Thursday, March 28, 2013



The latest Christian moral panic

The Christians are trying to recriminalise prostitution again. Their latest argument? Claims that South Auckland is flooded with underage prostitutes being pimped out by their relatives. But to point out the obvious, the law is already perfectly capable of dealing with this. Pimping, receiving earnings from, or being a client of an underage prostitute is a serious crime, punishable by 7 years imprisonment. Compelling a minor to work as a prostitute (as claimed in the article above) is even more serious, with a penalty of 14 years. These are serious offences that police and CYFS will act on immediately. If Pastor Membrey or Asenati Lole-Taylor know of this happening, then they should be reporting it to police so that the guilty parties can be prosecuted. The fact that they are not doing that (and the fact that they claim that police are simply returning underage prostitutes to their alleged pimps, rather than handing them over to CYFS and making arrests) suggests that their real problem is with legal sexual services, rather than illegal ones.

[Also worth reading: Queen of Thorns on the topic]