Under the pretext of wanting to safeguard the human right of self-determination for women around the world, Christian zealots in the US government are about to impose conditions for the distribution of financial aid in the fight against AIDS in other countries. Primarily, foreign governments who want to receive such financial aid will have to commit themselves to fight prostitution.
No, I am not personally in favor of brothels, or street hookers, or any other form of the organized sex trade. I don't frequent prostitutes, as they provide a service of inferior quality when compared to sex with a woman who is not a prostitute.
But I am against the US government attaching the intended strings to the distribution of AIDS aid, because it smucks of typical US political trickery.
Yes, forcing women into prostitution, or keeping them in brothels through debt bondage, or forcing them to serve customers, or restricting their freedom in any way... all of these are criminal acts that ought to be stopped by the police, with the perpetrators brought to court.
However, laws that deal with such crimes already are in place in every country of the world. But the agenda behind the new AIDS aid distribution proposal is not to improve law enforcement in poor countries. If that were their primary concern, there would be stronger leverage through other routes. And apart from that, they would focus on worse crime, such as murder.
Yes, I hold that murdering a woman is a worse crime than forcing her into prostitution. From forced prostitution, she can be rescued; there is no such redress if she has been murdered.
But the concern of Christian zealots in the US government is not to protect people from the worst crimes. The hidden agenda is to fight sexual freedom. And the US government pursues an anti-sexual agenda not just abroad, but also at home. We can judge this from the fact that, for example, sexual harassment cases receive more attention than, let's say, armed robbery and murder.
No, I do not advocate sexual harassment. But blowing sexual harassment up out of proportion has the net effect of desexualizing society. In a case of doubt, men will not proceed with approaching a potential sexual partner, rather than go ahead and risk a sexual harassment scandal.
And to put the breaks on the sexual expression of men precisely is the hidden agenda of Christian zealots in the US government.
Another example is the extremely tight interpretation in the US of what constitutes rape. Don't worry. I'm entirely against raping women. However, the tight interpretation of what constitutes rape again has a net effect beyond actual rape cases.
Because it is so easy for women to accuse men of rape, and because it can be so profitable for the women when the accused men are rich, many men in the US, especially when they are rich, now think again before proceeding with a sexual adventure.
An example for the tight interpretation of rape and date rape laws: Assume a man meets a young woman at a discotheque. They have a few drinks, then head for a hotel room. There they kiss passionately and have exciting foreplay, including oral sex. Of course, all of this doesn't give the man the right to penetrative sex.
A traditional interpretation would have been that if the woman were against a sexual relationship, she better didn't follow the man to the hotel room. And even if she were to follow to the hotel room, when in the hotel room she better made clear from the beginning that she doesn't want any sex.
The current tight US interpretation of what constitutes date rape makes rich US men who pursue a playboy lifestyle extremely vulnerable to false accusations and blackmailing. What if the woman in the above example, during passionate embraces, says "no need to go inside" but at the same time proceeds with encouraging behavior, such as kissing the man's neck? What if she even records her words while they are spoken, using a sufficiently sophisticated cell phone (just to have proof)?
Some lawyers have seriously suggested that promiscuous men let their dates sign written forms of consent that they agree to sexual intercourse.
Yes, you can regulate the fun out of sexual relationships, which is precisely what Christian zealots in the US government try to achieve.
Maybe in not too long a future, US Congress will declare it an offense to use the US postal services to solicit extramarital sex. Or it will become a crime to use interstate radio waves for the transmission of words such as "fuck". What a great potential to combat Internet pornography!
The anti-sexual Christian zealots in the US government also target free sexual expression in poorer Third World countries. And the pretext are the human rights of women in prostitution.
