12 November 2004

Re: Aspiring College-Age Prostitutes, Pimps and Druggies

The Society is not surprised over a news report today that New Zealand college students have expressed aspirations of becoming brothel workers, drug lords, dope dealers, dope packers, strippers, pimps, beneficiaries and druggies living on the street. These hopes expressed in their school’s 2004 year book has led to it having to be recalled by their Principal, acting on a parent’s complaint, 24 hours after its publication and issuing to students.

The Prostitution Reform Bill passed into law by a waffer-thin majority of one vote last year, has issued in a climate in which college-age young people view prostitution, brothel-keeping, pimping, stripping and all forms of “sexual services,” as attractive and viable quick-money earning forms of legal work. The decriminalisation of the prostitution ‘industry’ has opened up a whole new ‘playground’ for young persons to have ‘fun’ in – as soon as they turn 18 years. Of course it would appear that many are getting into the action much earlier based on well-documented reports in the media of girls 13 years of age and younger working as street-prostitutes in Auckland and Christchurch.

The Society is saddened that students from an Eastern Bay of Plenty college have chosen to use their school’s year book “to boast about their drug habits, gang connections, and love of parties.” This sort of bravado no-doubt has an element of tongue-in-cheek humour. Nevertheless, it probably does reflect something of the real values of some young people. Society must recognise that such values do not emerge from a vacuum. The glamourisation of drug-taking, sexual promiscuity, crime and sexual deviancy, in all forms of the media, has taken its toll on our children and young people.

MPs should realise the impact their decisions as law-makers make on the younger generation. Censorship authorities who hold statutory positions and fail to ban or require cuts to films that glamourise sexualised-violence and graphic violence should also be held to account for failing to apply the law properly and consequently injuring the “public good”.

The school authorities do need to deal with those who allowed a year book like this to be published without proper editorial discretion being applied. However, such action may miss the point. Our children are being subjected to unhealthy moral influences many of which find their origin in the liberal ideological mind-sets of those in government who have little time for those who want our children and young persons to honour and aspire to marriage and family, value chastity, and abhor abortion and sexual deviancy such as prostitution.

ENDS

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