Whores in the Religious Marketplace: Sex-Positivity's Roots in Commercial Sex Cultures

In late 1976 the Church of Venus opened its doors at 1414 First Avenue--sandwiched between adult bookstores and theaters on what, during the 1970s, was colloquially known as Seattle's Flesh Avenue. Before it even opened its doors, a columnist for the Seattle Times, curious about the descriptor Church on a street known for sin, would begin chronicling the organization's purported mission. In this article I argue that people in the sex trade were primary developers of sex- positivity and that sex- positivity was a political resource for challenging their criminalization and marginalization. For the purposes of this article, sex- positivity refers to an ethico- spiritual framework that critiqued the rigid regulation of sexual practice by dominant institutions and the state; affirmed sexual exploration as a site of personal and collective meaning making. Sex- positivity provided people with a framework from which to embrace and explore the significance of bodies and pleasures to modern sexual selves.