislator should review anti-prostitution law..
Although we didn’t get the anti prostitution law struck down at that time, we did get the attention of many District Attorneys, who clearly had never conceived of the idea that people actually thought that they had the constitutional right to be prostitutes and customers of prostitutes.
It was like the knowledge of Margo St. James and all her comrades’ good work to give rights to whores had never touched their ears. But as a result, while the police continued to enforce the law, we saw a definite slowing of prosecutions and turnover in the diversion programs.
We also got the attention of legislators. Our allies in the California legislature were able to pass progressive legislation such as SB 239 which repealed the criminalization of HIV positive status, and SB 233 which gives immunity to anyone reporting a serious crime without being charged with prostitution, and condoms can no longer be used as probable cause to make prostitution arrests.
Ironically, George Gascon went on to be elected Los Angeles County District Attorney, and immediately started to roll back the prosecution of misdemeanors including prostitution. So much so that the LA County sheriff recently complained that Gascón had “basically legalized” prostitution in Los Angeles by failing to prosecute suspected solicitation of prostitution cases referred his office by LA police.
So, in this way, we see Margo St. James’ fight to decriminalize prostitution delivering results.
It doesn’t matter whether we’re charismatic like Margo, whether we are worldly and educated like Margo, or whether we have lots of friends, lovers and comrades like Margo. We can still make a difference and have a role to play.
We believe that prostitution should not be criminalized – and that prostitutes and our customers and our larger communities make valuable contributions to humanity, that we make a difference in the world.
So go join your local movement and lend your talents, your energy, your money, and your presence towards that end. Everyone has a role to pay.
Maxine Doogan
May 2021