Hawley on defense after linking human trafficking to sexual revolution of 1960s

JEFFERSON CITY — Attorney General Josh Hawley is being forced to defend his comments on sex trafficking, an issue that has been a focus of his time in Missouri office.

The Kansas City Star reported Wednesday that Hawley had linked human trafficking for the purposes of sexual gratification to the "sexual revolution" of previous decades when speaking to an audience of conservative Christians in December. The comments came to light when an unnamed source provided a partial audio recording to the Star of Hawley speaking at a "Pastors and Pews" event hosted by the Missouri Renewal Project.

Hawley's campaign later uploaded Hawley's speech to YouTube and noted that his speech aired on the Bott Radio Network earlier in January. However, the section in which Hawley connects the changes in American attitudes about sex in the 1960s and 1970s to a practice he has called "modern-day slavery" appears to have been edited out of the Christian radio network's broadcast. 

Hawley's speech

In the speech, Hawley talks about his Missouri upbringing, his legal career and his Christian faith, peppering his speech with references to Bible verses.

"As believers, we are charged to take that message that the Lord reigns, that Jesus Christ reigns, that He is risen and is seated on the throne, we are called to take that message into every sphere of life that we touch, including ... including the political realm. Amen?" Hawley said, receiving affirmation in reply.

Hawley then talked about challenges to efforts to spread Christian evangelicalism and "the battle for religious liberty" against "secular progressives," whose agenda Hawley characterized as "a form of authoritarianism. It is not equality at all, it's a form of privilege for those who hate the Gospel."

This led into Hawley's declaration that "so long as I'm Attorney General of the state of Missouri or hold any office or have any voice in this nation, I will fight for (religious liberty) as long as I live."

He also recited his legal advocacy that helped lead to a Supreme Court ruling that businesses like Hobby Lobby are allowed to cite religious objections to avoid providing contraceptive coverage under the Affordable Care Act.

After urging his audience to spread the Gospel, Hawley started talking about "the so-called sexual revolution."

"You know what I’m talking about, the 1960s, 1970s, it became commonplace in our culture among our cultural elites, Hollywood, and the media, to talk about, to denigrate the biblical truth about husband and wife, man and woman,” Hawley said. "To denigrate the biblical teaching about the sanctity of marriage and the sanctity of family, the sanctity of children and the appropriate place for sexual practice and expression within the family, within marriage, and we're living now with the terrible after-effects of this so-called revolution, which was in fact I think a great step back.

"And one of them is, one of those effects, is a crisis in our country that goes by the name of human trafficking."

"We have a human trafficking crisis in our state and in this city and in our country because people are willing to purchase women, young women, and treat them like commodities," Hawley said. "There is a market for it. Why is there? Because our culture has completely lost its way. The sexual revolution has led to exploitation of women on a scale that we would never have imagined, never have imagined."

Hawley also said sex trafficking exists "partly because the criminals are not getting the penalties they deserve" and "don't live in fear of the law like they should, and I'm telling you, I'm working day and night to see that that changes." 

Criminals should be held accountable, Hawley said, and "we must seek to help the victims of this crime to recover, to find a new life, to find healing and wholeness and a new start."

"But we must also deliver a message to our culture that the false gospel of 'anything goes' ends in this road of slavery," Hawley continued, adding that "the antidote to the cultural darkness we are facing" is to "preach the Gospel of Jesus Christ."

Hawley concluded his speech with a renewed call for evangelicals to "stop worrying and whining about the decline of Christian faith in America and start doing something about it."

The reaction

Hawley is a Republican candidate for U.S. Senate seen by many as the front-runner ahead of the GOP primary in August. President Donald Trump said Hawley "is gonna be a great senator" during a speech in Missouri late last year and promised to campaign with him.

In recent fundraising reports to the Federal Election Commission, Hawley was outstripping his GOP rivals but trailing his ultimate target: Democratic Sen. Claire McCaskill.

McCaskill's office did not immediately address Hawley's reported remarks, but the senator took to Twitter later Wednesday to comment.

