The False Compassion of Normalizing Exploitation

There is a tendency in the modern age to favor such vapid individualism that some will celebrate another person’s demise if only it can be alleged that he chose it. They will hail his demonstration of ‘freedom’ even as self-destructs. An example of this is currently taking place in New York.

There is a 2-mile stretch in Queens, NY, reminiscent of what one only expects to see in the third world, or perhaps deep in Bangkok. Prostitutes, many of whom are sex trafficking victims, line up along the walkway, so that potential buyers can evaluate them, in plain view, and pick them out, not unlike a slave market. On the same street, one can find an array of drug dealers and those selling stolen items, acquired in New York’s prolific shoplifting surge.

When police decided to begin a multi-agency crackdown on Roosevelt Avenue, there were protests. Police were accused of cracking down on “the most vulnerable”, while other groups took the moment to advocate to make “sex work” legal. Of course, those people are the most vulnerable at precisely the moment when they are engaging in these high-risk behaviors. People are not empowered by selling themselves as sex objects, nor by surrounding themselves with individuals who would treat them as such. Likewise, drug users who are living lives of despair and whose deaths via overdose we label as “deaths of despair” are indeed vulnerable—by their addictions, by the drugs which may be laced with deadly impurities, and by the characters that sell drugs to them.

DecrimNY, which seeks to decriminalize prostitution, wrote on Instagram:

“This violent targeting of non-citizens, transgender people, people of color, street vendors, and s*x workers is unjust and unacceptable.”

Thus, by attempting to merge this issue with cultural Marxist class warfare, they seek alliances with a broader movement that is focused on normalizing not just the mere exotic, but the aberrant, and rejecting that which is good. They glorify miscreants and chaos while vilifying any that they see as representative of a state of order.

There is a false claim that is pivotal to this supposed ‘cause’ of promoting prostitution and drug abuse. Illogically, they insist that promoting or at least permitting these behaviors is in some way helpful to those who are performing them, merely because those in a time of desperation want them. In fact, we know the opposite is true—we know that prostitution is dangerous as well as degrading, and likewise with drug use. We know the life-destroying and often grave consequences for those engaged in either, which only become more likely with time.

Those who see this red light district as an acceptable area of the city must surely have a very different vision for what civilization should look like. After all, if this were to spread, such that it became the norm, are we to hail it as civilizational progress? Some would, and that would have to be because they have a vastly different idea of what we ought to be progressing towards.

Wanton license, promoted under the banner of freedom, will manifest in dead young adults who never dreamed of what they were capable of. Worse still, a society that values such license as a high virtue would never tell those vulnerable persons the truth of their inherent dignity and worth, because it would be too busy encouraging such self-destructive behaviors instead. Therein lies the tragedy: that those who are truly vulnerable and at-risk will suffer from the moral vacuousness of those who claim a high ground by turning their backs away from this problem, and refusing to intervene.

It’s not “brave” to encourage a person to engage in the behaviors that he is already immersed in. It’s the easiest position, for it results in no opposition. It takes moral courage to tell him to cease, for it creates far more strife, but it is what is necessary in caring for the person. This is true for many parents and friends of those engaged in high-risk behaviors. To do the opposite, to encourage what we know is bad for a person, when we know it to be so, is such a disservice to our fellow man as to be an act of evil in itself.