Josh Hawley blames sex trafficking on ‘sexual revolution’ of 1960s in leaked audio

[clueliss]

Dang.  The Republican Lineup against Claire McCaskill is turning into a real bunch of winners.  I know I saw a thread on here somewhere (that I just looked for and couldn't quickly locate) about some other blowhard idiot in this same race.  And it looks like the KC Star has audio of this incident.  

http://www.kansascity.com/news/local/news-columns-blogs/the-buzz/article197603534.html

Quote

Josh Hawley blames sex trafficking on ‘sexual revolution’ of 1960s in leaked audio

BY BRYAN LOWRY

 

 

During a speech to pastors in Kansas City in December, Missouri Attorney General Josh Hawley linked the problem of sex trafficking to the sexual revolution of the 1960s.

Hawley, the top Republican prospect to challenge Democratic incumbent Sen. Claire McCaskill in November, launched a new unit in the attorney general’s office focused on fighting human trafficking a few months into his first year in office.

During a speech at a “Pastors and Pews” event hosted by the Missouri Renewal Project, Hawley tied the issue to the sexual revolution, the cultural shift in the 1960s and 1970s that eliminated the social stigma for premarital sex and contraception that had been commonplace in the United States.

 

The Star obtained audio of Hawley, a GOP candidate for U.S. Senate, talking to Kansas City pastors in December.

Jason Boatright and Bryan LowryThe Kansas City Star

“We have a human trafficking crisis in our state and in this city and in our country because people are willing to purchase women, young women, and treat them like commodities. There is a market for it. Why is there? Because our culture has completely lost its way. The sexual revolution has led to exploitation of women on a scale that we would never have imagined, never have imagined,” Hawley told the crowd in audio obtained by The Star this week.

“We must ... deliver a message to our culture that the false gospel of ‘anything goes’ ends in this road of slavery. It ends in the slavery and the exploitation of the most vulnerable among us. It ends in the slavery and exploitation of young women.”

Kimberly Mehlman-Orozco, an expert on human trafficking who has advised law enforcement and testified in criminal cases across the country, said there is “absolutely no empirical evidence or research to suggest there was any uptick in human trafficking in the 1960s or 70s or that that’s when it started.”

Mehlman-Orozco, who wrote the 2017 book “Hidden in Plain Sight: America’s Slaves of the New Millennium,” said that sex trafficking has been a problem in the United States since the nation’s founding and that it gained significant public attention in the years after the Civil War.

“There are quite a few politicians, both Republican and Democrat, who try to use the issue to help themselves get elected without doing much research,” Mehlman-Orozco said. “It’s a bipartisan issue that most people can come behind. Everybody’s against human trafficking.”

Hawley’s comments came to light after Courtland Sykes, one of his rivals for the GOP nomination, inspired international backlash with a Facebook post about his desire to have daughters who will grow up to be homemakers rather than “career obsessed banshees.”

Austin Petersen, a Kansas City man who is also seeking the nomination, criticized Hawley’s comments and compared them to former U.S. Rep. Todd Akin’s comments about “legitimate rape” that helped sink the Republican’s campaign against McCaskill in 2012.

“It would also be great if GOP senate candidates could stop writing Claire’s attack ads and fundraising emails for her. These comments do nothing but foster a Todd Akin-style culture war that the GOP will lose to a formidable female incumbent,” he said in an email.

McCaskill’s campaign did not immediately comment on Hawley’s speech.

The Missouri Renewal Project is an affiliate of the national American Renewal Project, a group that works to politically engage conservative Christians. The national project did not respond for a request for comment.

Hawley’s campaign spokeswoman, Kelli Ford, said the candidate’s comments about the links between trafficking and the sexual revolution do not need clarification.

“Attorney General Hawley has spoken at length about this, so I’m not sure what part was unclear,” Ford said in an email.

“We now have a sex trafficking epidemic because too many men view women as objects for their own gratification and control. Hollywood and the media have promoted this attitude for decades, and it is wrong,” she said. “Attorney General Hawley regularly challenges audiences to get serious about sex trafficking by getting serious about changing male attitudes toward women, so that all women are treated with respect, equality, and dignity.”

5

 

[Destiny]

Oh. Dear. O.O

[clueliss]

I'll be donating to Claire's re-election fund when I get home tonight.  Just because of that.  

[Audrey2]

Guess all of the depictions of bordellos in the old west were fake news then. I've read that the "soiled doves" were moved around from town to town in some cases. That resembles some forms of sex trafficking to me.

[GrumpyGran]

Aside from the stupid, he sure seems to be trying to tie something specific to something else that really doesn't have much to do with the first thing. Interesting to me that he is quite specific about the victims of whatever he is talking about being "young women".

If he's talking about prostitution, and I don't think that's the big bad that's in his head, has he missed the memo about male prostitution? Child pornography? The very real fact that women who are prostitutes don't get to retire when they hit 30?

He's attached that headline-grabber, human trafficking, to something that he's sure he's never participated in. And now he's trying to appeal to the evangelicals by blaming it all on behavior that emerged during a time period, behavior that is appalling to them.

And ultimately, isn't he victim blaming? Is he saying young girls have to be prostitutes because their parents were hippies? He's waited about 20 years too late to make that case.

Young women, eh? I smell a pile of dirty laundry here.

[AmazonGrace]

Good thing no one ever treated human being like commodities and purchased them prior to the invention of contraception.