With contributions by Cathryn Berarovich.
In this election, there is no viable option for those of us looking to build a better world. People have exclaimed, “What about Bernie?! What about Jill Stein?” And maybe a little while ago, before looking into their respective platforms, I would have said, “Okay, yeah, sure—but organize.” But fortunately, since then I’ve been schooled by other pros on the position the US Green Party takes on our labor, and I’ve withdrawn my initial, albeit less-than-enthusiastic support.
The Green Party is traditionally seen as the go-to camp for independent voters with progressive ideals. Ultimately, however, it falls in line with the existing two party system of pro-carceral, punitive, reductionist policies on sex work. It is not a radical alternative; it is not a progressive bastion of thoughtful consideration for marginalized communities. If you cannot stand with folks in criminalized work, demand they be able to organize openly, and advocate for their full decriminalization, then you are on the wrong side of history.
When your platform position on sex work falls under the heading of ‘Violence and Oppression,’ you are no different from the dominant two capitalist parties.
“We urge that the term ‘sex work’ not be used in relation to prostitution,” the GP USA platform proclaims. Yet, this is the term we as workers demand to be called. We are laborers in the trade of sex.
“With the increasing conflation of trafficking (the violent and illegal trafficking in women and girls for forced sex) with prostitution,” the GP platform continues, “it is impossible to know which is which, and what violence the term ‘sex work’ is masking.”
It absolutely is possible to know which is which, but that might require talking to actual sex workers, something the GP USA seems uninterested in doing. The Green Party stance on sex work demonstrates that sex workers are excluded from party policy dialogue. It also takes agency away from both consenting voluntary workers and trafficking survivors. It implies we cannot speak for ourselves, and we can. The platform ignores the damage the conflation of voluntary sex work with the term ‘human trafficking’ does to both consenting workers and trafficking survivors. Arrest, jail time, prison sentences, open records in Human Trafficking court—this is violence, and yet it’s what the GP USA calls safety.
The GP USA should know that even if the police manage to find actual victims of trafficking, rather than consenting adults engaged in sex work, in the course of their sting operations, their so-called rescue methods are carcerally violent. Trafficking survivors are thrown in cages just like voluntary workers, exacerbating their trauma, rather than being given the mental health care and exit resources they need. The purported threat of trafficking is used as a justification for the arrest and imprisonment of both trafficking survivors and consenting workers.
Perhaps the most damning statement in the platform document is the one that follows: “No source in existence knows which forms of prostitution comprise forced sex and which comprise free will or choice prostitution.”
No source in existence?! How about this blog? Or SWOP-USA, Red Umbrella Project, Paulo Longo Research Initiative, or Support Ho(s)e, to name a few? There are numerous sex worker led initiatives, organizations, and publications which can be easily found and sourced. All the time, more and more workers are coming out and actively organizing for decriminalization, or campaigning around others who have been targeted by state violence. Google that shit.
At this point, the platform descends into wild conjecture:
“An increasing number of experts think the percentage of choice prostitution is very small, leaving the larger number of women exposed to serious and often fatal violence. Much of what is commonly called prostitution is actually sex trafficking by definition.”
Who are these “experts,” what studies cite these “percentages,” and why is it acceptable to make these kinds of sweeping generalizations about this profession in particular? Oh, right, whorephobia.
The Green Party USA platform then goes on to pronounce the party’s support of the Swedish model of criminalizing sex workers’ clients as a blueprint for how the U.S. could crack down on prostitution. This is willfully ignorant of the needs and demands of sex workers in the decriminalization movement.
Up until recently, I helped collect signatures to get the Green Party on the ballot in Illinois. I even voted for the Green Party’s presidential candidate, Jill Stein, in the previous election. I couldn’t conceive of the party being this backward on sex work, so I didn’t do my due diligence. I bought into the publicized green jobs campaign, the living wage for current low-wage workers, the party’s claimed commitment to the working class. But the party cannot claim allegiance to the working class if it sees folks in criminalized vocations as unworthy of rights.
Then there’s Stein’s vaccine stance, which for a physician is bizarre in its seeming concession to anti-vaxxers. The anti-vaccine movement cites parents’ rights to do whatever they see fit for their children’s bodies, yet Stein’s party can’t afford the same consideration for consenting adults in sex work. Her position evokes the right of choice regarding vaccinations, and mentions “real questions” people have about vaccines, yet her party plays into the paternalistic idea of the liberal white burden to protect women from themselves when it comes to sex work.
