A Sin No More: Sex Workers Deserve Protection in Colorado

Even though the effort was abandoned by State Senator Nick Hinrichsen, a Pueblo Democrat and primary sponsor of the Decriminalize Adult Commercial Sexual Activity bill, a Christian argument can and should be made for its passage by the Colorado Legislature, anyway. It has been reported that sex workers whose lives and professions would be affected by the bill’s passage felt themselves in danger from threatening behavior, surveillance and even doxxing by police, religious leaders and others in the room hostile to them.

I am a religious leader, and the thought of a committee room full of “religious leaders” willing to defame and be a threatening presence to sex workers disgusts me. I am a United Methodist pastor and I believe, unambiguously, that sex workers do not deserve to be judged by us. As fellow human beings, they deserve to have their inherent dignity honored by us. And while we could differ personally on their choice of profession, state law should never be established or preserved on the basis of any religious belief — including mine.

This bill would have contributed to harm reduction. This bill would have recognized and codified into law that sex workers are deserving of dignity and should feel safe enough to contact law enforcement when they experience abuse or are trafficked. In Christian theology, we refer often to the imago dei, the image of God in which all humanity has been created. Sex workers are radiant with the same imago dei that shines outward from the rest of us. Sex workers are beloved children of God, as we are. 

There is at least one prominent and celebrated figure in Jewish and Christian scriptures who was a sex worker. Rahab was a prostitute whose home was built into the outer walls of the city of Jericho (Joshua 2:15). She was known in Jericho for her profession — so well known, in fact, that the King of Jericho corresponded with her directly, requesting that she deliver to him Joshua’s spies whom the King suspected had visited her that night (Joshua 2:3).

Rahab’s profession as a prostitute, with all of its social assumptions, and her courage to lie to her king and put her own life in danger to save these spies contributed to the success of Joshua’s later conquest of Jericho. The book of Joshua doesn’t comment on Rahab’s profession or make a point of naming it as something that doesn’t belong — it was a matter of fact. This bill would have done the same thing: It doesn’t encourage sex work, it simply recognizes the fact that it is happening without requiring it be considered a crime.

It’s notable to this pastor that Rahab was named specifically as one of only five women in Jesus’s geneaology in the gospel of Matthew (Matthew 1:5). She was a celebrated figure in our Christian story, as well as the Jewish one.

While I do not endorse sexual activity as something that should be reduced to a commercial transaction, that is my personal moral position and should not be a universal social ethic for our state to codify into law. Such laws at the state and municipal level make the lives and occupations of sex workers more dangerous, and deprive them of rights the rest of us enjoy: protection from law enforcement and adequate due process, without the bias of being perceived as a criminal.

Criminalizing sex work across our country has not made it less common — it has only driven sex workers into hiding.

Sex trafficking is an understandable concern in this conversation. But those who point to statistics like how Nevada (the only state in the U.S. where prostitution is legal) has the ninth-highest amount of reported sex trafficking cases miss an important point: Human sex trafficking thrives and depends upon secrecy. The more it is reported is not necessarily a bad thing — it means more survivors of this abuse are being recognized, and crimes against them are being prosecuted.

If we have learned anything from the release of the Epstein files, we should recognize that the worst and most heinous sex crimes and abuses against survivors took place decades before their stories became known and anyone was prosecuted. We should pause and consider the rights that survivors of this abuse have for their story being believed and their perpetrators held accountable. If sex work remains a crime, then survivors of violence who are sex workers have no incentive to seek justice and report it. Our society blames sex workers (especially women) as much, if not more, than the abusers who violate them, traffic them and abuse them.

This bill sought to do something about it: It should have passed and been sent to the governor’s desk. As a matter of fact, it would have been a very Christian thing to do.

All to the greater glory of God.

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