The New York Times - October 3, 1986
Judith Miller

Margo St. James, 48 years old, a prostitutes' rights activist who organized the conference, called on the governments of Western Europe and the United States to conduct extensive sex-education programs stressing the need for what she called "safe sex."

"Safe sex means condoms," Miss St. James said at a news conference. "The prostitutes here overwhelmingly endorse the use and want governments, brothels and pimps to insist that clients use them."

The 180 delegates, including 120 prostitutes from 16 countries, also issued an appeal for decriminalization of prostitution. The news conference was held today in the European Parliament offices. Delegates from each country, some wearing masks, hats and sunglasses to disguise their identity, presented a list of what they called "human rights abuses" directed against prostitutes in their countries. U.S. Is Assailed

The United States was depicted as the most anti-prostitute country in the West - the only country with an outright ban in most states on prostitution.

Delegates from West Germany, where prostitutes are licensed by the state, complained of overregulation and what they see as invasions of privacy, such as mandatory health checks.

The Swiss delegate complained about high rents and over taxation.

Helen Buckingham of Britain said she had run a brothel for five years "within spitting distance of the house in which Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher lives on Flood Street."

Miss Buckingham, a prostitute for 12 years who quit four years ago to campaign for prostitutes' rights, accused Britain of "hypocrisy towards prostitutes."

The delegates said the fear of AIDS, or acquired immune deficiency syndrome, which reduces the body's resistance to infection, was transforming their business.

"It's driving prostitutes indoors, off the streets," said Gloria Lockett, co-director of the San Francisco branch of the American prostitutes' rights groups known as Coyote, or Call Off Your Old Tired Ethics.

'AIDS Changing the Trade'

"Fear of AIDS is changing the trade by prompting prostitutes to promote services that do not include sexual intercourse," said Miss Lockett, who spent 17 years as a street and brothel prostitute. Such services, she said, include more sex fantasy, manual sex and oral sex with prophylactics.

The women said prostitutes who were not intravenous drug users were not transmitters of the deadly virus.

Ms. Lockett, whose group has helped test 463 women for AIDS in San Francisco, 150 of them prostitutes, said only 4 percent of them tested positive, all of whom used intravenous drugs.

Don Desjarlais, an epidemiologist who studies AIDS for New York State's Health Department, agreed that prostitutes per se were not a high-risk group. "The bottom line is that AIDS is spread by behavior, not by labels," he said.

Mr. Desjarlais said that in educational programs, state officials had begun to emphasize safe practices, rather than purportedly high-risk groups. He urged that all drug users not to share needles and that all sexually active individuals to insist on the use of condoms.

Mr. Desjarlais and others deplored the legal and policy bans on radio and television advertising of condoms in the United States, France and Britain.

The Minister of Health in France has recently proposed an amendment in Parliament to drop the ban and similar proposals are being considered by news organizations in America, the delegates said.

The women agreed that the trend in Europe was toward decriminalization, which prostitutes here favor, or at least, toward licensing, which they oppose, but prefer to a ban.

But in the United States conservative pressures inimical to prostitution were growing, the 12-member American delegation said.

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