THE TWO JOHNS John Kerry didn't know it was the ...

S John Kerry didn't know it was the 30th anniversary of the first national Hookers Convention when he told the New York Times: "We have to get back to the place we were, where terrorists are not the focus of our lives, but they're a nuisance. As a former law-enforcement person, I know we're never going to end prostitution. We're never going to end illegal gambling. But we're going to reduce it, organized crime, to a level where it isn't on the rise."

Margo St. James, a former prostitute and founder of COYOTE (Call Off Your Tired Old Ethics), had turned the finest trick of her life when she turned prurient interest back on itself to spread the message of the Hookers Convention. Their official poster featured an illustration of a woman fingering her clit, with the slogan, "Our convention is different-we want everybody to come!"

The event was held at Glide Memorial Church in San Francisco. In the lobby, t-shirts were on sale, flaunting the slogan "'74-Year of the Whore!" Reverend Cecil Williams greeted the overflow crowd: "This church is open to everybody. It has always been concerned with people who are misused and oppressed. I am delighted to welcome you."

There was a growing awareness of the linear connections in suffering, which COYOTE had recognized by the range of its actions, from successfully protesting the automatic forced treatment for undiagnosed venereal disease of women arrested for prostitution-their presumably also-infected male customers go untreated-to the hookers' boycott of crewmen off a ship docked in from torture-infested Chile.

Margo was invited to contribute an essay for the San Francisco Opera 2004-05 yearbook to accompany an essay on La Traviata. "Today," she wrote, "the St. James Infirmary, a first-of-its-kind occupational health and safety clinic run by sex industry workers for sex industry workers, provides primary health care for all sex workers in San Francisco. Our mission is not to reform sex workers but to reform society."

I asked her to respond to John Kerry's statement.

"Kerry, Jesse Jackson," she said, "they don't seem to realize the institutionalized racism and sexism produced by the prohibitions on drugs and sex work. There was a 10-year study in the Netherlands, 1985-95, where violence against women was reduced by 75 percent when the official stigma was removed by decriminalization. Look who is serving time-the majority are black. It's also the means by which women's wages are kept at 75 percent of wages for men doing the same jobs.

"The drug laws that imprison non-violent youth, that allow the seizure of property-many times without an arrest-that is then converted to cash to fund the DEA. The two Wars on Whores and Drugs are the foundation for the discrimination against women and minorities, and the justification for the violence by the state. Actually, Kerry has probably never been a client or he would know that the prohibitions create the atmosphere for organized crime."