Who'd have thunk it?

Last week the Christians tried to push their campaign to recriminalise prostitution by starting a moral panic about teenage prostitutes in South Auckland. Now it turns out that they were making it all up:

Police say they've seen no evidence to back up an NZ First MP's claims that girls as young as 13 are working as prostitutes in south Auckland.

[...]

That was news to police Area Commander for Counties-Manukau East, Inspector Chris de Wattignar.

"It's not something that police have seen ourselves. We also work with a number of agencies and community partners in the Otara town centre and that's certainly not the information we have."

He said police were spending a lot of time in parts of Otara where youth congregate, to try to prevent disorder and liquor ban breaches, and had seen no cases of underage prostitution.

"We've got the CCTV cameras over there and we're certainly not getting the same sort of information around prostitution there - in fact, any at all - as we get through the cameras at Papatoetoe."

Charitably, it seems some Christians are unable to distinguish between women and prostitutes. Less charitably, deceit and exaggeration seems to be a common tactic in their social crusades - witness the bullshit we've seen around marriage equality. Either way, it means we should treat their "moral" complaints with a bit more caution in the future.