Tag: sex workers
Nevada Brothel Lobbyist Put Friendly Face On Often-Reviled Industry

Nevada Brothel Lobbyist Put Friendly Face On Often-Reviled Industry

By John M. Glionna, Los Angeles Times (TNS)

CARSON CITY, Nev. — Most lawmakers in this state capital simply call him “Georgie,” a soft-spoken old opinion-swayer with a cane who revels in his political incorrectness.

For half a century, George Flint held court in the hallways of the Legislature here, most lately in the first-floor coffee shop, at the round table nearest the elevators, so he didn’t have to walk too far on his gimpy left leg and two replaced hips.

Flint is Carson City’s oldest working political advocate, toiling on behalf of the world’s oldest profession — the lone brothel lobbyist in the only state to sanction legal prostitution.

Even at 81, he had intended to keep working, but a heart attack hit him last month. So now he’s calling it quits to a career of using a folksy, lean-over-the-fence style to advocate the legal pleasures of the flesh.

The subject makes some lawmakers queasy, so it came as a surprise when the speaker of the House visited Flint’s hospital bed with some news.

Forty-one of 53 legislators had signed a proclamation declaring April 12 as “George Flint Day” at the capital, marking his “outstanding and valuable contributions as Nevada’s longest-standing senior lobbyist.” Flint keeps the document by his convalescent hospital bed, where he can continue to absorb the power of the gesture.

“George should be a scholar on how to be a lobbyist,” said Democratic Sen. Mark Manendo, who helped organize the decree. “People just love him, especially the old-timers.”

Most admit that Flint isn’t what you’d expect. He’s a doting great-grandfather who — unlike cigar-chomping Joe Conforte, one of his brothel-owner bosses — never sashayed around town in a $2,000 suit with several slinky women hanging on his arm.

Flint is savvier than that. He collects art, is an amateur expert on Napoleon and has traveled much of the world. But for decades he represented the interests of the 300-odd legal prostitutes working in the state’s 17 brothels, shady hideaways with names like the Love Ranch, Angel’s Ladies and the Cherry Patch II.

Oh, and there’s another thing: Flint is also the son of two preachers, an ordained Pentecostal minister who runs Chapel of the Bells, a quickie wedding salon in downtown Reno. He can lecture on the history of adultery and paraphrases Scripture discussing politicians who avoid him: “In the latter days, men’s hearts will fail them for fear.”

He’s also a keeper of secrets: In the old days, lawmakers who fought him in public later discreetly sought freebie coupons at a brothel just 10 minutes from the Legislature. Flint has also challenged the holy-rollers, insisting Jesus’ best friend was a so-called fallen woman — Mary Magdalene. If a prostitute was good enough for Christ, he reasons, she ought to be good enough for the fine people of Nevada.

At times, it’s also been good enough for Flint: Decades ago, he occasionally visited brothels — not as a lobbyist, but as a client: “I’ve never hidden the fact I’ve tasted that merchandise.”

Mostly, however, Flint was just a good lobbyist. With a well-timed slap on the back, he put a friendly face on an industry many found repulsive. Years ago, the famed Mustang Ranch threw a steak and lobster party for legislators. Three showed up.

He’s also cagey, jokingly advocating a tax on all bedroom sex because, of course, everyone would over report.

Born in San Pedro, Calif., Flint spent his youth in Wyoming, where brothels were illegal but accepted. A sportswriter in high school, he later studied theology at the College of the Open Bible in Des Moines.

In 1963, he was a married father of four running a wedding chapel in Reno when he heard about proposed legislation against the wedding industry. He drove to Carson City and persuaded lawmakers to retract the bill. “I made a note: Georgie, you better get involved,” he said. “It was my baptism into lobbying.”

In 1985, some 14 years after prostitution became legal here, he began representing an industry threatened by AIDS, speaking out in support of laws designed to protect sex workers and their clients.

Many members of the Nevada Brothel Association attribute their longevity to Flint. “George would challenge commissioners who often didn’t know what they were talking about,” said Joe Richards, who once owned three brothels. “When George is gone, the industry’s going to be history.”

These days, Flint knows that troubled times lie ahead: Thanks to Craigslist and burgeoning sex-for-sale websites, legal prostitution is imperiled in Nevada.

