A Preface to Politics — CHAPTER V

1. 1. The Chicago Vice Report's recommendations are dominated by taboos and repression, ignoring the human impulse behind prostitution.
2. 2. The Commission assumed lust itself is inherently evil, leading to an impossible goal of annihilating not just prostitution but all sexual expression outside marriage.
3. 3. The report's recommendation for a stringent uniform divorce law reveals a desire to confine sex to monogamous marriage, ignoring those unable to marry.
4. 4. Prostitution is organic to industrial life, low wages, and social customs; abolishing it requires radical societal change, not just police action.
5. 5. The Commission's few constructive suggestions, like municipal dance halls and sex hygiene education, are overshadowed by a mass of taboos and lack a unifying philosophy.
6. 6. Forcible suppression of vice corrupts the police and requires a tyranny, which is incompatible with democracy.
7. 7. The sex impulse can be diffused into art, religion, and social endeavor rather than repressed, as demonstrated by Jane Addams' Hull House.
8. 8. Abolishing prostitution requires a revolution in the whole quality of life, driven by dynamic social forces like the labor movement and women's awakening.
9. 9. The Commission's method failed because it did not put human impulses at the center, leading to remedies valueless to human nature and an undemocratic tyranny.