Religious conservatives and feminists agree: prostitution should not be legal.

They are opposing a bid by the Clinton administration and several European nations to loosen international rules governing sexual trafficking of women and girls, news reports say. A proposal before the United Nations, backed by the United States, calls for the word “trafficking” to be redefined to include only those women who become prostitutes against their will.

That amounts to legalization of “voluntary” prostitution, Charles Colson of Prison Fellowship (see http://www.pfi.org) said. “In effect, so-called voluntary prostitution would be redefined by default as a legitimate form of labor,” he said on his Breakpoint radio broadcast.

Southern Baptist leader Richard Land called the proposal immoral and outrageous. “I have seldom been more outraged at the behavior of the government that represents [Americans] overseas and at home than I am at this very moment,” he told Baptist Press. Land is president of the Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission (see http://www.erlc.com/), part of the Southern Baptist Convention.

Changing the definition would create a legal loophole for sex traffickers, Robert Flores of the National Law Center for Children and Families said. Many women and girls are lured or coerced into prostitution and become virtual slaves to their pimps, he said. Out of fear, they would likely lie to prevent prosecution of the pimps.

Feminist leaders oppose it on the same grounds. The new definition “would not cover some of the most common methods of sex trafficking which prey on and profit from the economic desperation of women, girls, and their families by securing their ‘consent’ for sale in prostitution,” Gloria Steinem and Patricia Ireland of the National Organization for Women said in a letter to U.S. Secretary of State Madeline Albright.

Land, Colson, Campus Crusade for Christ (see http://www.ccci.org)

Bill Bright, Diane Knippers of the Institute on Religion and Democracy, and other religious leaders sent a letter of protest to first lady Hillary Clinton. She is co-chair of the president’s Interagency Council on Women, which influences the administration’s policies on sex trafficking and has advocated changing the definition, Colson said. A vote on the subject will take place in the United Nations Jan. 17. Christians are being urged to contact the State Department and the White House to make their views known.

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