BY ANNISTON WEBER
On March 3, I attended a presentation on sex-trafficking with Jaco Booyens. It lasted for approximately an hour and a half and discussed the dangers and prevalence of sex-trafficking within the United States.
The evening was full of shocking statistics and personal anecdotes from the speaker. While he spoke, it was incredibly obvious he was passionate about what he does.
The subject of sex-trafficking is undoubtedly uncomfortable – Booyens noted this several times during his presentation. At the beginning of his presentation he identified himself as “politically incorrect,” which, from my understanding, meant that he was about to raise some controversial subjects.
“Uncomfortable” is absolutely how I felt for a majority of his speech. Not just because of the sex-trafficking discussion, but because of how the topic seemed to derail and blame other organizations and beliefs for the prevalence of sex-trafficking in the USA.
Booyens said the issue is bipartisan. This is a statement I can absolutely get behind. Sex-trafficking is an issue that people on all points of the political spectrum should be fighting against. However, since the conversation Booyens had with the audience very obviously strayed into a political leaning rather than speaking only on the issue, it was hard for me to focus my attention on the issue at hand.
As a minor example, after he had the women in the room briefly reflect on what going through puberty was like, he quickly interjected his own beliefs.
“This notion that men and women are alike is absolute B.S.,” he said. “Because you can’t in your 40s decide you’re now a woman. You were not 12 and woke up one morning and had a period where the whole world changed.”
As the night went on, I noticed Booyens adding more and more of his own ideas and beliefs into the conversation rather than sticking to the undeniable facts of sex-trafficking.
He went after Planned Parenthood. He attacked the Comprehensive Sexuality Education funded by the organization, claiming it started teaching kids about sex way too young.
“This curriculum is soft porn. The cover of the book says, ‘It’s perfectly normal,’” he said. “No, it’s not. When you show this in a classroom you normalize it. These kids are watching porn now. This is where we’re at.”
In addition to teaching sex-ed at a younger age, Booyens said sexual immorality is an idea that is promoted and celebrated in the United States. He placed blame on the “radical” beliefs and the sexual liberation movement that started in the 1960s.
“They promoted a mindset that sexual morality is not important,” he said. “Up until that point there’s no way you’d question whether or not marriage was between a man or a woman. There’s no way you’d question how many genders there are.”
He also stated that “there has not been a single civilization in history that has embraced sexual immorality that survived.”
“The Roman Empire fell because its leader embraced sexual immorality,” he said.
Rome did not fall because they were sexually liberated. Rome fell because of barbarian attacks, overexpansion, and poor military spending.
When I was listening to this part of his presentation, I found myself wondering what exactly this had to do with sex-trafficking. Sexual liberation is a movement people have been fighting for since the foundation of society. Acceptance and understanding of people with different backgrounds and beliefs is how society moves forward – not how people get trafficked.
“That’s what you are seeing in our country today,” he said. “People want you to agree with how they want to live. They want you to legalize prostitution and immoral lifestyles. They normalize it and now we are here.”
Specifically, Booyens blamed the LGBT+ movement “Love is Love” for promoting and normalizing pedophilia.
“Because of the insane conversation in our country about 300 genders and craziness, there’s a reason they do that,” he said. “They’re trying to classify pedophilia as a sexual orientation. They want to make it a bill to go to the senate floor. They want to give pedophiles rights. That’s insane.”
I don’t know a single LGBT+ person who supports the idea of legalizing pedophilia. In fact, they denounce it. I understand the point Booyens was trying to make – that pedophiles and sex-traffickers are exploiting a society attempting to be tolerant of all lifestyles. However, the way he presented this argument placed blame on the LGBT+ society as a whole instead of discussing how pedophiles are trying to infiltrate a community.
The rise of porn addiction, Booyens said, is another top contributor to sex-trafficking.
“If you watch porn today, you are literally playing with a viper,” he said. “Porn is more dangerous than any drug out there. It feeds sex-trafficking. Most porn scenes that you watch aren’t the first take. They overmedicate these girls and they hurt like hell. But people are addicted to it.”
He continued by saying that the Super Bowl halftime performance this year was a direct consequence of a society that is addicted to porn.
“Every single shot is a crotch shot,” he said. “How are you supposed to value women when this is happening? We had 12 and 13-year-old girls wanting to be pole dancers after that. A mom in her 50’s swinging on a pole for viewers. That’s a disgrace to being a parent and it’s a bad image for girls to see.”
Bringing in situations that are completely polarizing distracts from the subject at hand. If you are going to advertise this presentation as bipartisan, the content should have remained bipartisan. Everyone can agree that pedophilia is bad. Everyone can agree that sex-trafficking is abhorrent. But when you place blame on a known partisan movement – it feels like you’re there to attack the movement, not sex-trafficking.
Throughout Booyens’ speech, I wondered when he was going to cover tips to help spot sex-trafficking or how to get help if you are in danger. This is a conversation that unfortunately never came.
Presentations covering important topics like this should be nonpartisan. This is not a political issue, this is a human issue. We absolutely should be talking about it: educating students on ways to stay safe, providing support for victims, discussing policies that could positively bring about change, punishing the evil human beings participating, and informing citizens about how they can get involved.
I came into this presentation wanting to be on the side of Booyens – I wanted to learn how to spot sex-trafficking and ways to prevent it. The situations presented to the audience, however, prevented me from doing that. I think Booyens could get a lot more people on his side if he chose to actually leave irrelevant, political issues out of his discussions.