The Anti Vice Anti Immigrant Organizations
I understand people wanting to fight vice, but I don't understand the violent crusade against it that prefers police and prisons getting involved in people's personal morality choices. We live in a country that has laws against or restricting gambling, smoking cigarettes, drugs, alcohol, sex work, and other vices. These regulations are based on exclusion like banks being able to close the accounts of gamblers and sex workers. Or based on heavy punishment. When they should be providing treatment if people want it. People can't be forced into sobriety if they don't want it, they can't even be forced into treatment if they aren't ready because it has adversarial effects and often leads to a crash.
These people are continuation of the Temperance movement which is why they work and are allied with the Salvation Army (a descendant of the Temperance movement). This isn't based on reality. Most people aren't addicted to drugs or alcohol, they just do it once in a while by their own choice. Even if someone was addicted or housing insecure/homeless, you can't eliminate it by having the police beat them, hurling them to prison, or requiring total sobriety before they can access housing. What I just described is how a lot of these housing institutions work. Because they don't have enough beds for everyone, they are usually selective in who they help. Housing is usually the first step to getting better, it helps make it easier to get counseling, treatment, and a job. They act like they can save millions of victims, but they literally don't have the resources. Most of the money we give them in federal and state taxes usually doesn't go to victims, it goes into the operations, salaries, PR, and marketing for these institutions that are filled with corruption.
Despite their claims that they speak for the marginalized, they have a very clear disdain for them. Sex workers, undocumented immigrants, LGBTQ folk have tried talking to them from across the aisle. And they have run away every time. Three of the organizations that are a part of this coalition have stated in writing that they refuse to be in a room with undocumented immigrants because they don't want to be involved with illegal activity. A lot of the services these organizations gatekeep are denied to immigrants and they see nothing immoral about it. The Salvation Army would keep citizenship status of parents, because they wouldn't give Christmas gifts to children of migrants. The public had to find out about it and become angry for them to change policy. These organizations aren't the objective saviors they advertise themselves to be, and it's more immoral when you realize they advertise themselves this way to guilt trip people into giving them money.
Ending slavery was never a popular position. But now it is, and it's a really profitable business model for the people that claim that's what they do. They say sex sells. But slavery, and ending slavery narratives are even more profitable. They don't even need to provide much proof, be transparent to the public, or be answerable to the people they pretend to serve.
Written in 11/27/2019