But to label all porn as not good is not correct either in my opinion.
If, as an example, you find a porn account of a consentual couple who uploads videos on their own terms - why would that be bad?
You might end up with devices blocking all photos of a woman topless, or naked men, even art. Does Michelangelo's David statue get his privates covered or blocked? Or like in China where they increasing block things like picture/videos of women eating bananas as that is taken as sexual (and to be fair some steamers were knowingly doing as so).
Obviously there is reasonable ground in these discussions, but when it comes to censorship the best overall position is government should stay out as much as possible. History shows human nature, or the people attracted to powerful positions, seems to not play well in these spaces over time.
I'm sure there was very extreme porn when grandpa was reading his magazines. Maybe access to it is easier today, but I'm sure humans have been into extreme sexual activities for a veeeeeeery long time.
Again, I think adults should be able to watch what they want. The concern is for the children who are given unrestricted access to the Internet from a young age.
Kinda agree - but for me that's up to the parents. Control your kids devices, restrict them, educate them etc.
Else, how do you want to control this? Mandatory identification on the whole internet? No thanks...
I've seen a lot of things as a teenager which I shouldn't have seen (gore videos of mexican cartels, ISIS etc.), and I'm sure that this has done some mental damage, even though I can't exactly pinpoint what kind. But still, if the alternative is total bureaucratic control over the whole internet with my personal ID being identified everywhere, just to save some uncontrolled kids from watching things they shouldn't...I don't know.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_Horsemen_of_the_Infocal...
Once upon a time, when conservatism was a set of principles and not a set of rants, it was conservatives that stood for limiting government's reach into private concerns. Those values have largely flown out the window to the point where the "two sides" are simply arguing over what to interfere in.
At a global level, human societies have gone through this before. The rash of attaching fig leaves to statuary, for example. The last decade has seen an up-tick of that kind of activity as well.
What happens when you tear down religion and the family unit as moral centers in society? Society replaces them with government... which is drastically worse. Governmental agencies have no interest in teaching that they don't have the responsibility. Their existence depends on growing their authority. There's a conflict of interest.
This is not a slippery slope argument either, it's the consequences of some ideas winning mind share (government as moral authority, morality as old-fashioned...).
Furthermore, the notion of the state forcing computer makers to inspect for and block certain content dovetails nicely (if one's goal is the eradication of queer people in the public sphere) with states prohibiting the discussion of queer identities.
Porn is a drop in the ocean of the problematic content out there. You don't wage war with the ocean. You keep kids away from it until they learn how to swim.
There used to be clear lines drawn for porn penetration, oral copulation, etc... but those lines have been quite burred. Now anything lewd could be porn and just about anything could be lewd in the eyes of the beholder. There's some case law that tries to put bullet-point requirements on this but is still somewhat subjective even when stare decisis is utilized.
Overall I agree with you. The government should stay out of it. The tech industry should also stay out of it. Just add a header for URL's that may contain user-generated content and let the clients decide what actions to take or not take on that header.
"Principal fired after Florida students shown Michelangelo statue"
Imagine all junk food and sugary soda was produced with sustainable farming and renewable energy. It could still be the case that it leads to worse health outcomes for the population, which seems like grounds for regulation to me.
I don't really have a position on this, but it seems easy to imagine how someone could.
I don't see how that would be grounds for regulation, though. Grounds for education, perhaps.
Just say the more general thing in the first place so people don't have to bother trying to argue the finer points of the specific case.
Why would there need to be a line? Something can be porn or art, or both. There is no conflict. Anything done between two consenting adults should be completely un-controversial.
> Where do you draw the line; why draw it “there” as opposed to anywhere else; by what right is it to suppress, in the process, others’ definition of where to draw said line?
What is the point in having a line? If it’s just to decide what can be shown in public and what cannot, then I don’t see why more or less explicit nudes would be any worse than the various depictions of killings and torture we all seem to be comfortable with for some reason.
The sooner we grow up and can go past the kindergarten “OMG we can see her nipple” stage, the better.
Why stop at two?
