Thread by @LauraRbnsn

Okay, so, storytime.
I used to go to a church that had a "sex trafficking activism" group (which I've since learned is a thing, I cover it in my Hypersexuality article) where a group of guys there would go to strip clubs and ask women there if they needed help.
I don't know if

they went in or if they just waited menacingly in the parking lot when shift changes happen, but I remember joking with a friend "I bet they started that group in a hurry when their wives caught them at a strip club."
But then this interview with Radio Free Mormon dropped

yesterday of a former camera worker with Operation Underground Railroad who said that he documented a mission where a bunch of volunteers in the DR did *literally that,* just started going to strip clubs, getting lap dances, and going into private rooms to get "intel"

(there was no intel before the mission, this was just what the intel gathering process looked like).
This fits pretty well with Jimmy Rex's podcast this week where he described *his* work with OUR and said that about half the time they went to a city they were never able to

actually find anyone selling kids.
So, some thoughts.
1) The fact that people can spend days and weeks apparently slumming it in bars and clubs overseas while pestering people for trafficking information without turning up a thing almost makes you think that trafficking humans

isn't the most widespread thing ever and no one cares about it but Americans.
2) It's hard to not feel like this is just another manifestation of "but do you want to hinder the gospel" when a church leader is called out for bad behavior.
This is just the NGO version of it.

"But this is such a big problem," "do you want to criticize people doing the work," "maybe you should be criticizing the criticizers, not the people who actually do something," and the classic one, "but at least people were helped" -- this is the same "ends justify the means"

thinking that is ENDEMIC to Christian churches and politics, and apparently also NGOs and volunteering.
You might not be ethically opposed to going to strip clubs and getting lap dances. But you should have some ethical questions about 1) questioning a sex worker who hasn't been

accused of a crime while she's in the position of providing sexual services 2) using donor money to spend a night out that is indistinguishable from a bachelor party 3) approaching sex workers in parking lots after hours 4) doing any of this in a global south context where

a white guy with a handful of money has a lot of coercive power just by walking in the room.
And if your answer to this is "Well, the ends justify the means," I have to ask what makes any of this a distinctly Christian practice. If Christian churches, politics, and NGOs have

no discernibly Christian ethics and simply get the job done no matter who or what has to be done, why is this still Christian? And maybe this should be left up to non-Christian orgs, who seem to be able to organize effectively without doing this?