In a column titled "Seduction, Slavery and Sex" in today's New York Times, Nicholas D. Kristof again looks at the horrible, persistent problem of American girls being kidnapped and forced into prostitution, saying
Human trafficking tends to get ignored because it is an indelicate, sordid topic, with troubled victims who don’t make great poster children for family values.That reminded us of this blog post we did on March 15, 2008; it's worth repeating to look at low morals of a career politician like Rep. Jeff Flake:
A lot's been written about the creepy prostitution scandal that ended New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer's political life.
But Rep. Jeff Flake has his own problem with prostitution.
In the Sunday New York Times, Nicholas D. Kristof's column, "The Pimps' Slaves," details the nauseating horrors that young prostitutes face and then notes,when the girls are black, poor and prostituted, there is either indifference or an assumption that they are consenting to the abuse.
“It’s about race and class,” said Ms. Lloyd, who is bewildered when she sees Amber alerts for abducted children. Last year she worked with 250 teenage girls who had been prostituted, and not one of them ever merited an Amber alert.
“If we served 250 white girls from upstate middle-class homes, we’d be rolling in money,” she added, “and we’d be changing the law.”
Changing the law is on the agenda. The House of Representatives passed a landmark bill in December, by a vote of 405 to 2, that would make the federal authorities much more involved in cracking down on pimps and trafficking.
But the Justice Department is fighting the House bill, and Senator Joe Biden, who is chairman of a crucial subcommittee, has dawdled on it. A broad coalition of antitrafficking leaders from left and right sent the Justice Department a furious letter scolding it for being soft on pimps.
That may be the only letter in history signed by both Gary Bauer and Gloria Steinem, by executives of the National Organization for Women and the National Association of Evangelicals.
Knowing Jeff Flake's wise-guy reputation for always being one of a handful of House members to vote against an issue Republicans and Democrats with some sanity are almost unanimous in endorsing, and I checked the roll call for last December 4 on the William Wilberforce Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act of 2007:
Four hundred and five (405) members of the U.S. House of Representatives voted to make life tough for sex traffickers.
Just two congressmen voted to enable prostitution and sex slavery.
I'm not surprised, but I'm sorry to say that Jeff Flake was one of them.
Shame.
