Prostitution-Then and Now

Now Samson went to Gaza and saw a harlot there, and went in to her. When the Gazites were told, “Samson has come here!” they surrounded the place and lay in wait for him all night at the gate of the city. They were quiet all night, saying, “In the morning, when it is daylight, we will kill him (Jud. 16:1,2).”

Prostitution is a grievous plague of any society. America today is ridden with terrible consequences resultant from harlotry and its attending vices. There are areas of all major American cities in which poverty, disease, drugs, crime, and death–all associated with prostitution rings have literally transformed desirable middle class neighborhoods into ghettos of hellish horror.

According to Prostitutes Education Network, over one million Americans today have worked as prostitutes. The average American city spends 7.5 million annually on prostitution control. Studies show that 70% of American men have engaged a prostitute at least one time. A London study revealed that 50% of males who have bought the services of a prostitute were married or co-habiting at the time of their involvement. In a study of street prostitutes, 80% of prostitutes were found to have been physically assaulted. It is estimated that street prostitutes are often raped 8-10 times annually with only 4% of these rapes being reported to police. Today in larger American cities, 20-30% of prostitutes are reported to be male.

While these statistics are alarming, they are not what concerns me most about prostitution today. What is most disconcerting is the ever-growing push by prostitution advocates in our society to mainstream prostitution as a legal and recognized profession, Advocacy groups today are focusing on our legal system as the avenue through which they intend to make harlotry just another career with all attending rights and restrictions. This push involves the legal changing of the name “prostitute” to sex worker. Groups of supporters are advocating not only the legality of this “sex work”, but the protection of its “workers” from unhygienic working conditions, compulsory HIV testing, and the use of communal needles for contraceptive purposes. They are actively lobbying for paid holidays, unions, shorter work days and social security benefits. We are not hearing a lot about this from the media, but, rest assured, it is occurring under our noses. We must educate and push for legislation that protects society from the legalization and protection of prostitution.

As early as 1949, the U.N. passed a resolution to decriminalize prostitution. This resolution has been ratified by 50 nations, not including the U.S. The National Organization for Women has passed its own resolution seeking and supporting the decriminalization of harlotry in the United States.

It is difficult to imagine that standards of morality in heathen nations such as the Philistine people were any more immoral than the current standards in the United States. Bible believing people will continue to deplore the sin of harlotry and vocalize their objections to any legislation that would decriminalize this sin against which God’s warnings have always been clear. Proverbs 7 is devoted to warning the naive young man about the cunning nature of whoredom. Notice the difference in what she offers (vs.18), and what she delivers (vs.26, 27):

Samson was a strong man. But the harlot’s house was on his way down the road to the chambers of death. While it is true that he had a few more stops to make before that terrible day of death, this house of harlotry was clearly on a destructive path that Samson was too weak to resist. He was yet to display some amazing feats of physical strength, but he was headed for a bitter end and it would be his weakness for wicked women that would, in the end, be his undoing.

*www.bayswan.org/stats.html

This post taken largely from Women of Troubled Times, by Cindy Colley, Publishing Designs, Huntsville, AL