Eliot Spitzer, Prostitution and Global Warming

In 1988, a former Brazilian prostitute named Otila (Gabriela) Leite traveled across the United States on a tour sponsored by the National Council of Churches. She had earned an international reputation as a campaigner for the human rights of the prostitutes of Rio de Janeiro's red light district.

At the time, the Catholic Church of Brazil estimated that 5 million women in the nation of 44 million people were involved at least on a part-time basis in prostitution, and that half of them were girls under 14 years of age. And Ms. Leite became their champion, so much so that a character on one of the most popular soap operas of the day was modeled on her life story.

But what she had to say on her tour of US church groups was hard for the women she spoke with to accept, for she was unapologetic. She was campaigning for the protection and betterment of the prostitutes she represented, not the abolition of their profession. Didn't she see it as an evil that should be done away with, she was asked repeatedly? Here was her unforgettable response:

We do believe in the end of prostitution -- on the day that all of society stops also being prostitutes.

She was unflinching in her conviction, clear in her perception of the false morality and hypocrisy of those that would condemn prostitution and yet engage in the degradation of servants, or workers, or blacks, or Indians, or the environment -- for the right price. And more, the worker forced to sell his labor or the intellectual forced to sell his mind was as much of a prostitute as a woman who sold her body. Prostitution was far more a part of the human condition, it seemed, than anyone cared to admit.

When I heard the news that Eliot Spitzer got busted, my first thoughts went to the story I wrote about Ms. Leite's lessons twenty years ago, especially when I read this from The Times:

Though his signature issue was pursuing Wall Street misdeeds, as attorney general Mr. Spitzer also had prosecuted at least two prostitution rings as head of the state’s organized crime task force.

In one such case in 2004, Mr. Spitzer spoke with revulsion and anger after announcing the arrest of 16 people for operating a high-end prostitution ring out of Staten Island.

It's a brand of false morality and hypocrisy more overt and direct than even Ms. Leite had in mind.

Gosh, how stupid can the guy get? How he has disappointed the many who had hitched their votes, their hopes or their careers to his leadership, and who are now left to look wistfully toward France where such indiscretions count for little. But in this country we are hardly so liberated, and he will pay a high price.

Spitzer's rendez-vous, the night before Valentine's day s'il vous plaît, will unfortunately strike a blow at progress on global warming, whether through his resignation, unavoidable distraction if he stays in office, and/or his diminished effectiveness. He has been a Governor who has shown -- in the absence of federal action -- leadership on global warming, which began during his tenure as New York State attorney General, and whose good effect endures.

What is particularly ironic, however, is that Spitzer was "caught" paying for sex in Washington DC, which through the lens of Ms. Leite's perspective is arguably the global capital of prostitution. Why pick on the poor Governor for his self-abasing immaturity when the whole town is awash in the stench of illicit love-making of the political variety?

The federal wiretaps certainly picked up the damaging evidence on Client 9 in Room 871 of the Mayflower Hotel. But what is preventing us from being appalled by the deals that are cut in the back rooms of Congress where prostitution of a far more damaging sort occurs -- the kind that protects the auto industry and the oil industry and the coal industry -- thanks to their payments, rendered openly, so that they can continue with business-as-usual?

It is a continuing degradation of the earth and all that is sacred, and of far greater consequence than Eliot's foolish diddling.

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