TruthBook Religious News Blog

Wesley G. Hughes, Staff Writer
04/05/2009

I've had a hankering in the last few years to be an ethicist, not one of those ivory-tower or mountaintop kinds of guys but sort of a shade-tree, back-of-the-envelope kind of thinker on things right and wrong.

I'm not sure what impels the thinking of those other ethicists with the letters behind their names but what gets me going is the evil that men do or allow to be done to the weakest, meekest and most innocent among us.

And it's usually not something I've been thinking about for a long time. It's as though someone slapped me in the face with it like a big wet fish. It gets your attention.

A good example of that kind of attention grabber is when I learned of the festering outbreak of child prostitution going on right here in this county and just to the west in the Pomona area. It's not just there and in Ontario and Claremont. Those seem to be the only cities that have acknowledged it and are attempting to do something about it.

It seems unlikely that ethics and war go hand in hand but I promise I'm going to wage war against child prostitution and the evil merchandisers and users of these child slaves in every way I can. And I'll be talking about the enablers who allow it to go on under their noses.

Another example of one of those fishlike epiphanies occurred a couple of years ago. I remember it well, not the exact date but the moment.

It was probably a Saturday. I was sitting at the kitchen table drinking my coffee and reading the paper, looking forward to working the crossword puzzle.

I turned the page and the wet fish got me. There before me was a large photograph of a beautiful child, whose face was disfigured by a cleft palate and lip. It caught me so by surprise that it brought tears to my eyes.

The photo was in an ad placed by The Smile Train...

The Smile Train became my favorite charity and I've written about it in this space before and I wear and never remove one of those rubber wristlets - what do they call those things anyway? - bearing The Smile Train name. There's a pang of guilt that goes with that. It's been too long since I sent a contribution. It's time.

The final fish I'll use today occurred Saturday.

I don't usually stick my nose into religious issues but I'll make an exception for the story that I read in Saturday's New York Times. It was about a 17-year-old girl, who was publicly flogged by a Taliban commander in the Swat region of Pakistan. Someone caught it on video.

Why this incident affected me so, I don't really know. Over time, I've witnessed and read so many vile things done in the name of God that I should not be surprised. That includes the religions granted freedom of worship by our Constitution right here at home.

Fortunately, they don't have completely free reign here. If my neighbors dragged my daughter into the street and flogged her for missing Sunday school, they'd have more than just me to deal with.

They would be prosecuted and punished (if there was anything left after I got through but then of course, I'd be prosecuted too. We have a good system).

This final item came together in my mind Saturday with the children, who are prostituted ...They too are beaten and abused and have no power and no choices. It doesn't matter whether it's done in the name of commerce or the name of religion. It should be stopped.

It extends beyond children to women everywhere. A woman should have every right to live her life with the same freedoms as any man, no matter where on the planet, the color of her skin or the name of her religion, or if she chooses, without religion.

Those are my ethics.

Labels: children, ethics, exploitation, persecution, Wesley G. Hughes, women