Bush Global Anti-Prostitution Loyalty Oath and Gag Order

This page has links describing history and resistance to the Bush administration's efforts to impose the morality of United States religious zealots throughout the world. This series of "gag orders," (and the ultimate Anti-Prostitution Loyalty Oath) first global, now U.S., primarily target issues of women's health and sexual health. Bush's U.S. Department of Justice recently issued a policy requiring that organizations receiving HIV/AIDS funding must agree to explicitly oppose prostitution. This site contains compiles information about the progression of and resistance to these policies.

Click here for U.S. Govt. Site Text of Anti-Prostitution Loyalty Oath
This text (see dropdown on right column) is the original amendment from 2004. The public discourse that ensued in Summer of 2005 responded to the Justice Department policy statement based on this amendment. (Scroll or search to find Rep. Akin amendment (#20), on July 8, 2004.)

2002 Collin Powell issued this gag order "Organizations advocating prostitution as an employment choice or which advocate or support the legalization of prostitution are not appropriate partners for USAID anti-trafficking grants or contracts. Missions will avoid contracting or assistance agreements with such organizations as primary or sub-grantees or contractors."

The Bush administration has created a series of conditions for receipt of global and national funding which prescribe (and ultimately enforce) the moral agendas of the Bush administration. In 2005 the U.S. Department of Justice issued a policy statement that eligibility for US based HIV/AIDS prevention funding to organizations can include an anti-prostitution loyalty oath. "This policy is reflects moralistic, antiquated approaches to epidemics and will do more to harm society than help," says Carol Leigh, COYOTE (Call Off Your Old Tired Ethics) spokesperson and sex worker rights activist." Those who are best at reaching sex workers are peers, other sex workers, and, ofcourse they have a range of attitudes towards prostitution, prostitutions rights and law reform. To insist that these organizations have anti-prostitution policies means that sex workers' organizations can not be eligible for support to help other sex workers fight HIV. Studies in the last twenty-years have supported the fact that peer based programs are the most effective forms of community education in the context of this health crisis."

"This requirement for foreign organisations was mandated by the 2003 Global AIDS Act and amendments in 2003 to the Trafficking Victims Protection Act. The U.S. Department of Justice has now argued that U.S.-based organisations should also be bound by this requirement," writes Jodi Jacobson, executive director of the Center for Health and Gender Equity.

"The so-called 'anti-prostitution pledge' originally applied to foreign organisations. But in sweeping reinterpretation of the policy, the Bush administration is now requiring U.S.- based organisations to adopt this pledge. We oppose the application to both sets of groups," said Human Rights Watch.

News Reports Re: Protests against Bush Administration Anti-Prostitution Gag Order: