The sex trafficking moral panic isn’t about sex abuse

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Journalist Erin Gloria Ryan recently pointed out that several Republican Congresswomen elected in 2020, the “year of the Republican woman,” who campaigned on being anti-predator or anti-trafficking have yet to weigh in on allegations Republican Representative Matt Gaetz paid at least one 17-year-old for sex.

Sex trafficking is a winning campaign issue because Evangelical organizations have been pushing disinformation campaigns inflating the numbers and lying about the causes of sex trafficking. And everyone from New York Times columnists to celebrity influencers have been amplifying and legitimizing their numbers and narratives.

Evangelicals push the sex trafficking moral panic in part to distract attention from their own sex abuse scandals and from the ways Evangelical culture exacerbates and excuses sex abuse from leaders within their own communities.

I’m not saying this is a conscious conspiracy. Most Evangelicals don’t understand how purity culture leads to abuse.

But I would argue that the sex trafficking moral panic isn’t, at root, about opposing sex abuse. Remember, Evangelicals supported Trump.

At root, the sex trafficking moral panic is a means to an end to fight sex work and porn, which Evangelicals perceive as threats to the white, nationalist, Evangelical nuclear family.

The sex trafficking moral panic centers concerns about a racialized other while ignoring the people who do 99% of the sex abuse in this country: our fathers, pastors, coaches, bosses, classmates, etc.

If Evangelicals or the Congresswomen campaigning on sex trafficking fears really wanted to end sex trafficking and protect women in the sex trade they’d push for sex work decrim, a policy supported by every credible human rights organization including Amnesty International.

But they don’t. Every solution they propose involves further criminalizing porn and sex work.

That’s telling.