Village Voice responds to religious leaders’ complaints about Backpage.com

Seattle Times | Westword.com | Groundswell Movement

Dozen of religious leaders are calling on Village Voice Media to stop taking adult ads on backpage.com, because of child-sex trafficking that police link to the classifieds. In a full-page ad in Tuesday’s New York Times, the “moral and religious leaders of many creeds and backgrounds” tell Village Voice’s board members and CEO that “we trust that your company shares our outrage over the sex trafficking of minors. While we empathize with your business challenges and the increasingly difficult marketplace in which Village Voice Media competes, we trust that you are committed to running your business without compromising the lives of our nation’s girls and boys.” Village Voice Media says in its response:

The religious coalition demanded that we close down our legal, adult classifieds.

Neither government officials nor God’s advocates can dictate such arbitrary control of business or speech.

In August, this same religious coalition asked for a confidential meeting regarding Backpage.com. We readily agreed. As we prepared to share our information, we were informed that only four members of the coalition would attend.

Village Voice Media then offered to fly, at our expense, all members of the clerical delegation to New York for the conference.

The Voice says “Backpage has spent millions of dollars and dedicated countless resources to protecting children from those who would misuse an adult site. …Complicated issues require sophisticated solutions, not PR flurries.”

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  • http://www.facebook.com/people/Norma-Jean-Almodovar/100001283590525 Norma Jean Almodovar

    The FBI should also investigate the over 100 cases in 2011 alone of law enforcement agents having sex with minors. Why is it that there is such a culture of corruption within law enforcement that allows this to happen? Judges and even  FBI agents have been caught with child porn and having sex with minors… but there is no outrage from the clergy or a demand to shut down the agencies which contribute to these cases. And according to the May 5th, 2011 Economist,  ”Sexual abuse in prison is distressingly common: the Justice Department estimated that more than 217,000 prisoners, including at least 17,000 juveniles, were raped or sexually abused in America in 2008.” What are the clergy doing about that? Does it even matter to them? According to many conservative women’s groups, like the Georgia Eagle Forum of which Sue Ella Deadwyler, publisher of Georgia Insight, is a member, stated- in opposition to the Republican Georgia state senator Renee Unterman who introduced a bill that would steer girls under the age of 16 into diversionary programs instead of arresting them as prostitutes- “Arrest is a valuable life-saving tool that must be used. We need to hire more cops to arrest the prostitutes.” She said that she believes that arrest is a better deterrent than a proposal for rehabilitation — no matter the age. “Sure there are those who are forced into prostitution, but I think most of them volunteer,” Deadwyler said of under 16-year-old prostitutes. “Many, many children have been scared straight because of arrest.” Of course. And raped by the corrections staff. That will certainly do it!  But what of real rapes with real victims? Between 400,000 to 500,000 untested rape kits sit rotting in police evidence lockers because there is no funding to test the DNA OR to pursue and prosecute the perpetrators. Does this concern these members of the clergy at all? It doesn’t seem to faze them one bit. Go after consenting adults engaged in consenting adult behavior. That’s how we protect children. RIght.

  • Patrick O’Malley

    Let the FBI investigate. 

     

    Then let those same FBI investigators investigate the
    Catholic church, which has had sex with thousands and thousands and thousands
    of children in the US alone, and then covered it up.  In the case of the Catholic church, it isn’t
    just child sex, its organized crime and cover up. 

     

    Use the same RICO statutes that they use to infiltrate
    the mob. 

     

    Thanks, Catholic church. 
    People almost forgot that you are the world experts on having sex with
    children.