Lost Distinction

In a hundred side streets one night last week, solitary Italian males popped discreetly into familiar shuttered houses for one final fling. Outside, plainclothes cops prowled, ready to squelch any farewell parties that showed signs of getting out of hand. Surrendering its distinction as the last West European nation to boast legalized brothels, Italy finally closed down its "houses of tolerance."

The closing was the sole triumph of Socialist Deputy Angelina Merlin, whose incessant appeals to conscience had finally driven Italy's reluctant male legislators into outlawing an industry that paid the Italian state $20 million a year in taxes and license fees (TIME, Feb. 10).

Though the "Merlin law" offered the 2,500 inmates of Italy's 543 licensed houses the opportunity to enter "centers of social re-education," no one really believed that last week's shutdown would end prostitution in Italy. Even Deputy Merlin--who four months ago lost her campaign for re-election to Italy's Senate--concedes that most of the girls from the shuttered houses as well as the vast majority of the nation's 7,000 formerly licensed streetwalkers will simply join the vast army of clandestine prostitutes. Says blunt Angelina Merlin: "Thirty percent of all women between 15 and 60 give themselves up to prostitution in its various degrees." As for complaints that she has imposed an intolerable hardship on Italy's pridefully hot-blooded males, Signora Merlin last week snorted: "No one ever died of continence."

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