Belgium: To Brussels with Love

Just what were all those hookers doing in the hallowed halls of the European Parliament in Brussels last week? The moral outrage echoing in the corridors may have suggested that a re-creation of Sodom and Gomorrah was being staged. Reason: about 125 prostitutes, including three men, were attending the Second World Whores Congress. They were in Brussels at the invitation of the Green- Alternative European Link, an alliance of environmentalist and independent leftist parties.

Delegates to the three-day conference reaffirmed such objectives as decriminalizing adult prostitution and abolishing red-light districts. Acquired immunodeficiency syndrome was a pressing issue. Said Margo St. James, founder of the National Task Force on Prostitution, a U.S. prostitutes’ group: “People are too afraid to come out in the streets these days.” But most of the women were irrepressibly optimistic. One wore a T shirt emblazoned with the message GOOD GIRLS GO TO HEAVEN, BAD GIRLS GO EVERYWHERE.