Skip to footer

'Happy Prostitute' ads yanked from web by Brazil health official

Happy prostitute ads online were intended to encourage Brazilian sex workers to seek treatment for AIDs as part of International Prostitute Day. But criticism over the 'Happy prostitute' ads may be indicative of the growing clout of evangelical Christians in Brazil.

|
(AP Photo/Eraldo Peres)
Human rights activists create a ribbon holding red umbrellas to commemorate the World AIDS Day in downtown Brasilia, Brazil in 2011.
  • By Asher Levine Reuters

| Sao Paulo

Brazil's health ministry on Wednesday pulled an outreach campaign urging sex workers to use condoms after coming under fire from conservative lawmakers.

"I'm happy being a prostitute" was the slogan on a web campaign for International Prostitute Day that also encouraged sex workers to not be ashamed to seek medical treatment for sexually transmitted diseases.

The campaign was published on the health ministry's website and social media sites last weekend, and has since provoked a wave of criticism, especially from evangelical legislators in Brazil's congress.

The decision is another indicator of the rise of the influence of Christian evangelism.

"According to a global survey carried out by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life in 2006, Guatemala and Brazil harbor the largest communities of renewalists as a percentage of their populations: 60 percent in Guatemala and 50 percent in urban Brazil. Evangelicals have exerted growing influence in political spheres as churches, which first drew members among the poor, have become more attractive to the middle and upper classes. Chile remains deeply Catholic, but a quarter of the Catholics are now charismatic," reported The Christian Science Monitor in 2009.

"We are fighting childhood prostitution and here comes a campaign encouraging it," federal deputy Liliam Sá said in a recent congressional committee meeting.

Health Minister Alexandre Padilha, a rising star in the ruling Workers' Party who is expected to run for governor of São Paulo state next year, said in a Twitter post late Tuesday that the campaign had gone ahead without his authorization.

In the tweet, Padilha said the decision to scrap the campaign "came before any protests for or against it."

The Associated Press reported that Padilha told reporters: "I don't think this is a message the ministry should be sending. Our campaigns orient people how to avoid sexual transmitted diseases."

As The Christian Science Monitor reports, Brazil has long been a leader in Latin America when it comes to pushing international drugmakers to reduce the cost of antiretroviral drugs to fight AIDs. For example, it championed a 2005 "agreement between Latin American governments and global drug companies to reduce the price of AIDS medicines ... and regional AIDS activists say authorities must be more pro-active in identifying carriers of the HIV virus if they want to reduce hospitalizations, save on drug expenditures, and help destigmatize the disease."

(Reporting by Asher Levine; Editing by Todd Benson and Vicki Allen)

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.
editor@csmonitor.com
Subscribe
Mark Sappenfield
Editor

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

Subscribe to insightful journalism

QR Code to 'Happy Prostitute' ads yanked from web by Brazil health official
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/World/Latest-News-Wires/2013/0606/Happy-Prostitute-ads-yanked-from-web-by-Brazil-health-official
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe