Legalized pornography, legalized prostitution and slavery

If you favour the continued legalization of pornography and prostitution (and some Christians do argue this on the grounds of freedom of choice for sins they are not personally involved in), then this article, Commercialized Sex and Human Bondage by Ellyn Arevalo and Mark Regnerus suggests at least some reasons why this is not a wise or good idea.

From the article:

While precise figures remain difficult to obtain given human trafficking’s underworld existence, in 2002 USAID estimated that between 700,000 and 4 million persons are trafficked each year into slavery. That number does not include cases of trafficking within a country’s borders, only across them. Furthermore, not only is human trafficking the fastest-growing criminal industry, it is tied with the illegal arms industry as being the second-largest global criminal industry.

and:

rather than eliminate sexual trafficking, the evidence has consistently revealed that legalizing prostitution fosters it.

and

Of course most of us want to end sexual slavery, but the commercial sex industry—which is the very lifeblood of trafficking—is increasingly tolerated. Prostitution is seen by plenty as a legitimate, if suboptimal, form of “work,” and pornography is taken to be harmless. And yet the commercial sex market and sex trafficking are symbiotically related; the latter simply would not exist without the former. Women and girls are trafficked into brothels, strip clubs, and massage parlors. They’re photographed and filmed servicing men. Customers—including men who simply click on free porn on the web—do not and cannot distinguish between trafficked women, prostitutes, and porn stars.

and

In other words, sexual demand is not as stable as you might think; it can be stimulated. Just consider what happened in Australia when its government decriminalized prostitution and took control of the industry: “in New South Wales where brothels were decriminalized in 1995, the number of brothels in Sydney had tripled to 400-500 by 1999, with the vast majority having no license.”

and

in a recent study of trafficking and prostitution across nine countries, researchers found that out of 785 sex workers, “89 percent…wanted to escape prostitution but did not have other options for survival.”

Free choice here is largely a myth.

Pornography and tobacco

I know Christians who think of themselves as free-speech libertarians in the matter of pornography. They don't use it, but they don't want to fight for its censorship either, reasoning that censorship is bad and people make their own choices.

Here's a thought provoking paper comparing pornography with the use of tobacco in the early '60s.

Got this from Justin Taylor, who got it from somewhere else.

Pornography as art?

I posted a few comments about this subject on the sola panel blog. There's an interesting discussion going on with Michael and a few others right now, in the comments section, which you may also like to check out. What is the best way to respond to art that appears to transgress moral boundaries?

The link between pornography and prostitution

One argument used against the idea of censoring pornography is that this is not the business of government.

However it is the business of government, as far as Christians are concerned, to punish evil. As 1 Peter 2:14 says that governors are "sent by [God] to punish those who do evil and to praise those who do good." Or as Romans 13:4 says of rulers, "But if you do wrong, be afraid, for he does not bear the sword in vain. For he is the servant of God, an avenger who carries out God’s wrath on the wrongdoer." A good government, whether secular or religious in nature, has a duty under God to make moral decisions and, insofar as it has power, to use the sword to enforce those moral decisions.

So it follows that governments have the right and duty, as they are able, to censor pornography. Whether they in fact do have the power (or even the willpower) to do this is another question. The sword that God has given to them may not reach quite as far as our internet connections, and some in a parliamentary democracy would see advantage in making sure that the sword remains short.

This is not a question that I've spent a lot of time thinking about, but I started thinking about it again because of the proposal currently before our local council to have a brothel built just round the corner from us. The particular question that has started to interest me is the link between pornography and prostitution (and perhaps further, the link between prostitution and human trafficking). Al Mohler's blog had an article about this subject in August 2005, where he mentions the work of Pamela Paul. And I also come across this quote in a 2006 article

The more often men purchased sex, the more they were to view sex as a commodity, and the more often they were to hold false information about prostitutes: most freely choose prostitution, they enjoy their work, they make lots of money, etc. Hughes suggested that if an education campaign debunked such beliefs and gave these men a more realistic view of the life of prostitution, they might be willing to change their behavior.25

Recently commentators in the United States have noted that pornography is becoming more culturally acceptable at the same time that it is becoming more violent and degrading toward women. This problem must be addressed in order to eliminate the demand for sexual trafficking, since researchers have found a link between pornography and prostitution, with men who solicit sex acts to be twice as likely to have viewed pornography as US men in general.

The same article reminds its readers that "Up to 800,000 people are trafficked internationally each year for sexual exploitation and forced labor, 80% of them women or girls."

I might do a bit more digging around on this subject. I found a pdf file of a 2004 article by Dr. Donna Hughes, Best Practices to Address the Demand Side of Sex Trafficking, you can download it here and it makes worthwhile reading.