'Best Super Bowl half time show ever' or tawdry 'exploitation'?

FPI / February 3, 2020

Sunday’s Super Bowl halftime show starring Jennifer Lopez and Shakira — which featured J-Lo on a stripper pole — was praised by many, including the announcers on the Fox broadcast.

Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush tweeted: “Best Super Bowl half time show ever!”

Variety hailed it as “14 minutes of pure frenzy” with a “bounty of bootymania.”

Others said that the “bootymania” was not only inappropriate for a broadcast being watched by millions of young children but also glorified the “sexual exploitation of women.”

Evangelist Franklin Graham said in a Facebook post: “It was demonstrated tonight in the Pepsi Super Bowl Halftime Show — with millions of children watching. This exhibition was Pepsi showing young girls that sexual exploitation of women is okay. With the exploitation of women on the rise worldwide, instead of lowering the standard, we as a society should be raising it.”

Graham added: “I don’t expect the world to act like the church, but our country has had a sense of moral decency on prime time television in order to protect children. We see that disappearing before our eyes.”

Michael L. Brown of LifeSite News wrote: “What does it say of a nation when a 50-year-old mother is celebrated for her pole-dancing agility and a former governor and presidential candidate tweets, ‘Best Super Bowl half time show ever!’? What does it say?”

Brown added: “Making things even worse is that all this has taken place in a climate of increased awareness for the victims of accused sexual predators like Bill Cosby and Harvey Weinstein and Jeffrey Epstein, men who allegedly exploited women as sex objects. What does it say of our culture, of our nation, of our morals? It says that we really, urgently, desperately need awakening and revival.”

The Left, however, is not likely to be revived. A columnist suggested that is evident in a new poll which shows 6 in 10 Democrats support decriminalizing prostitution and other illegal sexual behaviors.

“The secularization of the country is nearly complete,” Cheryl K. Chumley wrote for The Washington Times on Jan. 31.

The poll by the left-leaning Data for Progress shows that 64 of Democrats wanted to decriminalize prostitution and other illegal sex behaviors, compared to 55 percent of independents and just 37 percent of Republicans.

Chumley noted that Data for Progress “does partner with the likes of the American Civil Liberties Union, the Center for Constitutional Rights, the Human Rights Campaign, the Immigrant Defense Project — all left of leftist-leaning outfits. So there is that.”

Chumley continued: “But no matter the political breakdown — fact is, decriminalizing sex work is horrible national policy. The fact that now, 52 percent of all respondents said they either strongly support or somewhat support decriminalization is a terrible commentary on the nation’s march toward secularism, on the country’s growing atheism, on the national turn from once-accepted founders’ views of the need for citizens to be heavenly guided on the moral front, else the democratic-republic would fall.”

The poll comes around the same time that President Donald Trump signed an executive order combating human and sex trafficking.

“The far left thinks that decriminalizing prostitution actually opens the door to protect the rights of the sex workers and keep them from exploitation,” Chumley wrote. “But since when does turning a blind eye to crime prove a benefit to anyone, least of all the victims?”

Decriminalizing sex work, Chumley wrote, “would move it from the shadows into the open; from the seedy into the acceptable. And that gives traffickers and those who prey on the unfortunate, the unwitting, the abused and neglected even greater ability to recruit — even bolder attitudes to profit. Don’t we already have enough gang thugs and animal drug dealers trafficking young girls, sometimes across the borders, to help fund their already illegal endeavors? Should we really be encouraging more of these disgusting, destructive activities?”

Chumley continued: “Decriminalizing sex work simply opens the door to more exploitation of youth. At the same time, it removes the stain of shame and sin from a field in which no human being should take esteem. Bluntly, those who would seek to leave the field for more reputable pursuits might reconsider if their sex-for-money acts were regarded, say, as professional as lawyering.”

Free Press International