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Many so-called advocates for women attempt to contrast sexual trafficking, which they rightly see as slavery, with legal prostitution, which they call "voluntary." The New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof says the debate among anti-trafficking activists over legal prostitution is a "ridiculously divisive" sideshow to the "central challenge" of sexual trafficking.

Hardly. As one activist told CT, "Prostitution is to sex trafficking what coal is to steam engines." There is an ugly, symbiotic link between legal and illegal prostitution: Legal prostitution stimulates the market for "commercialized sex" and opens the door to organized crime, including sex trafficking.

Whether governments draw the line at legalized prostitution or not, the fact is that God intended sex as a sacred gift, to be shared only in the one-flesh context of lifelong, heterosexual marriage. Any other use of our sexuality defaces the image of God as seen in man and woman.

Responding to the many brothels available in the Germany of his day, Martin Luther dismissed the argument—still held by many—that legal prostitution provides a safety valve for male lust, and instead extolled marriage, which "redounds to the benefit not alone of the body, property, honor, and soul of an individual, but also to the benefit of whole cities and countries, in that they remain exempt from the plagues imposed by God."

Modern Germany's state-sanctioned pimping and tacit encouragement of sex trafficking on a massive scale—even as its birthrate has plunged far below the replacement level—show that the plagues of which Luther warned are already upon us. No wonder Islamists call the West decadent.

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News elsewhere includes:

Soccer games no match for sexual tyranny | With the World Cup now under way in Germany, both sides would agree that sex-slave trafficking for a soccer extravaganza is nothing to cheer about. (Roberta de Boer, Toledo Blade, June 11, 2006)

Vatican Laments World Cup Prostitution | Estimates Say 40,000 Women Could Be Exploited As Sex Workers (Associated Press, June 8, 2006)

Germany warned over World Cup sex trade | The United States has warned Germany that it must do more to stop an expected tide of sex trafficking for sexual exploitation during the football World Cup. (Times, London, June 6, 2006

U.S. warns Germany on World Cup sex workers | Report on human trafficking names violator nations (Associated Press, June 5, 2006)

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July 2006, Vol. 50, No. 7