A SOLOMON COME TO JUDGMENT!

Rick Bell's clarity and simplicity are quite disarming. ("Legalized
brothels make sense," Feb. 3). They make sense in Holland. Why not
here? We are all members of the human race, all God's children. "Drive
the streets," he says. "The option is not prostitution or no
prostitution. It's regulated prostitution or, what we have now,
unregulated prostitution." I can imagine the amount of spluttering
that will cause.

But when the spluttering subsides, the fact will remain: As long as we
have streets, we will have street walkers -- unless we decide to
recognize and regulate them. Our efforts to prohibit booze failed,
just as the war on (some) drugs has failed. Why? Because the laws of
supply and demand operate as inflexibly and inexorably as the law of
gravity.

When will we learn to accommodate this fact in our political
life?

Pat Dolan

(Laws against prostitution are almost as old as the activity itself.)