The current Missouri Attorney General and likely Republican challenger for the Senate seat currently held by Democrat Claire McCaskill is Josh Hawley. In keeping with the rightward lurch of the GOP comes this statement from him, via The Kansas City Star:
“We have a human trafficking crisis in our state and in this city and in our country because people are willing to purchase women, young women, and treat them like commodities. There is a market for it. Why is there? Because our culture has completely lost its way. The sexual revolution has led to exploitation of women on a scale that we would never have imagined, never have imagined,” Hawley told the crowd in audio obtained this week by The Star.
“We must … deliver a message to our culture that the false gospel of ‘anything goes’ ends in this road of slavery. It ends in the slavery and the exploitation of the most vulnerable among us. It ends in the slavery and exploitation of young women.”
Poor guy is getting a lot of press, and most of it bad. So let’s see if we can help him out here.
We know that the sex trade is the world’s oldest profession, if we may take chestnuts at their face value, no? So we can immediately eliminate the obvious contention of his statement. But consider this: for the vast majority of that time, the sex trade was merely considered part of the commercial activity of society.
So when the “sexual revolution” came around, freeing women from the compulsion of fidelity from which men had freed themselves long ago, it lent an exclamation point to the work of women over the last couple of centuries to secure their personhood, previously marked by the Suffragette movement.
Which is to say, what had been a simple part of the commercial activity of society suddenly became … repulsive. Enslaving women for sex prior to the sexual revolution had not been terribly abnormal, even when the bonds were matrimonial. Afterwards? Not in the least normal.
And, so, he’s right, if you can read the sentimental tea leaves properly. A fairly normal activity suddenly becomes repulsive – because of freedom. The freedom to indulge, or not to indulge. The freedom to use self-judgment.
Thanks for pointing that out, A.G. Hawley. I’m sure the pastors you were talking with will appreciate this point.
