Melissa Broudo is a staff attorney at the Sex Workers Project at the Urban Justice Center in New York, where she focuses on the legal concerns, safety and rights of sex workers.

Wendy Cadge is an associate professor of sociology at Brandeis University in Waltham, Mass. She has written widely about homosexuality and Christianity, especially as it pertains to mainline Protestantism.

Kevin Bales is a sociologist and co-founder of Free the Slaves, a nonprofit and sister organization to the U.S. Anti-Slavery International. He has written articles about human trafficking, stating that it could be eliminated if governments would enforce their own anti-slavery laws, spend money on the effort and increase public awareness about the problem.

Margaret A. Farley is the Gilbert L. Stark professor emerita of Christian ethics at Yale Divinity School in New Haven, Conn. She is Catholic and has written widely about Christian sexual ethics.

Luis CdeBaca is ambassador-at-large for the State Department’s Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons. He is a former prosecutor and received an award for his work as lead trial counsel in the largest slavery prosecution in U.S. history, in a case involving a garment factory in American Samoa.

Read a column about Diwali gift-giving by author Arthur Magida, posted at Beliefnet.com.

Read a Dec. 15, 2005, Washington Post article about a focus on johns and pimps in the battle against prostitution.

Read a story, posted at Beliefnet.com, about how Hindus in America celebrate Diwali.

Read a May 23, 2013, article about the human trafficking problem in Wisconsin and commentary on the film, Not Today, that portrays the violence and devastation of the lives of those forced into the slavery.