The GOP’s Sex Trafficking Shell Game: How Laws Against ‘Sex Trafficking’ End Up Hurting Women

[DonViejo]

Jay Michaelson

Republicans are insisting on tacking anti-abortion language onto an anti-sex-trafficking bill—and it’s just their latest effort to exploit the issue to fight “sexual immorality.”

Who doesn’t hate sex trafficking?

No one, of course. Sex trafficking is horrifying. Which is why it’s being exploited by social conservatives to push an anti-sex agenda under an anti-trafficking banner.

Just recently, this longstanding tactic became front-page news. A pending Senate bill on sex trafficking was all set to pass—until Democrats discovered that it expands a longstanding policy known as the Hyde Amendment, which prohibits taxpayer money from being used to fund abortions. Under the proposed law, that policy would now also cover a dedicated fund for victims of sex trafficking.

Sneakily, the bill does so only by cross-referencing another law without even mentioning what it is. Democrats say they had no idea the provision was even in there. But now, their objections to it have stalled the law and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is stalling Loretta Lynch’s nomination to be attorney general until the stalemate is resolved.

Although this is its first time in the headlines, the sex trafficking shell game is not new; it’s been going on for some time now, away from the limelight, in at least five distinct ways.

more
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/03/19/the-gop-s-sex-trafficking-shell-game-how-laws-against-sex-trafficking-end-up-hurting-women.html

[geek tragedy]

1. Meh. This article ignores the fact that a lot of people on the left

are also on board with cracking down on sex trafficking.

No, anti-trafficking money should not be spent on arresting prostitutes.

But it sure as shit be used to crack down on pimps and johns. There would be no sex trafficking without men willing to pay for it. It's demand-driven, and the only real way to suppress it is to suppress the demand.