The world is full of narrow-minded zealots.
Take a look, for example, at those religious nutjobs who are against human trafficking. They’re too busy imposing their bronze-age morality on the rest of us that they fail to see that human trafficking is not a black and white issue. In fact, there are some totes amaze arguments in favour of it.
Behold:
Trafficked humans would only be living in poverty anyway
There are over 100,000 homeless people in Northern Ireland alone. If we keep human trafficking illegal, that figure will continue to increase. Nobody wants that.
Additionally, many studies have shown that when people come out of a life of being trafficked, they sink into abject poverty, don’t achieve very much, or end up in prison or dead.
Human trafficking, on the other hand, is caring and compassionate; it keeps the trafficked person alive, fed, housed, and out of prison – meaning much less crime on our streets, too.
Anti-traffickers only care about freedom, they don’t care what happens to a person once they’re free
People take up a lot of resources. As anyone who has ever had a human live in their house will testify, they’re really very expensive. From the exorbitant costs of living to the endless pile of stuff they demand, like mobile phones and tins of Monster.
So, if we take away trafficking, who’s going to give all these millions of suddenly-free people a home? I don’t see anti-traffickers queuing up to give them ALL a home, do you?
No – every free human being should be a WANTED free human being. And until anti-traffickers start caring for already-free people, they have no business telling the rest of us what to do. Unless a human being is wanted, the caring thing to do is traffic it.
Banning human trafficking does not stop human trafficking
The main reason anti-traffickers want to keep human trafficking illegal, other than to impose their morals on the rest of us, is that doing so will reduce its frequency. But the data says otherwise. According to the International Labour Organization, there were 40.3 million humans trafficked globally in 2016 – most of which were in countries where trafficking is already illegal! So obviously keeping it illegal doesn’t help. It just stops safe trafficking.
A friend of mine, Mauricio – who only wants to go by his first name because of the horrible stigma attached to trafficking, and for fear of being arrested – trafficks humans in his home village of Lambeg.
Teary-eyed, with his once immaculate three-tier ebony mullet now unkempt with the stress, he recently told me, “Restricting access to human trafficking makes no significant difference to the number of people being trafficked. Instead, restrictions on human trafficking make it more likely that poor people looking to make a better life for themselves will turn to backstreet traffickers. In 2018, this is unacceptable.”
Did you read that? Yes, it’s 2018. Therefore, any other opinion is wrong because it’s older. And older things are inferior to present day things. Don’t ask me how. They just are.
It’s morally wrong to impose your morals on someone else
I’m all for freedom of religious belief. However, when religious beliefs impede on secular beliefs, then we need to ensure that secular beliefs come out on top – because secular beliefs are neutral. And that’s a scientific fact. So, religious people don’t have a right to tell other people how to behave, which is why it’s important to tell them – forcefully, if necessary – that they need to behave more secularly. Or else.
But by far the biggest problem I find with those against human trafficking – in my experience mostly Christians – is when they quote their “holy” book. Well, you can just quote it right back at them – “Judge not, that ye be not judged”.
What the God-botherers fail to understand here is that Jesus didn’t say anything specific about human trafficking, therefore it’s totally cool. And if Jesus thinks it’s cool, it’s cool. Even though I don’t think Jesus even existed.
The point is, all beliefs are good, but I believe that the religious have no right to force their beliefs on others – especially when it comes to sensitive and emotive issues like trafficking. So just stop being so judgemental, OK?
If you don’t like human trafficking, don’t traffick humans
This is the best argument for everything, ever. It is the platinum rule, not just for human trafficking, but for EVERYTHING that people disagree with you on! If you don’t like the idea of human trafficking, no one is forcing you to traffic humans. Mind your own business.
Your anti-trafficking opinion will not change the fact that traffickers traffic people every day. Old traffickers, young traffickers, poor traffickers, rich traffickers – they all traffic humans on a daily basis, and nobody’s opinion is going to change that.
In summary, anyone who values progress and empathy should support traffick rights because being pro-traffic means a lot of wonderful things – among them, the belief that trafficking should be safe, legal, accessible, entirely paid for by your taxes and carried out with empathy and non-judgement.
Only a hateful, bigoted fool would disagree. RIGHT!?!??!!