Will House enact laws to make sex work legal?

Times have changed. Yes, they have really changed.

We grew up knowing there were prostitutes and then grew old knowing there were commercial sex workers.

Now we are ageing knowing that there are just sex workers. When we were growing up, we knew there was prostitution; now as old people, we know there is sex work.

Again when we were growing up, we knew prostitutes were women; now in our old age, we know sex workers are both male and female.

As we are ageing, we know that there are men who have sex with men (MSM) and there are men or male sex workers (MSW) and female sex workers (FSW).

And then there are those men who have sex with men but who also have wives and children.

THE BRAND

There has been a rebranding of prostitution and homosexuality. When you rebrand you attempt to give a product, company or person a new identity or role, renewed vigour or importance.

You attempt to bury or delink the brand from something of the past and fashion a new chapter. But the accent is on getting acceptance, endearment, and penetration or market share.

When Mr Tony Blair became leader of UK’s Labour Party in 1994, he christened it New Labour, signalling a shift to left-of-centre; embraced the free market and profits unlike its far left trade union-centred predecessor.

In the lead-up to the 1997 General Election, most Brits bought Mr Blair’s pitch that Labour was ready to govern after staying in the cold for 17 years.

When I knew there was an alternative to bar soap, it was called Omo; it became Blue Omo which mutated to New Blue Omo and then New Blue Omo with Active Brightener before it morphed into Omo with Power Foam and now we have Omo Multi-Active Hand Washing Powder.

Yes, the idea is that this brand always gets better to serve us better.

BUYING CONDOMS

Now, listen carefully. The government is considering allocating Sh4 billion every year for the singular purpose of buying condoms and distributing these daily to sex workers.

Remember there are condoms for men and women and, therefore, the government wants to make sure we are protected from the Aids-causing HIV virus.

It also wants to ensure we are protected from STIs. This stands for Sexually Transmitted Infections which previously were called Sexually Transmitted Diseases (STDs).

So the government has chosen not to put money in the pockets of sex workers to keep them off the streets but to put condoms in their mipango to keep us safe from HIV/Aids and STIs.

Government is not doing this in isolation.

Prostitute and prostitution were not good terms and so we rebranded them as commercial sex workers which we soon found not acceptable and we settled for sex workers and sex work.

This is to say selling sex is now work like any other and we should accept it as such. The next step is to make available condoms in our mipango for sex work.

I agree the government must protect its people from HIV/Aids, cholera, Ebola, measles, name it.

I agree that government must reward people who work hard, play by the rules and enable one more person to put food on the table.

PROTECT SEX WORKERS

Sex work is very hard, tough and dangerous work. The government must, therefore, protect sex workers by safeguarding them from disease and those who would molest them.

I, therefore, think it will not make sense for Bible-wielding Inspector-General of Police David Kimaiyo to unleash his uniformed boys to clobber skimpily clad, condom-brandishing sex workers of the female variety and herd them off to police stations.

Why should he if the government has put condoms mpangoni?

Now if government (aka we, the people) has put condoms mpangoni; if government even considered giving sex workers money to keep them off the streets, will the twin Houses of Parliament consider enacting legislation to make sex work legitimate business?

Why, government recognises it renders a service used by its people.

And where does that leave the churches, mosques, temples and especially the Catholics who will rigidly have absolutely no truck with condoms and who insist prostitution is a sin?

They may yet change. In 1993, Dr David Jenkins, the Anglican Bishop of the UK’s See of Durham, told us that torture (eternal fire) does not exist in hell.

Please remember the an-eye-for-an-eye doctrine of the Old Testament was replaced by the turn-the-other-cheek canon of the New Testament.

Christians may yet rebrand themselves and prostitution as has the government.

Opanga is a media consultant; [email protected]