England To Remove Term “Prostitute” From Law Books
That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet, but bureaucrats are constantly renaming occupations, diseases and disabilities to remove any perceived stigma. A garbage man is transformed into a “sanitation engineer” but at the end of the day I bet he still smells like crap.
The United Kingdom may be beset with many problems, especially terrorism, but lawmakers still find the time to introduce bills to give occupations a more politically-correct name.
From Reuters:
“Britain is proposing to remove the term ‘prostitute’ from the criminal statutes because it carries too much stigma.
Instead, a new bill that the Justice Ministry has drafted refers simply to persons who sell sex persistently — defined as twice or more in three months.
‘We just wanted to remove the stigma of the label ‘common prostitute’,’ said a spokeswoman for the Justice Ministry.”
The phrase “A person who sells sex persistently” may catch on in bureaucratese, but I can’t imagine Joe Sixpack saying “This weekend I will pick up a person who sells sex persistently”.
The Brits want to remove the term “prostitute” because it carries too much stigma. Duh! Shouldn’t we be shaming whores so that they will pick up a more respectable profession?
Will the Brit’s remove the term “burglar” from the criminal statues because it carries too much stigma. Instead, will they be referred to as “persons who repeatedly enter homes without obtaining permission?
I write a weekly column for a small town newspaper in Virginia, and I also write for several Web sites. Please leave a comment or send me an email at: rreyes4966@aol.com | More from Robert Paul Reyes
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