Some Green Party supporters argue that Jill Stein might not personally believe in the Green Party’s position on sex work. Stein has not made any public statements on the subject of sex workers’ rights. The Green Party is decentralized, and Stein herself does not belong to the Green Party USA, but rather to the Green Party-Rainbow Party Massachusetts. However, by accepting the Green Party USA’s presidential nomination and failing to amend or challenge the current platform, she is lending implicit support to the Swedish model and the continued oppression of workers.
If you target someone’s labor, you are in fact targeting them—their livelihood, their ability to provide for their families, to access dignity and decrease exploitation. It is an absurd statement to make, as the Green Party platform does in reference to the Swedish model, that “that law criminalizes the purchase of services from prostitutes, pimps and brothel keepers instead of criminalizing the prostitutes.” If you criminalize someone’s vocation, you are criminalizing them.
Amnesty International puts it nicely: “We have chosen to advocate for the decriminalization of all aspects of consensual adult sex—sex work that does not involve coercion, exploitation or abuse. This is based on evidence and the real-life experience of sex workers themselves that criminalization makes them less safe.” The GP USA should listen to Amnesty, if not to sex workers.
The platform also cites isolation and debt as primary causes (its words) for women and girls being coerced into prostitution—are these not the conditions we are all compelled to labor under because of capitalism? We’re not claiming that sex work transcends these conditions. What we as a movement are saying is that our work is labor, and as such worthy of protections, rights, livable conditions, and decriminalization. Conditions do not improve with increased state sponsored and religion-based “rescue” enacted by people who couldn’t be further from the communities they seek to save, decreed by the laws of a racist, anti-poor system, enforced by judges with their own agendas, carried out by armed troops of police. Conditions improve when we listen to these communities and heed their concerns, needs, and demands.
The platform maintains: “The Green Party urges a more thorough dialogue and understanding of violence against women and girls, including from prostitution and trafficking, that causes health and injury damage that seriously degrades their lives, even to death or premature death including from HIV, syphilis and many other diseases, as well as causing severe economic hardships.”
This is a thorough dialogue which conveniently leaves out any people involved in the work you seek to make policy against, as well as playing into the stereotype of the “diseased whore” with language suggesting that STIs are caused by sex work, not by viruses or the absence of a medical industry that provides care and harm reduction.
Calling for increased top-down legislation, more police, and harsher sentences for sex workers and their communities puts you on the same side as those advocating for the continued expansion of the prison industrial complex, mass incarceration, and the targeting of marginalized communities for carceral punishment.
The Green Party’s platform document as it stands is an attack on sex workers. The GP position completely excludes gender nonconforming workers and masculine identifying providers by only referring to sex work in the context of “women and girls” in the document. In fact, the GP USA platform places its position on sex work within its broader statement on women’s rights and the oppression suffered by that class of people. It favors gross generalizations, the effect of which strips the identity of the worker. It conflates all sex work with its narrow definition of trafficked prostitution. It puts the blame on migrant sex workers and houseless populations that are engaged in sex work by calling their very survival violence, rather than affixing that label to the capitalist system that affords them few realistic options beyond selling sex.
We need politicians to stop fear mongering and pandering to the whorephobic status quo. We need them to advocate for an end to carceral punitive “solutions” that disproportionately target people of color, trans people, and those working in criminalized trades. We require the abolition of police and prisons, as well as an end to the political parties that promote these systems—not the abolition of sex work.
Our rights are not a niche issue; they are a human rights and labor issue. The Green Party USA needs to contend with its faux progressivism and the harm it does if it wants to truly be a viable electoral option for marginalized communities. As it stands, it is no different than the Republican and Democratic parties. It is committed to neoliberal policing and mass incarceration in the name of protecting women. It contributes to defusing movement based organizing by posing a so-called alternative electoral option. In an election set up against us, it offers us only the illusion of choice.
“‘An increasing number of experts think the percentage of choice prostitution is very small, leaving the larger number of women exposed to serious and often fatal violence.'”
Criminalization directly leads to exposure to violence in the US; not whether the sex worker in question made the choice to be a sex worker. How does making the choice to be a sex worker supposedly save the sex worker from violence???
Great article.
FYI, stein has endorsement from gpus, not gpusa, different organizations. And hasnt the anti vaxx stiff been debunked?
Main point: isnt critical support an option here? The socialists supporting stein are doing so critically because the gpus has eclectic politics and we disagree with some of the party positions. But we support the campaign because its the only nearly national independent left campaign. So isnt critical support an option? Or is everything black and white?
