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5. You don’t have to be involved in prostitution or pornography to contribute to the problem. You just have to belong to our society.

I now know that I’ve contributed to the problem:

* By not providing a forum for healthy messages about sexuality to the young people growing up around me.

* When I can, but don’t, communicate to others what I’ve learned about commercial sexual exploitation.

* If I don’t care that rising property values in my neighborhood are eliminating affordable housing, which leads people living on the edge to exploit themselves to pay their rent.

* If I don’t write my congressperson to say I’m concerned about making sure that immigrants who are sold into sexual bondage outside or within the United States are treated fairly by our legal system.

6. Helping sexually-exploited people can be an uncomfortable experience.

What does it mean to be the kingdom of God and welcome people who are drunk, high, prostituted, or otherwise sexually exploited?

To be brutally honest, I don’t do so well in this area. It was one thing to sit with Joy, who is now a survivor. It’s another thing to sit down and talk with a woman who is currently being beaten with pipes, thrown from moving cars, and eating out of trash cans. But this was where Joy once was. Yet the church didn’t help her.

Joy told me: “More than once, I went to churches for help but I didn’t find refuge. I got judged because of how I looked.”

7. We are all called by God to help.
Ruth Wright, a United Church of Christ pastor in Vancouver, B.C., told us about her congregation, which offers people who are homeless and prostituted healthy food, clothing, a safe place to sleep, a mailing address, worship services, counseling and something more rare —respect. Wright reminded us to see every person as a fine, bright, intelligent person of worth, created by God.

So what should you do?

Here are four things to consider:

• Pray for people who are homeless or living in poverty — they are the ones most likely to be victims of sexual exploitation.

• Ask your elected representatives to pass legislation that punishes traffickers and helps people living in poverty avoid sexual exploitation.

• Talk with young people from an early age about what makes a friendship healthy, so that they are equipped to evaluate whether they’re being manipulated.

• Be aware of how you may be seen as welcoming or unwelcoming. Be honest about your own shortcomings, as well as everyone's true beauty and worth as a child of God.

Remember that everyone is called to help, but you can’t do everything. What specifically can you do?

Elizabeth Hunter, a section editor for The Lutheran magazine, lives in the Chicago area with her husband and two young children.

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Faith Reflections by Mary Streufert

The writer of Judges casts his critical lens on the situation in the closing verse: “In those days there was no king in Israel; all the people did what was right in their own eyes” (21:25). The king, the link between Israel and God, was God’s representative on earth. He was supposed to help Israel follow God’s way. The problem was that people were taking their own counsel, resulting in chaos through the misuse of power and the maltreatment of the vulnerable.

These same factors are at play in modern-day forms of commercial sexual exploitation, in which female sexuality is usually what's sold as “human retail.” Examples of human retail are both extreme and subtle, but they both deserve our critical eye and our prophetic resistance. Human trafficking for sexual slavery is an extreme form of human retail in which women, girls, and boys are tricked into or captured for sex with customers.

This happens both in malls in the United States and in countries far away.
The objectification of female bodies, minds, and spirits is a subtle form of human retail. It can be so insidious that we barely notice it. Here are two recent examples. KMart sold a white shirt with black cartoon graphics depicting a woman upset with a man. The man solves the “problem” by pushing the woman to the ground in the cartoon frame. The caption reads, “Problem solved.”

Despite initial protests, KMart decided to continue to sell the shirts. Perhaps a more familiar example is an Abercrombie and Fitch shirt that reads across the chest, “If you have these, who needs . . . ?” Apparently, a woman’s breasts are more important than her ability to think.

Both these shirts promulgate the idea that a woman’s body and mind are for the use of others. This is objectification. And objectification of female bodies allows us to see commercial sexual exploitation as normal. Women are bought and sold in many different ways, every day, around the world, including where you live.

Taking a bald look at Judges 19 in relationship to contemporary commercial sexual exploitation is disturbing. But as Christians, we need to retell and study such stories of biblical violence if we are going to engage in the kind of self-criticism that is necessary for transformation and greater faithfulness to God. And our critique must be directed not only to ourselves but also to our society and our churches, for without critical reflection, we may continue to live unaware of our own practices of “human retail.”

Mary Streufert is the director for justice for women, ELCA.