Nearly 20 years ago, a confident President Reagan stood in Berlin and delivered a powerful speech that sounded the death knell of a discredited ideology. It was an ideology that had enslaved a part of the people of that proud country, dividing it East and West. Those in the East were subject to the inhuman oppression of Communism–a defunct ideology that had never told anything but lies, and resulted in economic collapse, societal regression, and spiritual depression.
German Chancellor Andrea Merkel visits the United States today. She is currently facing increasing opposition from NGOs, government leaders, human-rights advocates, and faith-based groups to Germany’s open acceptance of brothels and sex huts. The issue has been brought to a point by well-publicized efforts to expand this industry when Germany hosts the World Cup this June. Estimates are that over 40,000 women, many from the Eastern bloc and Russia, will be trafficked into the German cities hosting soccer games in order to meet the demand promised, and manufactured, by the sex industry. Even now, before the games, authorities claim that as much as 80 percent of those women who will work as prostitutes are foreign, and have been coerced or beguiled into thinking they were coming to Germany for jobs in restaurants and clubs.
Merkel has a historic opportunity to denounce another corrupt ideology that is a product of lies. The ideology that drives this industry of commercial exploitation deals in the vulnerability and desperation of enslaved women, while lying to their oppressors that this is their right to enjoy. It makes a mockery of womanhood, denying these women their natural yearnings for motherhood, marriage, and love. It makes guarantees of protection and provision, of order and opportunity; instead, it reaps money earned from slave labor, and leaves the souls of its captives empty and suicidal. It destroys the very culture it calls free, denies there are moral absolutes, and drives a permanent wedge between the harmony and trust that should be encouraged between the sexes. Just as Communism did, it crushes the human spirit, denies its transcendence, and does nothing but exploit and use. And no one is left rich save those in the criminal underground.
The German government’s passive acceptance of the criminals behind the sex industry is no better than the stoic silence it maintained in the days of the Berlin Wall. Communist thugs once stole from part of Germany its right to flourish in freedom. Now a free and united Germany condones a new separation between abusers and exploiters on the one side, and those forced and defrauded and coerced into slavery on the other.
The words Reagan spoke at the Brandenburg Gate are just as profound in light of modern sex slavery:
As I looked out a moment ago from the Reichstag, that embodiment of German unity, I noticed words crudely spray-painted upon the wall, perhaps by a young Berliner:
“This wall will fall. Beliefs become reality.”
Yes, across Europe, this wall will fall, for it cannot withstand faith; it cannot withstand truth. The wall cannot withstand freedom
The liberalization of prostitution does not provide women with opportunities. It is no man’s right to use a woman in this way. It is a lie to say that commercial sexual exploitation is worthy of free-enterprise exchange. That this deception should be associated with sport and entertainment should shame Germany.
Chancellor Merkel, you have the opportunity to defend a standard that does not allow the separation of the sexes into abusers and victims. Set a standard that allows free expression without abuse and that denies criminals access to commerce. Set a standard for Germans that will lead the EU in combating this tyranny. Ms Merkel, tear down this reprehensible wall.
– Claudia Barlow is a consultant on medicine and trafficking.