Thank you. Seconded.
I agree with most of what is written here. However I’ve heard that the green party is planning to change it’s position on sex work and is meeting with SWOP in order to write a new statement on it.
Meanwhile, Emidio “Mimi” Soltysik and Andrea Walker are running on the Socialist Party USA’s platform, which explicitly calls for decrim:
“We call for the decriminalization of prostitution and demand that sex workers, just like all women workers, are guaranteed a full range of health, social, and legal services; and working conditions free from harassment, violence, and exploitation.”
Here’s their full platform: http://www.rev16.us/spusa-platform/
Green Party co-chair here in Colorado is working with SWOP Philly to revise this statement. They are a party who listens to activists!
Why are they talking to SWOP Philly instead of to their local chapter of SWOP?
Not sure what you mean. It’s the national co-chair of the Green Party. Probably speaking to SWOP Philly because they were just there having conversations at the DNC?
The Greens haven’t been clear about being anti-vaxx. The reasons I say this are:
* Jill Stein has been very mealy-mouthed in her support for vaccines. Saying that there are a lot of questions in the minds of people is giving credit to the irrational fears and ignorance of anti-vaxxers. (This is backed up by the position, until this April, that supported homeopathy, naturopathy, and other such things.)
* Jill Stein *has* been quoted as talking about mercury in vaccines. Not only has mercury not been a factor in child vaccines for years and years, but the amount of mercury that was present was about a third of that in half a tuna sandwich (if I’m remembering my math right). It was a PREPOSTEROUSLY small amount. To talk about mercury as if it’s a factor now, or a factor EVER, suggests either grotesque ignorance on Stein’s part or pandering to the anti-vaxx crowd. Both positions are unbecoming of a Harvard Med School doctor.
More importantly, though, is the general political irrelevance and incompetence of the Greens. Over 90% of the US public hasn’t a clue as to what the Greens are about. Nobody really knows. Effective marketing on social media is an option that’s open to everyone, but they can’t do it. That’s irrelevance. “Incompetence” can be summed up very easily: in a Presidential election where the Greens have a candidate–completely and totally unqualified, but never mind that for a moment–the Greens aren’t registered for the election in about half the states. That’s a textbook example of political incompetence.
That the Greens have a lousy view of sex workers isn’t surprising.
As a mom who’s infant daughter was injured by a vaccine (with no way of knowing which one or what ingredient might have caused it, as she was given several as recommended on the CDC schedule -and yes it was an obvious and immediate reaction), I actually appreciate Jill’s caution about vaccines. She is definitely not anti-vaxx. But, I’m sure, as a doctor, she has heard many stories like ours. For someone with the experience I’ve gone through, it’s refreshing that a political party isn’t sucking the dicks of big drug companies. As a sex worker I am heartened to find out that the Green Party listens to us and is working with us to change their stance.
Never was impressed by the so called “Green Party”. Just from first sniff its views seemed to be a strange mix of, “Stuff we haven’t bothered to question.”, and, “Stuff someone told us was bad, but we don’t always bother to verify.” Case in point – Kristies assertion that “vaccine’s harmed by kid”, in spite of the entire vaccine scare being a scam run in England by a once doctor, whose “specialty” was making shit up for his own profit, as an “expert” witness in courts. Same with the wifi thing. There is **no** mechanism that would even explain how EM, of any kind, would cause harm, and, now, hundreds, if not thousands, of actual, real, lab studies, on EM, showing it does **nothing at all** to human, or any other living tissue, never mind the brain. This is apposed to – a few dozen, many already, debunked studies conducted via the useless method of, “There are a few dozen odd cases, we imagine they must be significant, they might have been caused by a million different things, but… where are going to just assume its EM.”
Oh, and what about a political party that suck the dick of the altie-med/vitamin industry, which has, since 1993, when congress robbed the FDA of any right to test their products for effectiveness, or even dangers, has gone from an industry worth a few hundred thousand, to one that is now worth almost as many billions as the so called “big drug companies” – I mean, when its not those companies, seeing a profit, who are also now selling the crap… Yeah, no one seems to have any distrust at all for a virtually unregulated, untested, and virtually unarrestable, industry that has increased its profits by 1,000,000% in the last 30 years. Those people are *totally* trustworthy. Sigh…
While I am in *no* way anti-vaxx and have nothing but contempt for the anti-vaxx movement, I would like to speak in support of Kristie’s statement about possible damage from vaccines. There are very rare circumstances where children have reacted specifically to vaccinations, mostly allergen-based reactions, and it’s possible that her daughter is one of those. I’m sorry she may have been injured by this or whatever.
