Lyon County brothel owner Dennis Hof will join the likes of Ronald Reagan, Archbishop Desmond Tutu and the Dalai Lama this month when he participates in a debate at England's world-re nowned Oxford Union.
Hof, owner of the Moonlite BunnyRanch and star of HBO reality TV show "Cathouse," will argue for the merits of legalized prostitution on May 17.
"(England has) had 1,096 years to figure out prostitution and they haven't done it yet," Hof said Tuesday in an interview.
He'll be part of a three-member pro-team that includes Dr. Fiona Godlee, editor-in-chief of the British Medical Journal, and Johnny Anglais, an adult entertainer.
Against will be Julie Bindel, author and co-founder of Justice for Women; feminist-activist Julia Long, who is also a board member of OBJECT, which opposes sexual-objectification; and Ellie Levenson, a campaigner and author.
Hof said he expects to agree with the anti-prostitution side in many ways not related to differing morals or religious beliefs. He's against women being taken advantage of by pimps and corrupt police officers. He's against them being attacked and murdered. But, at the end of the day, he argues, the supply and demand for sex will still exist, and prostitution should be aboveboard.
He joked that when prostitution is legalized — bringing with it all the protections that that affords — it's the clients that end up being exploited.
"For all the men who work all week and give these girls half our paycheck? They're taking advantage of us," he said.
He said he fully expects his stance to stir outrage at the debate, and he anticipates more hostility toward his ideas than he would get in the United States. But he hopes that more people — he characterized the Oxford audience as "the future leaders of the world" — to agree with him after he makes his points.
"I've said it a thousand times before and I'll say it a thousand times again: The BunnyRanch is a 57-year-old social experiment that works," Hof said.
He said he is also using his United Kingdom visit as an opportunity to petition the London mayor and U.K. Prime Minister David Cameron to operate a brothel during the 2012 Olympics, to be held this summer in London.
He warned that the large number of international guests raises the likelihood of illegal sex workers traveling into the country, with their pimps and traffickers not worrying about disease or the welfare of the workers.
Hof said if he received authorization to operate there, he would run his brothel to the same standards as the ones in Nevada.