Why am I not surprised?
ATLANTA (Reuters) - In a sleazy hotel room, "Brittany," then aged 16 and drugged into oblivion, waited for the men to arrive. Her pimps sent as many as 17 clients an evening through the door.
A "john" could even pre-book the pretty young blonde for $1,000 a night, sometimes flying in and then flying out from a nearby airport.
None of this happened in Bangkok or Costa Rica, places that have become synonymous with sex tourism and underage sex.
It took place in Atlanta, the buckle of the U.S. Bible Belt, where the world's busiest passenger airport provides a cheaper, more convenient and safer underage sex destination for men seeking girls as young as 10.
"Men fly in, are met by pimps, have sex with a 14-year-old for lunch, and get home in time for dinner with the family," said Sanford Jones, the chief juvenile judge of Fulton County, Georgia.
A new federal law passed in 2003 ensures that American sex tourists landing on foreign soil and hiring prostitutes under the age of 18 can get 30 years in prison.
But in Georgia, punishment for pimping or soliciting sex with a girl under 18 is only five to 20 years, according to Deborah Espy, the Deputy District Attorney of Fulton County.
"Men are coming to Atlanta to have sex with a child," said LaKendra Baker, project manager for the Center to End Adolescent Sexual Exploitation (CEASE).
Half of the street-level prostitutes in Atlanta are believed to be under 18, according to experts.
Others are booked through Internet sex sites and from social sites like Black Planet, where girls innocently post profiles, said Baker.
Just in March, police arrested a Canadian man meeting a 14-year-old girl he found through the Internet, said Cathey Steinberg, executive director of the Juvenile Justice Fund, which funds treatment for abused girls and prevention.
Another man drove from North Georgia, with a bag containing a teddy bear, a love note and condoms, snorting methamphetamine on the way.
He expected a 13-year-old girl, but instead found Heather Lackey, a corporal with the Peachtree City Police Department.
"People are stunned that Atlanta's the No. 1 sex center in the country," said Steinberg.
I don't know why they're stunned. I also don't know why they're stunned when preachers' wives shoot them dead in cold blood, or when churches turn out to house pedophilia rings or every time some Bible Belter (I'm talking to you, Mr. Gingrich) turns out to be a serial adulterer. They shouldn't be stunned, because the kind of religion that these people practice is so fucked up, and so utterly devoid of any kind of healthy attitudes about sex, that it's no wonder Neal Horsley brags that his first girlfriend was a mule, and that the ONLY barometer of "morality" they have is who's putting his pecker where and who's opening her legs to accept said pecker.
A fundie once told me that Satan targets Christians specifically with temptation because their stronger moral compass is offensive to Mr. Lucifer -- as if Satan and God were duking it out at the Universe Bowl-o-rama and God gives Satan bonus points for knocking over Christians. I say that's a cop-out. I say that the reason you see Bible-belters seeking out 14-year-old meth whores in Atlanta is because of the shame and self-loathing they're raised to feel about their own bodies from the day they're born.
And this is what they want to foist on the rest of us; those of us who are atheists and Wiccans and others who do not adhere to the silliness that grew out of the Fertile Crescent who seem able to live a perfectly moral life without all of the rubbish these people have in their heads. Funny how it's almost never liberals seeking out underage hookers; it's always these good, churchgoing people. But when your religion says that some Jew got nailed to a tree 2000 years ago so that you can do whatever the fuck you want and be forgiven without haveing to do a damn thing, and that same religion tells you that your most human responses are wrong and dirty and evil, this is what you get.
(Hat tip: ShakesSis)
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