Is it a crime to like dames? Is it a crime to like to have a good time? With dames? Is it a crime to buy, you know, airline tickets, and hotel rooms, and dinners for a good-lookin’ dame who might be feelin’ romantic the same time as you? Is it?
Well, it might be tacky, but it probably isn’t illegal, and it certainly isn’t sex trafficking, as Reason’s Elizabeth Nolan Brown explains, giving us the low down on the “sugar baby scene”, which it appears has been well sampled by that swingin’ party animal from the Florida panhandle, and representative of the Sunshine State’s 1st district since 2017.
As Lizzie notes, the Justice Department is hoisting poor Matt on a petard that’s used regularly by law enforcement when they need some publicity: accuse some poor schmuck of sex trafficking. Underage girls! Forced into sex slavery! Evil pimps! Helpless girls! Lecherous old men!
And then, well, it turns out there was no sex trafficking, no underage girls, just ordinary or garden variety prostitution. And, since there’s no one else to bust, the women get busted, while the accused sex traffickers vanish into thin air.
In Matt’s case, the scam is especially egregious, because all the accusations have come from anonymous sources: there isn’t even enough “evidence” to sustain an arrest, much less an indictment, not to say a conviction. If Matt’s constituents want to bounce him for partying like it’s 1999, well, fine. But prostitution, not to mention sugar babying, should be legal, and people who engage in it should not be hounded by the police, or the press, however good it may feel to beat up on a helpless Republican.
