By Karen Battles, American Family Radio and producer of It's Not Gay

September 2000 – I thought I had no naivete left. After all, working at AFA for almost five years I have been exposed to the extreme fraying of our society’s moral fiber – including some poor choices I had made in the past. So I really didn’t think much could surprise me anymore, but one thing did.

On a recent trip to Washington, D.C., while working on a new video for AFA, I made a visit to Dupont Circle, the high profile, glitzy center of the homosexual community in our nation’s capital. Along with my guide, himself a former homosexual, we watched as countless scenes unfolded, actual life stories being played out.

Then we left Dupont Circle for the far less attractive side of homosexual nightlife, an area with a strip club (yes, they have those also), a bathhouse and other “attractions.” I did not go into any of these clubs, but saw enough. One club had two sections. At one end was a bar where drag queens, many decked out in full and not-so-full attire performed their routines to popular songs. The other end had male dancers for their male audience.

A bathhouse was also in this string of buildings. The entrance alone let you know this business was different. There were no welcoming faces, no inviting music, no pretenses of normalcy, just three flights of stairs leading to another floor with stark gray walls. Men waited at the door for admission into what was described to me as “a dark abyss from which few escape.”

Next to the bathhouse was a club that youth are known to frequent. My guide pointed out a young man (we’ll call him Timmy) sitting on a wall in front of one club. He was the wholesome-looking boy-next-door type. Timmy, who looked to be about 16, was talking to two men who appeared to be in their fifties. Soon Timmy was walking away with the two men. Then they all got into a car.

It didn’t seem like anything remarkable until my guide informed me that young Timmy had just sold himself to these two men for the night. This was my rude awakening.

I am not naive. I have seen a child die a painful death. I have seen dehumanizing pornography. I have seen the results of alcohol and drug abuse. But I had never seen a child prostitute.

I cannot get Timmy out of my mind and I hope I never do. The reality of his life is forcing me out of my complacency. More than ever, I want to use my work at AFA not just to counter the homosexual political agenda, but to expose the personal tragedy behind stories like Timmy’s.

Maybe if we do that, our culture will wake up to the fact that when we affirm homosexuality we are sending our own children into the “dark abyss from which few escape.”