No Aid to AIDS Groups That Promote Prostitution

Continuing the FRC tradition of misleading associations, I see? By claiming that DKT and similar groups 'condone prostitution and sex trafficing' - absolute falsehood. They are very much against sex trafficing, as they should be, and they tolerate prostitution because they realise that its a disease vector that must be controled.

Bush's policies - actually a restatement of the previous Bush's actions - do not merely 'deny AIDS funding to groups that condone prostitution and sex trafficking.' They deny funding to all groups that do not *condemn* and *criminalise* prostitution.

Prostitution will always be around. No society to date has managed to even reduce it to an insignificent level - and they have been trying ever since there were societies to try. But the damage can be limited - get the prostitutes condems, get them STI testing. Help them while doing so - government or charities can watch for signs of abuse, take the prostitutes somewhere safe and bring charges against the pimps. But all this requires that the prostitutes can be aided - and under Bush's demands, there is only one possible action to be taken on finding out about a prostitute: Jail them for a long time. That is of no help in preventing STIs, because there will be more prostitutes. There are always more. Its not helping the prostitutes. And it makes it impossible for them to trust the government - how can prostitutes report abuse or any other crime to an organisation that has a legal duty to imprison them?

And I find the way in which the article was written to be misleading and dishonest for its frequent mentioning of sex trafficking, and its implication that DKT supports it with such lines as " ... Bush's authority to fund only those organizations that communicate the U.S. government's opposition to sex trafficking." and "When DKT refused to sign a pledge that it would honor the President's anti-trafficking policies, the administration denied it taxpayer support." - particually while failing to mention the full scope of that pledge to concentrate on the one element to which noone objects.

Its nothing but mud-slinging, trying to portray organisations doing their best to prevent the spread of HIV as abusive people-smuggling abusers.

By claiming that DKT and similar groups 'condone prostitution and sex trafficing' - absolute falsehood.

If you condone prostitution you are tacitly condoning sex trafficking. Where exactly do they think the prostitutes come from? Do they they think little girls dream of growing up to be prostitutes?

Sex trafficking is driven by the demand for prostitution. Ergo, no prostitution -- no demand for sex trafficking. Wherever prostitution is legal or openly condoned, sex trafficking thrives.

Good reply Joe. Giving money to that group is like putting gas in a car without a tank: it's a waste of time, energy and money on something that won't work in the first place.

DKT - at least, I assume this to be the case, based on my knowledge of similar groups - still does not condone prostitution. They do not condemn it either - as previously explained, condemning prostitution makes working with prostitutes impossible, which makes them very difficult to help.

The prostitutes are not the problem. They are as much victims as anyone - and criminalising them serves no purpose other than letting others look down on them. Arrest one, and a new one takes their place. Trafficked in, often. You can claim that 'no prostitition = no demand for sex trafficking,' but you overlook the impossibility of achieving the first part. As long as there is demand for prostitutes and a shortage of supply, more will be shiped in. No matter how strict any criminalisation and enforcement of it, all you can do it make life a little harder for the traffickers - and ensure they bring it more prostitutes to replace those arrested.

If you want to stop sex trafficking, then you should be concentrating on the traffickers themselves - which means finding them, and getting witnesses who will testify, both of which are much easier if the prostitutes are not terrified they will be locked up.

And Randy: It does work. Brazil's anti-HIV campaign includes working with prostitutes, and its one of the few countries to achieve a great reduction in infection rate. It is actually so good that when the US demanded Brazil stop helping and start imprisoning, Brazil instead turned down all US funding. Its so good, that even the branch of the Catholic Church in Brazil, while not approving of the program, has tolerated it. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/3065397.stm
The free antiretrovirals help too - the Brazilian government authorised a drug company there to break international patent law to produce it at a fraction of the cost of imports. The US tried to get the WTO to declare a sort of mini-sanctions on them as punishment.