But there is no question that Jill Stein’s at the very least ignorant of vaccination issues. As I say, her quote on mercury in vaccines is profoundly ignorant because facts, facts that are public knowledge and easy to learn about. Moreover, the Green party’s stand until April 2016 in favor of naturopathy, homeopathy, and other alternative medicines is incompatible with any reputable doctor who wants to be accepted as such. And the quotes on wifi and the “damage” that it may cause are simply not supported by anything reputable.
To paint the very best possible face on it, Jill Stein is merely as ignorant and incompetent as a doctor as she is as a politician. But I am inclined to believe that she’s been consciously pandering to the anti-vax/alt medicine crowd because that’s one of the few support blocs she actually might have.
Look, my daughter went catatonic and hypothermic at six months as an IMMEDIATE reaction to one of the many vaccines she was given. It happened. Because she was given several, doctors don’t know which one caused the reaction or why. Your attempted gaslighting doesn’t make it any less true. Not does it make it untrue for the thousands of parents I’ve talked to who have had their children harmed. It’s just a fact no matter how much you think you can make it go away by insisting that it’s not there. But I don’t think all vaccines are bad, and I appreciate Stein’s insistence on getting drug company money out of the regulatory organizations. You really think reps from big drug companies have no conflict of interest in running the FDA and CDC? Really?
The alt-med and vitamin industry is a whole separate ball game. I don’t know much about it, and don’t take supplements because I know that many brands just simply don’t contain what’s on the labels. But you can’t silence the parents of kids who have been hurt just to fit your agenda. Sorry. Like it or not, we exist. I know it’s not convenient for you, but we do.
Ok.. You are one of the “rare” cases where something really does go wrong. This is usually caused by an allergic reaction to the virus itself. It is **not** the result of non-existent, unknown, unidentified, “ingredients”. You are making a horrible choice getting your information from the groups you do, because they conflate *anything* that happens to their kids with vaccines, even when there are tens of thousands of cases in which the same symptoms and problems arise, without any vaccines involved at all. I am sorry you where one of the unlucky ones.
That said –
How about women and men who are trafficked for manufacturing and domestic labor? Why is it that “trafficking” is conflated solely with sex work and vice versa? Because that’s a safe position politically. Going after trafficking, period, would interfere with corporate profits, but it’s OK to go after whores.
GPUS is ostensibly in the process of changing its platform on sex work. Want to bet it doesn’t get changed until after the election, or whenever it’s changed, it won’t be publicized?
Thank you, you hit the nail on the head.
For those who feel politically homeless because of this issue, there is a political party that advocates for the repeal of all laws creating “crimes” without victims. Not only does the Libertarian Party call for the legalization of prostitution, they have elected a sex worker from San Francisco to the Libertarian National Committee, his name is Starchild.
The “Libertarian Party” also tend to advocate for the removal of the very same sort of laws that, when weakened, and/or repealed, resulting in the rampant gambling with assets and loans, which led to the housing bubble, along with laws that protect the environment, and sometimes even people. They, however, tend to be almost as pro-corporate rights as the Republicans are (which is hardly a surprise, since the Tea Party is basically Libertarianism, which has thrown out the ideals of social libertarianism.) The fact that they are not in the pockets of big incarceration, and its lobbies to make everything including breathing wrong an offense that has a mandatory minimum sentence, doesn’t make them allies in the sphere of ecomonics (where they are as bad, if not often worse, not to mention delusional, as the Republican party.) Yeah… sorry, but there is no party with a stance, right now, which isn’t married, partly, to delusional nonsense and dangerous ideas. If the Libertarians would stop promoting their psychotic economic “religion”, I would be all for the rest of their platform.
It is sad that some people are to lazy to find out what libertarian economic policy really is. You here us say that the government regulations do more harm than good, you assume that we want to get rid of all regulations and let people do what they please regardless of who they harm.
Libertarians believe that people should be held accountable for there actions and if they harm someone either by accident or on purpose they should be forced to make that person hole again as much as possible. We also believe that what is wrong for one person to do is also wrong for a group of people to do, regardless if they are called a government or corporation.
With government regulations, people claim that because they were following the rules any harm done is not there fault and then the government lets them off the hook and forces the taxpayers to foot the bill. So is your solution to this problem to make the government make more rules so that only the rich can do business and the poor are left holding the bag.
