“We agree with 51 Attorneys General. Girls and boys should not be sold for sex on Village Voice Media’s Backpage.com,” begins the open letter printed in today’s New York Times—a letter written to the board of Directors at Village Voice Media on behalf of 36 prominent Christians, Catholics, Jews, evangelical Christians, Muslims, Sikhs, Humanists and other moral and religious leaders, who all agree that protecting children from sex trafficking should be “a basic fact of the moral universe.”
The clergy members—convened by Groundswell, the Auburn Theological Seminary’s social action initiative—also launched an online petition via Change.org to pressure VVM into shutting down its online escort ads. Their petition currently has over 11,000 signatories.
Their NYTimes letter continues:
As moral and religious leaders of many creeds and backgrounds, we are united in calling on your publication to shut down the Adult section of Backpage.com. We appreciate your efforts to put in place new measures attempting to screen for ads featuring minors. However, we do not believe that these measures are doing enough to adequately solve the problem, and we share the opinion of the nation’s 51 Attorneys General that the best way to eradicate your company’s connection with the sex trafficking of minors is to shut down the Adult section of your Web site, as Craigslist did.
This is the latest evolution of a fight that began four months ago in Seattle.
In July, Seattle Mayor Mike McGinn publicly called on VVM to reform its escort ad policies to include in person age-verification (a tactic employed by The Stranger) after Seattle police officers linked 22 recent cases of underage sex trafficking linked to the VVM-owned Seattle Weekly’s online personal ads platform on Backpage.com. When VVM refused, Washington AG Rob McKenna, along with 44 other AGs, took the request one step further—they sent a letter to VVM to “do the right thing,” and shut down their escort ads altogether. Now, these clergy members are falling in step with the AGs’ mode of thinking.
In an August 31 letter to Backpage.com, the National Association of Attorneys General stated that it has “tracked more than 50 instances, in 22 states over three years, of charges filed against those trafficking or attempting to traffic minors on Backpage.com.”
Lulz. You’re siding with Catholics.
The clergy say “We agree with 51 Attorneys General. Girls and boys should not be sold for sex on Village Voice Media’s Backpage.com,”
but what follows after the comma is
“because child sex should be free”
Religious groups dont really care about sex trafficking, they just want the sex ad section removed.
As always when we hear hand-wringing about the ‘children, oh what about the children, for god’s sake’ clearly the real motivation is to stomp on the civil liberties of consenting adults engaging in activities that puritanical busybodies generally can’t stand.
Yes, let’s get the sexual exploitation of children out of Backpages and back into church where it belongs.
Well, you folks are still publishing lots of escort ads in the back of your paper, so I’m taking this as just a dig at the Weekly, without any sort of real belief or conviction behind it.
You think that’s bad, turns out the Canadian Scouts were hiding child molestation nationwide.
It’s not just Catholics.
Where were they when priests were raping kids? Oh, that’s right, they are priests. Fuck them and their “moral” leadership. Let’s tax churches to pay for homes for unwanted children. Then we’ll hear the truth about their fucking morality. Their morality is the almighty dollar. Make prostitution legal and licensed.
Why pay high fees when you can meet Courtney Stodden online, get married and have unlimited romance…for FREE|
http://cdn03.cdn.socialitelife.com/wp-co…
Of course it’s about shutting down the entire adult services website. The age verification nonsense was only camouflage. If they succeed against VVM despite its vow to resist the pressures Craigslist couldn’t, something else will pop up. Sex worker-client matches have moved online for good.
The something else that will pop up will be significantly less interested in cooperating with law enforcement to protect minors than Backpage has been. But everyone who meant to advance their careers on this issue will have moved on to something else by then. Be careful what you wish for…
You shouldn’t be able to sell children online! You should only be able to sell them out of the back of a church after you’ve stolen them from their unworthy harlot mothers, isn’t that right, Catholic Church of Spain?
Stranger bedfellows, indeed.
The irony, the layers of sweet irony… let me savor it. Mmmmmmmm…
I know The Stranger is only considering one small narrow completely self-serving layer of this irony. So let me help.
How quick would the Stranger be to rally the pervy pitchforks and defend the barricades if a church, ANY church, let alone the Catholic church, demanded it ALSO stop it’s own adult services ads?
This is about the Churches stand against sex. And if this is successful in getting Village Voice Media to shut down it’s entire adult services section — SHUTTING IT DOWN, not reforming it — you think this same coalition of wouldn’t come after the Stranger in a heart beat?
Note that when the same issue came up before in a similar context (banning of “erotic services” ads on Craigslist), The Stranger had a different spin on the story:
“A moment of silence, please, to mark a passing. The love child of free speech and free enterprise that was the Craigslist Erotic Services section is no more. State attorneys around the country have been hounding Craigslist for over a year to censor sex-work ads. On September 3, the site, facing massive lawsuits and a firestorm of bad press, bowed to the pressure and removed the ads.
“I understand why Craigslist did it, but from a First Amendment standpoint, this is bad. The notion that censoring Craigslist makes people safer is a canard; it’s simply a sad example of political scapegoating. Any traffickers in children and unwilling women will go about their business, undeterred, while politicians praise themselves for being tough on pedophiles. …”
http://www.thestranger.com/seattle/contr…
Outercow,
You forgot Ireland and Australia.
@13 exactly. I wonder does anybody at the Stranger even read their own paper anymore?
“The price for children is too damn high!”
OMG!! Sex traffickers are snatching children from their suburban lawns and trafficking them on the internet for sex! Or killing them as part of their homosexual satanic communist rituals!! Someone save the children!!
@14 Sweet Galactus! There too!?
@ 18,
Unfortunately, yes. Our dear Noadi posted this on Oct. 18th …Australia http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/religion… and Ireland http://www.irishcentral.com/news/Full-sc…
I can imagine that there is more to come, as I can too easily imagine this happening in other nations as well. Sad. I do hope that I’m wrong, though.
Wouldn’t a better way to end sex trafficking be for the Catholic clergy to resign & be prosecuted?
Next they should end personal ads. On Craigslist, the few remaining hookers who didn’t move to less trackable advertising venues moved into the personals section. Who knows? Maybe there are CHILDREN posting trying to get casual sex. CHILDREN! THINK OF THE CHILDREN! So what if those children are 16 and 17 and able to have free consensual sex. THERE ARE CHILDREN BEING TRAFFICKED! OMG! JEESUS!