Of the state’s remaining brothels, only a handful make a profit, he said. His budget for political contributions has dropped from $100,000 annually to $20,000.

And he senses a shift in public attitudes too. This year, 17 freshman lawmakers bring a new generation with modern ideas. Sighed Flint: “Another anti-brothel movement can’t be far off.”

But the one-man brothel lobby has a successor in mind: his own daughter, Margaret, who currently advocates for animal rights. Trouble is, she doesn’t want the job. “I don’t have a passion for brothel workers,” she said. “That’s my dad.”

Flint will miss the fine art of brothel opinion-swaying: “My heart is there. It’s hard to give up.”

(c)2015 Los Angeles Times, Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

Photo: At age 81, George Flint is a minister, wedding chapel owner and lobbyist for the world’s oldest profession: legal prostitutes at brothels in Nevada. Here he sits in his office at the Chapel of the Bells in March 2015 in downtown Reno, Nev. (John M. Glionna/ Los Angeles Times)

NYPD Limits Use Of Condoms Seized From Sex Workers As Evidence

NYPD Limits Use Of Condoms Seized From Sex Workers As Evidence

By Tina Susman, Los Angeles Times

NEW YORK — Condoms no longer will be seized from sex workers for use as evidence in prostitution cases, police announced Monday in a move that officials say should help prevent the spread of AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases among people at high risk of infection.

The policy change is the latest effort by New York Mayor Bill de Blasio and his police commissioner, William J. Bratton, to revamp some of the policing tactics of the previous administration, which were blamed for the souring of police-community relations.

“I think it’s the right thing to do,” de Blasio said after Bratton announced the condom decision. “A policy that actually inhibits people from safe sex is a mistake and is dangerous.”

Although advocates of the change call it a positive step, they say it does not go far enough toward protecting victims of human traffickers, whose captors could still refuse to give them condoms for fear the prophylactics could be used as evidence by police.

The new policy applies only to three crimes related to the sex trade: prostitution, prostitution in a school zone and loitering for the purposes of prostitution. In those cases, Bratton said condoms will be treated as personal property and returned to individuals upon their release from custody and will not be considered evidence.

Condoms confiscated in sex-trafficking cases will continue to be used as evidence, said Bratton, calling the move a “reasonable approach” that would encourage safer sex without hampering efforts to build cases “against the vast criminal enterprise associated with prostitution.”

“It’s very exciting the New York Police Department is taking this issue seriously, but we believe it needs to be expanded,” said Sienna Baskin, co-director of the Sex Workers Project at the Urban Justice Center in New York.

Baskin said advocacy groups would continue pressing for a policy that would stop police from seizing condoms as evidence in any prostitution-related crime. “That would really send a very clear message that people are safe to carry condoms,” she said.

Still, the change announced Monday marks a victory for groups that have battled more than a decade to prevent the seizure of condoms from sex workers, a practice that is common around the world and that has been the subject of studies by health and human rights groups. A 2012 report by Human Rights Watch on the issue quoted sex workers in New York City as saying police routinely stopped and searched them, often commenting on the number of condoms they were carrying and leading many to believe there were legal limits on the carrying of condoms.

“The cops say, ‘What are you carrying all those condoms for? We could arrest you just for this,’” one sex worker, identified in the report as Pam G., told Human Rights Watch.

Since that report, San Francisco and Washington have altered their policies to limit the use of condoms as evidence in prostitution cases, said Emma Caterine, a community organizer for Red Umbrella Project, a New York advocacy group.

Caterine said she hoped New York’s move would encourage other major cities to follow suit and motivate state lawmakers to pass a bill introduced last year barring the use of seized condoms as evidence in most prostitution cases.

Critics of condom seizures say the practice is particularly absurd in cities, such as New York, with huge condom distribution programs aimed at preventing AIDS. New York City health officials give out about 40 million condoms each year.

But changing police policy on condom seizures is challenging because sex workers tend to represent marginalized members of society, Caterine said.

“It’s targeting especially lower-income women and transgender women,” Caterine said, adding that police have been known to search and confiscate condoms from women who are not sex workers but who are “profiled” as sex workers because of where they are walking or how they look.

“These people have had problems getting their voices heard by policymakers,” she said. “I hope we’re slowly making strides at changing that.”

AFP Photo/John Moore