When teenagers and young adults stop measurably falling off their path in life (chosen according to their own wishes) then we can say that age is the right age for teenagers to be allowed to opt-in to porn.
This is not to condemn the average joe who is unaffected by porn, but to distance the innocent from getting addicted.
Alcohol, cars, guns and literal sex all have minimum ages. The controversy around porn is more rabid and faith-based than logical.
The government doesnt need any new tools to do it, too. Just legally require porn providers to accept a one-off credit card verification payment or 2factor phone auth or a gift card, to establish that the user is old enough to do those basic tasks. If the teenager uses a parents card or phone, the parent will find out eventually and it will solve itself.
But we all know the gov will try to implement more control than that. And that will kill the idea dead, before it begins.
This simplistic line of 'porn bad' is just the pretense for labeling anything out of line with your religion's prescribed morality as pornohrafic and therefore worthy of being expunged by violent means. This ideology never stops at videos containing nudity or sex but continues on to being directed at music, literature, women who don't cover their heads, Transgender people, and so on.
It's the exact justification currently used by conservative turbo-karens to ban books from public libraries that contain any trace if LGBTQIA+ content, histories that acknowledge the slave trade and racism, or even basic health information about periods.
Here's what Unicef says:
> Pornographic content can harm children. Exposure to pornography at a young age may lead to poor mental health, sexism and objectification, sexual violence, and other negative outcomes. ...
> UNICEF is alarmed by the massive quantity of pornography available online, including increasingly graphic and extreme content that is easily accessible to children of all ages. Efforts to regulate content and restrict children’s access to pornography have not kept pace with technological shifts that have profoundly altered the landscape for the consumption of pornography.
(At least I'm not aware of any public libraries with adult-only sections.)
And in the context of the overall discussion of a bill attempting to restrict specifically children's (not adults') access to porn.
But since you asked, I'll respond. I have my own computer and internet connection, so I don't watch anything at the library. But it's not unheard of for homeless people to watch porn at the library.
And there is zero chance that a bureaucracy designed to censor the citizens will not overextend it's powers and refrain from censoring these things.
"Fight the New Drug" is much more entangled with religion than its owners would like the public to believe.
> The group denies a formal affiliation with the Mormon church, though as journalist Samantha Allen notes, its founders are all Mormon, and its facts rely on claims from Mormon author Donald Hilton’s He Restoreth My Soul: Understanding and Breaking the Chemical and Spiritual Chains of Pornography through the Atonement of Jesus Christ. The group’s leader Clay Olsen has explicitly distanced his group from the larger sect. His group opts for a newer-age revelation, explaining on its website, “As young college students not too long ago, we came across the recent science of how porn affects the brain and we were shocked!”
> Olson and company sell the ideological argument as a “just the facts” approach. Less transparent than an openly ideology-driven strategy, the just-the-facts approach is rather a just-some-of-the-facts approach. Fight the New Drugs’ marketing campaigns have built a hearty million-follower Facebook page, where a person can buy faux-faded t-shirts with aphorisms about choosing love instead of porn. Righteous idealism is sold to those countercultural enough to seek a cause, but not enough to challenge spurious dichotomies.
https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2016/04/a-crisis-...
> The leaders and presenters of FTND are not mental health nor sexuality professionals and do not have sufficient training in sexuality or human development to be addressing these subjects. Investigative journalists have recognized FTND as an LDS organization, which FTND continues to deny.
> The largest published neuroscience study of this topic to date, as well as a series of published behavioral studies, shows that those who report problems viewing sex films do not resemble any other substance or "behavioral" addictions. According to their own website, 90 percent of FTND attendees end up agreeing that "pornography releases the same chemicals in your brain as other hard drugs" compared to 43 percent who believed this prior to their presentation. FTND is advertising their ability to successfully spread false information.
> FTND claims they use "peer reviewed science and research" to back their information. A "sex/porn addiction" diagnosis does not exist in the DSM-5, which was explicitly rejected for "lack of scientific evidence."
https://archive.sltrib.com/article.php?id=4409139&itype=CMSI...