Ah yes the “sex workers” – especially the ones who happen to be children. Julie Bindel in Al Jazeera:

In recent decades, so-called “sex workers’ rights” campaigners working to decriminalise pimping and buying of sex have attached themselves, just like trans rights activists, to the movement for the rights of same sex attracted people. This was a logical – and highly beneficial – move on their part. Being seen as part of a proud, widely-respected social justice campaign undoubtedly helps their efforts to perpetuate the myth that “sex work is work” and “prostitution is liberating”. 

One of the more…er…surprising moments of the hostile divorce between Freethought Blogs and me was when Greta Christina and her enforcers labeled me a big meany to “sex workers.” Won’t somebody please think of the pimps?

Their acceptance into what came to be called the “LGBTQ+” movement, however, has been incredibly harmful to the most vulnerable members of society, and especially children.

Recently in California, for example, so called LGBTQ+ activists have successfully mounted opposition to planned increased penalties for adults soliciting sex from prostituted children.

In April this year, Republican Senator Shannon Grove put forward a bill that would have made soliciting a minor for sex, or agreeing to engage in any form of commercial sex with a child, a felony offence, carrying a mandatory jail time and a requirement for sex offender registration for repeat offenders.

“The crime of purchasing a child, of any age, for sex in the state of California should be a prison felony,” said Grove. However, LGBTQ+ activists, opposed the bill citing concerns about “unintended consequences”. They claimed that increased penalties for those who abuse minors caught up in the sex trade will affect the LGBTQ+ community “disproportionately”.

Meaning members of “the LGBTQ+ community” are disproportionately abusing minors in the sex trade, and “activists” are defending that. How very progressive.

You might think that harsher penalties for buying and selling children for sex should be a no-brainer, but these activists argued that  “studies have shown that LGBTQ+ people, particularly gay and transgendered individuals, are more likely to be charged with sex offences compared to their heterosexual counterparts”. They went on to state that “LGBTQ+ individuals are nine times more likely to be charged with sex crimes, and are thus more likely to be incarcerated – which will in turn lead to increased difficulties in finding housing and employment.”

If these here LGBTQ+ individuals are nine times more likely to be committing sex crimes against children then maybe the activists should be rebuking them rather than trying to help them continue committing sex crimes against children. Wouldn’t you think?

Who would have thought that in the US state of California, it would be this difficult to protect children from men wanting to purchase them for sex? And why is the California LGBTQ+ community trying to frame soliciting of children for sex as part of a sexual identity rather than a depraved, inexcusable crime?

Why indeed. Who knew the enigmatic “+” meant pimping out children? No wonder it’s enigmatic.

That people are advocating for decriminalisation of prostitution, and lenient sentences for those who buy sex from minors, in the name of protecting the rights of gay and trans-identified men, means something has gone terribly wrong with the movement for lesbian and gay rights. However it is dressed up, this is nothing more than child abuse apologism. It should be countered, for the benefit of children as well as lesbians and gays who want the movement for their rights to be urgently divorced from harmful prostitution advocacy.

Damn right it should.