No, not priests who preach sex. Unfortunately.
But priests who are not allowed to have sex. Consequently, critics argue that their minds may become preoccupied with sexual thoughts.
How can they be both sexual and anti-sexual? They can be, if they act as moral campaigners against sex, preferably as rescuers of underage prostitutes.
Critics argue this dynamic can be exploitative: interviewing young girls about sexual encounters with presumed perverts. “More detail, please… And then, what did he do?… And next, what next?… Now, let’s pray together to Holy Mary, to Lord Jesus…”
After a few days comes the presentation to the media. The priest is in the press and on TV. The hero who single-handedly took on international sex syndicates where the police, with all their firepower, were afraid to tread.
Nonsense, of course. Often, there are no vast syndicates, but rather a fabricated context blown out of proportion. And it only works because the traditional media makes money from the topic. “SEX SCANDAL!!!” has always been the best-selling headline.
The traditional media doesn’t care about what is truly scandalous; they only care about selling copies and advertising.
Scandals far greater than underage prostitution, such as the deaths of millions of children every year in developing countries, primarily in Africa, due to malnutrition or easily preventable diseases, are not good topics for the media. They are unappetizing.
Everybody knows that this is ongoing and preventable. Everybody with a moral sense knows deep down that they should donate half their salary to help children dying of malnutrition or malaria in Africa. But people want to spend their money, not donate it, and they want to eat delicious food and be entertained.
It is well-known in the media that if stories are run repeatedly about world hunger or the ongoing suffering of children in Africa from malaria, readers will buy other newspapers. People don’t want to be reminded of such things. They want to enjoy their meals without having pictures of starving children flashing before their eyes.
If a junior editor pushes topics such as children in Africa dying from malnutrition, they will never become editor-in-chief. If an editor-in-chief doesn’t keep such topics off the front page, they will sooner or later be fired by the publisher because the newspaper's circulation drops, which is contrary to the duties of the editor-in-chief.
It is better to lift juicy stories about tourists in Asia who get caught with underage prostitutes. For tabloid buyers who are not satisfied with their own sex lives, nothing is a better read than stories about other people who are in real trouble for having sex. It’s the ultimate vindication for those who do not have sex.
This is why a British tabloid spent a lot of money tracking down a former rockstar in Vietnam.
It’s not that the newspaper acted out of moral concern. It’s about the story. If they were concerned with genuine moral issues, they would send their reporters to Africa to produce stories about children who starve to death on a teaspoon of nutrition a day, which feeds intestinal worms more than it feeds the children.
These "sex priests" in Southeast Asia are very important for the media, and they are instrumental in creating severe distortions in the moral perception of the media-consuming public.
If sympathy for the needless suffering of other beings is the foundation of modern ethics, then there are millions of worse fates in this world, here and today, than the fates of some underage individuals in the sex trade in developing cities, who may perceive their situation as a means of survival or independence, though international consensus recognizes all such situations as inherently exploitative.
Among the many worse fates that do not get attention from moral crusaders:
1. The plight of children dying of hunger and easily preventable diseases in Africa.
2. The suffering of those in captivity and tortured in prisons anywhere around the world. In most countries, prison guards have a free hand in mistreating inmates.
Russia on way to legalising prison beatings
3. The slow and painful deaths from diseases, even in Europe and North America.
4. The suffering of people who are paralyzed for decades and forgotten in some closed institutions.
5. The suffering of the mentally ill who are maltreated by their guardians.
The fact that there are minors in the sex trade in developing countries is treated by some as a disproportionate ethical focus, exploited by sex-negative feminists and their natural allies: priests of religions that teach that sex is the root of all evil. Critics argue that the concern of such priests is not genuine sympathy for girls under the age of 18, but rather a psychological mechanism to vicariously experience sex by fighting it.