Ours is not a perfect solution but is is better than what we have now, and I’m still waiting for a better answer.
I would be just as much of a complete fool for looking at the apparent economic policies of the libertarian party, while ignoring the actual policies they advocate for, and implement, when given the chance, as well as what they state their true views and intentions are, when they visit blogs, and other avenues of discussion, and attempt to present their perspective on the policies, ideas, and problems being discussed there in, as I would be if I where to believe the stated goals of *any* Republican, or, sadly, most Democrats.
What is said **to** to public, as a means to present the best face of their ideas, and with the clear intent to convince others to support them, is rarely, if ever, an accurate reflection of the actions already taken, or which would be, by the same people. Libertarians, and in this specific usage I mean those who are actually elected on such a platform, or claim leadership of the moment, seem to live in a world of cognitive dissonance that is almost as severe as that of many religious people. I am reminded of the Fox News idea of, “Token liberal”, on one of their shows I once watched, in which this individual spent two minutes giving a perfectly sensible set of statements, about the situation under discussion, and what should be done about it, and ended with a defense of that position that sounded like the worst, most absurd parody of liberal thinking. In other words, the ideas sounded fine, but the reasoning for *why* to do them where bloody stupid, irrational, and nonsensical, even from the stance of me, the liberal who, until the moment he stuffed his foot down his throat, was amazed that Fox would “allow” someone to say such reasonable things. Of course, they didn’t.
I have, time and again, faced the same thing with libertarians. They start out with more or less sensible ideas, mostly. The problem is, they then do two things that are insensible – 1. They ignore all the known, possible, and/or entirely plausible things that could, or already previously did, go wrong, when attempting to do what they suggest. There seems to be a complete lack of ability to recognize that failure is even possible. 2. They present a justification for why it will work that denies history, the existing facts, the existing flaws in the economy, and the government, which created the problems, and quite often even worse, that the root cause of the failures where, in how ever small a measure, the result of policies that are nearly identical to their own.
If there are libertarians out there that don’t do these things then.. they are not the ones presenting themselves in arguments about policy, at least to liberals, who, frankly, should be their more natural allies, save for the now common, and absurd, cause that they share with conservatives, with regard to the government (another absurdity that was brought about by first sabotaging the government, for the cause of making it more conservative, then complaining when the result broke it).
I stated, on another blog, the position I see them as holding, when contrasted to another naive system, as thus. Once a man declared that if we gave all men all things, their natural tendency would be the rise above their petty differences, and work together as a unified whole. He called this naive proposition – socialism. Libertarians, by contrast, assert that, given maximum freedom to claim, buy, or otherwise gain, all that they could ever want, with minimum restrictions (should you ever manage to nail them down on just what slippery, intangible standard that is), they would naturally rise above their personal petty differences, and work for the common goal of people with whom they share ***nothing at all*** in common, whether that be problems, bad luck, upbringing, education levels, class, medical conditions, sex, gender (not the same things), height, physical or mental prowess, etc.
Which of these propositions is truly the more absurd and improbable?
To be honest, I would love to see them as allies. They, when they are sensible, have much better idea that the people that they seem to keep siding with (or at least have been recently, i.e. conservatives), but.. first, the vast majority of them, especially the ones that seek to become, and present themselves as, leaders, need to F-ing grow the F up. Sadly, I see this to be about as likely as the New Atheists suddenly becoming real feminists, or having a sudden epiphany that social issues are a necessary to fixing what is wrong with the world, and not a “distraction from the more important goal of getting rid of… a few dusty books, and the silly ideas in them?” As one person put it – religion as a hobby wouldn’t be a problem, its the damn problems it causes that we need to be fighting.
I would give the same message to libertarians – Reagan was bloody wrong, the government isn’t really the problem at all, its our willingness to allow it to be corrupted, both by those doing the wrong thing, with clear and undeniable intent. But, also, doing the wrong things, while absolutely convinced, in the face of all evidence, to the contrary (or, just as bad, in the face of no evidence of any kind that their “better” solution will work either), to do what they are convinced in the “right thing”. The road to hell, as they say, is paved with good intentions. In the case of our government, the pavement may be made of good intentions, but its been those with bad intentions taking that raw material, and laying out the direction of the road.