"I didn’t go to one of those fancy private schools, but the history I learned in public schools & Mizzou taught me that the evidence of trafficking of women for sex goes back to before 2000 BC," McCaskill said. "It didn’t begin with women’s rights and the birth control pill."

To leave no doubt about what she was referring to, McCaskill punctuated her message by tagging Hawley's Twitter account. Hawley hit back a few hours later with a tweet of his own. 

"Get real. I'm for contraception & women working. I'm against exploitation of women promoted for decades by Hollywood & culture. Have to change that to stop trafficking," Hawley said. "Fly commercial home from your next Hollywood fundraiser & ask people what Hollywood is doing to our culture."

Kelli Ford, Hawley's campaign spokeswoman, emphasized in a statement that men are responsible for sex trafficking of women.

"Let’s get serious: sex trafficking is driven by male demand and the subjugation of women," Ford said in a statement. "In the 1960's and '70's, it became okay for Hollywood and the media to treat women as objects for male gratification. And that demeaning view of women has helped fuel harassment, inequality, and yes, sex trafficking. As Josh often says, to end sex trafficking, it’s not enough to put the criminals behind bars; you have to change the culture of male exploitation of women."

Others opposing Hawley were quick to call out Missouri's top law enforcement official following the Star's publication of the part of his comments pertaining to sex trafficking and the sexual revolution. Many compared his speech to a remark by Todd Akin, a U.S. congressman who torpedoed his own 2012 Senate bid against McCaskill by saying that women's bodies had ways of shutting down pregnancies in cases of "legitimate rape." 

"If my (GOP) Senate primary opponents could stop writing (McCaskill's) fundraising ads for her, that'd be great," said Austin Petersen, a former Libertarian presidential candidate now running as a Republican. He added: "These comments do nothing but foster a Todd Akin-style culture war that the GOP will lose to a formidable female incumbent."

Another GOP Senate hopeful, Courtland Sykes, drew heat recently for comparing Democrats like McCaskill to Disney villains and for criticizing "nail-biting manophobic hell-bent feminist she devils."

Hawley's remarks are in the spotlight on the heels of Gov. Eric Greitens' admission that he had an affair and denial that he threatened to blackmail the woman with a compromising photograph.

McCaskill had a sharp rejoinder for the Republican governor as well; the Columbia Daily Tribune reported McCaskill joked that while Greitens had promised to do many different and new things as governor, "little did we know it was sex in the basement."

American Bridge, a liberal political advocacy group, also likened Hawley's remarks to those made by Akin and characterized Hawley's comments as "a thinly disguised attempt to blame women for crimes committed upon women." An American Bridge spokeswoman, Allison Teixeira Sulier, denounced Hawley for "blaming victims for sex trafficking" and said it was "disgusting and wrong to ever suggest a woman is responsible for her own imprisonment and repeated rape."

Some conservatives came to Hawley's defense.

"What he said was that sex trafficking is a natural result of the Left's sexual revolution of the 60s," said Gregg Keller, a prominent Republican consultant, on Twitter. "And he's right, of course."

Asked what he thought of the claims that Hawley misidentified the source of the sex-trafficking problem, Keller replied that "liberals' policies are responsible for the cultural disintegration we've seen accelerate in recent decades. It's only natural they'd try to hide that fact when called to account."

Hawley's human trafficking efforts

Before the backlash, Hawley had made efforts to deter and prevent "modern-day slavery" one of the hallmarks of his term as attorney general.

He personally oversaw the execution of raids on massage parlors in Greene County after investigators believed women from China or east Asia were being held there against their will.

Last week, Hawley's office released a series of videos meant as resources to fight human trafficking.

And when he listed his accomplishments from his first year in office, Hawley noted that his anti-trafficking efforts included forming a task force, an enforcement unit and a business council.

He and McCaskill have both put pressure on Backpage.com, a website of classified advertisements notorious for being used to promote human trafficking and prostitution.