Super Bowl Is Single Largest Human Trafficking Incident In U.S.: Attorney General

From Huffington Post:

When it came time for the Super Bowl, Clemmie Greenlee was expected to sleep with anywhere from 25 to 50 men a day. It’s a staggering figure, but it doesn’t shock advocates who say that the sporting event attracts more traffickers than any other in the U.S.

"The Super Bowl is the greatest show on Earth, but it also has an ugly underbelly," Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott told USA Today in 2011 when his state was gearing up to host the event. "It's commonly known as the single largest human trafficking incident in the United States." 

The influx of fans fosters the optimal breeding ground for pimps looking to boost their profits. Experts say that the sheer number of men looking to pay for sex substantially increases demand and the massive crowds allow for pimps and victims to essentially go unnoticed, newsnet5.com reports.

More here. 

Okay, just now, actually about thirty or forty five minutes ago when I read the article, I finally resolved my feelings about prostitution.  I've been sitting on the fence about it for many years.  I've probably been a weak supporter of legalization and regulation for libertarian and harm reduction reasons, but it's never been something for which I've wanted to advocate.  I have a problem with treating sex as a commodity.  Sure, I fully support the notion of "free love," and I believe that between two consenting adults, or more, anything goes.  But weird things happen when you throw commerce into the mix.  The greatest thing ever, sexuality, becomes cheapened when you put a dollar value on it.  It is no longer a gift human beings give one another for mutual uplift.  It becomes a thing, a product like soap or cars or toilet paper or meat, rather than something that is deep and mysterious and essentially human--you see a similar dynamic in pornography to a much smaller extent, but at least that's dealing with imagery instead of sex itself.  That is, selling sex, as a philosophical notion, ruins everything about it that's good.  

So it's tough for me to get behind legalizing prostitution.

But this Super Bowl story just drives home how enormously huge as an enterprise prostitution has become, and the vast majority of women involved have virtually no control over the circumstances of their work.  It's a labor nightmare.  Indeed, for many, it's slavery, as the "human trafficking" label attests.  Throw that together with the recent news that slavery, worldwide, is now practiced more than ever in human history, and we have a global catastrophe on our hands.  Clearly, we can't wipe it out.  It's already illegal.  But we can minimize its worst aspects once we've ended the black market.  We can put the prostitutes in charge.  We can make their working conditions safer.  We can make sure that they get the majority of the money they make.  We can make sure that it's not slavery.

Whatever any of us think about sexuality and sex, the only decent thing to do is to legalize and regulate prostitution, whether it feels moral or not.  Indeed, it's the only moral course we can take.  I'm not on the fence about this anymore.

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