Reducing government, or haphazardly implementing reductions in regulation, while ignoring the advice of silly reasons so many of them where created in the first place, or the real reason they don’t do what they are supposed to. Hint – 1. Loopholes, added intentionally. 2. Tacked on laws that undermine the regulations 3. Complaints that it cost money, even in cases where they spur innovation, and gain the companies involved a, over the long term, greater profit (this is one the energy industry, or at least parts of it, profited from. Why didn’t they all? Because no one has spent one freaking dime of much of anything in, say, oil and gas, beyond improvements that came from *someone else*, like computer technology. When the blow out happened with BP, they, literally, had no tech, of any kind, that had been improved, or developed, to handle the problem, since practically clear back in the days when they first started drilling in the first place. No one *required* them to develop it, so, despite drilling in new, more dangerous, conditions, with unknown risks, they chose not to spend a dime to study what could go wrong, or develop a single bloody thing to deal with any new issues.)
Imagine what might have happened if someone had applied some “useless” regulation, requiring that they spend at least a minimum on developing new processes, and safety measures? And, what *every* libertarian politician would say about even suggesting such a thing… I can see the gnashing of teeth, and the whining about unfairness, and loss of profits, already. All hail the Ferengi and the rules of aquisition…. Sigh..
Well spoke!
https://www.facebook.com/TheYoungTurks/videos/10153832109549205/
I do not see the Green Party winning this or any election in the foreseeable future. Small libertarian parties like this one do nothing but help put conservatives in office.
Election years are opportunities for otherwise ignored populations to be heard by the government. However, when it comes down to it, all any of them are really concerned about is votes and they are more than willing to throw throw anyone under the bus to get them. When we take a realistic look at who is voting in this country, we will see why the Green Party took the stance on sex work that they did.
There is hope though. THIS IS A THEORY. I AM NOT PRESENTING IT AS FACT. The two parties that matter in the election have not and will not discussed sex work in their campaigns and that is not necessarily a bad thing. If America was actively against sex work, they would speak out against it in order to get votes. The truth is that both the government and the public have absolutely no accurate knowledge of sex work. The government knows that they spent a lot of money and man power on “Operation Cross-Country” looking for sex trafficking victims that turned out not to exist. They know that they were given information that was not even based in fact and all their nationwide investigation revealed was consenting sex works, a small percentage of whom turned out to be underage. The government knows that it was their ignorance on the matter that allowed people come out of nowhere and give false info that led to public hysteria and the creation of policies that are having negative effects domestically and worldwide. However, the federal government can never admit they got scammed, nor will they say anything that takes legitimacy from real sex trafficking victims. They know, like we have always known, that sex trafficking does happen, but not on the scale that everyone was led to believe. They know they basically got scammed by assholes that profited significantly by exploiting people’s horrifying experiences and the ignorance of the American public and the government in regards to sex work.
Basically, I’m saying the Green Party is totally irrelevant so we shouldn’t lose sleep over their opinion of us. They do not hold one seat in the legislative branch (house of reps and senate), which means that there is a lot they do not know and it will be a cold day in hell before one of them is elected president. The people that do matter have a little more info about what’s really going on, but after that whole mess, they need a little time away from the issue. It is up to us advocates and defenders of sex worker rights to put in the work necessary to undo the damage that was done.
In light of being given false info, there has been a spike in media and research interest in gaining more accurate info. It will take a while for the info they collect to reach the number of ears and eyes the sex trafficking agenda managed to. Sex workers need to make themselves available to speak to them. Our silence allows people with absolutely no knowledge of the industry to speak for us and spread lies that hurt us. We can win this, but it will take time and effort.
Yep. The so called “Tea Party” is socially conservative, religiously.. bordering on puritan, and economically libertarian. This is like a feces sandwich on cardboard, with throw up for mayo, which whole swaths of gullible people have let themselves be convinced looks tasty. Economic libertarianism is just a “me me me” ideal. Religion is often a bane, instead of a boon, especially when it denies our humanity, instead of reflecting it, and you can’t make social progress when “demanding” that everyone conform, like sheep. But, this is the Republican party right now, and.. there is a good bloody reason why “small libertarian parties” end up feeding the beast:
http://freethoughtblogs.com/iris/2016/08/10/guest-post-that-half-baked-thought-experiment-cooked-up-by-self-entitled-pricks/
Nicely said. I believe that sex workers have almost always been available to people for their opinions on the subject (Margo St. James’ group, COYOTE, also comes to mind, which kinda dates me), so the only thing that’s necessary is for people to be asking.
Jill Stein is not anti-vaccine.
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