Sandy Rios, the right-wing radio host and American Family Association governmental affairs director, is outraged at the GOP’s handling of legislation to combat sex trafficking, a bipartisan bill whose passage may be threatened because of an anti-abortion provision quietly added in by Republican leadership.
Rios said her problem isn’t with the anti-choice add-on, which she supports, but with the fact that Republicans are pushing for the legislation at all at a time when they should instead be fighting to stop gay rights.
She claimed that conservatives should see the fight against sex trafficking as “secondary” to combatting homosexuality since the latter is “threatening the culture” while trafficking “has been overblown.”
This is where misguided people are really affecting the system in a bad way. And this is going to be very controversial what I’m about to say, but I’m going to say it. This whole business of sexual trafficking in the United States, I’m not saying it’s not something of note, I’m not saying it’s something I approve of, but I suspect, methinks, it has been overblown, methinks this is much like the homeless issue that was absolutely blown completely out of proportion by the press and by others many years ago. I think there may be some problem because we have such massive immigration from countries that actually practice this. I doubt it is the huge, huge, huge, huge, huge issue that people want you to think it is.
This is the thing that bothers me: I see ministries and churches jumping on the bandwagon, they are all about saving the women who have been sexually trafficked, this is their great sacrifice, this is their great stand on social issues, at the same time will not say a word, not a peep, about homosexual marriage, hardly anything about homosexuality and what God says about it because that, you see, would cost something. But sexual trafficking, you see, ‘we’re outraged about that,’ not so much about gay marriage because that might be a little icky, we might offend people in the congregation. But sexual trafficking, that’s huge.
So John Cornyn from Texas, Mitch McConnell, they’re hearing from evangelicals who are into sexual trafficking, such a controversial issue, it raises a lot of money and nobody disagrees, it’s a safe issue. By the way, I’m not saying don’t help women who are sexually trafficked or little boys, whoever, but I’m saying it is the coward’s embrace, that’s my opinion. It is the secondary issue of our day, it’s not the one that is threatening the culture.
They think they are pleasing — this is their bone to evangelicals, this is their bone to Christians, we’re passing this victims of trafficking act and we’re saving lives while doing it, this provision that prevents money from going to women who are trafficked for having abortions, I’m not opposed to that, I’m in favor of that. But it is not the issue of the day, it is the coward’s issue of the day to sort of act like you’re doing something when you’re really doing nothing. So Mitch McConnell is not going to call Loretta Lynch’s vote if those Democrats don’t allow this bill to go through with a provision to prevent abortions, so that is how they are pretending as though they have chests when indeed they have none.
