Do Louisiana Brothel Laws Apply to College Sorority Houses?

You've heard the song, and it goes like this, "There is a house way down in New Orleans they call the Rising Sun. And it's been the ruin of many a poor boy, and God I know I'm one". Many people think that the song made popular by the group The Animals is about a brothel.

You know, a house where women of questionable morals do questionable things for questionable reasons. It's kind of like Congress but at least at a brothel, they are upfront that someone is going to get screwed and some is going to have to pay.

While the Rising Sun/brothel debate, some say the song isn't about a brothel it's about something even more sinister, is still raging there are also debates among people who have way too much time on their hands regarding Louisiana's brothel laws and how they could somehow be connected to sorority houses on the campuses of many of our state's universities.

It is true that once upon a time, there were laws passed in New Orleans and other locales around the state that prohibited several women from sharing a house. The idea was that in order to run a brothel several women would need to reside there. You might remember this Brooke Shields movie from the late 1970s.

So by innocently capping the number of women who can live together, it was a way to push brothels out of business. I suppose the lawmakers back in the day needed a way to make it look like they were against prostitution by passing such statutes although many of them were probably the most frequent customers.

The bottom line the restriction on females sharing houses was a roundabout way to discourage prostitution. Doug MacCASH a writer for NOLA.com explored the question of brothel/sorority house rules in a story he penned earlier this year. It's an interesting read.

And based on what Doug and other investigators have discovered we can say with a large degree of confidence today's on-campus sorority houses at our state's universities are not in violation of any laws concerning prostitution or the operation of a brothel.

The fact-finding website SNOPES.com even addressed the issue and they too discovered that maybe once upon a time there were laws pertaining to brothels. But those laws did not and have not transferred over to sorority houses in Louisiana or any other part of the country for that matter.

So, the best we can offer on this subject is this. We'll call it an Urban Myth. It's not really a legend and we don't know for sure if it ever was true. But there is enough plausibility in the concept of the idea to make it at least believable at first blush. However further investigation reveals there is no substantiated truth to the connection between brothel laws and sorority houses.