Pornography was not considered speech by the American republic until the SCOTUS lawyers-in-robes declared that it was. The US Constitution begins with “We the People,” not “We the Judges.” The justices didn’t base their decisions on any law; same as abortion, they just squinted hard at the Constitution and made it up!
Pornography bans were affirmed by SCOTUS rulings throughout the 20th Century, until the 1970s, when the lawyers-in-robes legislated from the bench and redefined obscenity to a far more liberal interpretation. Hustler Magazine publisher Larry Flynt’s SCOTUS ruling in 1988 further eroded the power to oppose smut.
The justices went far beyond their enumerated powers to normalize smut, and now we have a degeneracy free-for-all. We the People never agreed to any of this.
Discourage the mass production of pornography via legislation? Maybe.
Ban pornography? No.
The war on drugs is the best example for a government hell-bent on stopping something, it blows up in their face.
This a cultural war issue. It’s better fought in the home. Parents setting a good example of a healthy marriage and healthy sex lives’ is far more foundational than legislating it away.
I would add that pornography should also be banned for children. Pornography is also harmful to the individuals forced to participate in the filming/taping. Many are drugged, abused and some even snuffed out live.
Addiction is about loneliness. Porn does not feel as good as love, and heavy use of it seems to me to be a symptom of lovelessness. Hold off on hard bans while the MAGA saga is still underway. The medicine needs time to work.
Humans crave healthy relationships, when given the opportunity to have healthy bonds to adult members of society when growing. The problem now is that we separate our young and treat them like robots. We make parents work so hard there is no time for interacting with kids.
Understand, when healthy relationships are not possible, the counterfeit type will be used, legal or not. Pornography is just an unhealthy relationship type for people who have not properly developed the skills and desire for real human connections, or who have never beeh given the opportunities for such.
It is not healthy for children to grow up without multiple healthy interactions with adults and kids with other ages growing. Kids need to come into a world in which they are welcome. Having a healthy community means that every child will have the strong and positive connections needed for healthy growth of self esteem, wisdom, and judgment. This is something that is an absolute must have. Give this and pron isn’t going to be that much a problem. Don’t and it will.
Debating how much to cover and how much to not is not helpful. Do we then alienate young mothers from feeding in public? Do we police what outfits stores sell, or force kids to wear clothes according to very strict dress standards?
I know how it sounds nice to force good behavior. The problem is that good behavior comes from good judgment, not from micromanagement. Develop good behavior through better development of wisdom and judgment and future generations will manage their own decisions in ways not possible with micromanagement
Porn has been around way before the internet and has been around in some form for many many decades. Banning won’t help. All this will do is force it to go underground and hurt women even more. As long as children and sex slaves are not involved - most women in that line of work choose to be there. I know of 2 women who work in porn and choose to be there - whether you agree with their career choices or not is not the issue here.
We all know the history of prohibition, Nancy Reagan’s war on drugs, etc. It did NOT work. Any time you ban something - it makes it MORE alluring.
What needs to happen is regulation to keep children off of it. Put up paywalls before they can access the main page - or have some sort of feature on computers and devices that are for kids only so they can’t access it.
Also - education. There are certainly warnings on cigarettes etc - so literature on each porn site should be accessible to the addictions of it.
There should also be a way that users can be put on a ban list to each site if they can’t stay away and have their IP blocked, or, name blocked or something. I know that is difficult to do.
But banning outright is NOT the answer. It should not be that easy for a child to see though. That part needs to be figured out.
I am motivated to support this most by the moral imperative to suppress sexual immorality in all its forms, but what might be even more important is giving men back their vitality. If men are pacified and weakened by porn, our civilization won’t have the force to make consequential changes when necessary.
I think this should be as an extension of the older laws against obscenity and profanity. Everything about porn flies in the face of nobility, honor, and self-respect. Not just for individuals, but for us as a collective too.
Wrong. This issue affects men AND women. Women do not want their spouses watching porn. Frankly, if you read the Bible it says not to waste the seed. This is filthy material and you need Jesus.
I think a better way of going about it is to make sure CONSENTING ADULTS are not punished for this. As for addiction, why not make counselling for it free and paid by taxpayers instead of out of pocket?
I agree. Decades ago, my husband looked at a ministry that would help get pornography off of Long Island. Back then it was in stores not on the Internet. If I remember right, the city of Cleveland decided because of The community standard that they did not want porn stores in their city and crime against women and children plummeted!! Most sex crimes have porn behind them. We have an epidemic of sex trafficking in this nation. Why feed these addictions? We need to do something. I’m not sure what but I was devastated when the Supreme Court called it ‘free speech’ when it is terrible destructive force in relationships and against women.
More importantly children shouldn’t be able to access porn so easily on the internet. Being able to just click a button lying that you are over 18. You should have to at the very least type in your drivers license or something to verify your age. This is a huge problem for kids and innocent children that should not be expose to this. It makes me infuriated. Thank you for bringing this up.
Unfortunately Porn, (sex) Sells. I understand Your Morals, Where i agree we need to Regulate it. I disagree to Ban it. That Is Infringing on peoples Private lives. I also, want to Point out not all Porn is model bodied women. Unless you are only looking for that particular body type, that isn’t all you will see. The porn industry isn’t just thin bodied babes. Violence? That’s interesting. I feel like this is What they said about Video games. However the violence comes from a lack of self control. Porn Does not Destroy Relationships or Families. I know plenty Of Married couples who make Porn. I personally think that is situational based. How we can Protect men In my opinion is to have open conversations, to what they are lacking at home that may be a call to the issue. Healthy Communication is Needed for a relationship to work. Plenty of Consoling Options in the world for Issues regarding At home Sexual problems. What I do think the issue is with Marital Problems and to why men look at porn; Is the women who Withhold Sex from their Husbands/significant others. I Disagree of this ban. I agree with Regulations. I will say, there is a lot of Mental health issues that need to be addressed in America over all. Porn May Be on that list of things, but there are Extreme’s to everything that I feel need to be looked at. As a woman who used to (hate Porn), I have found that taking away porn is not the answer to solving my discontent. Women who do that are very confident with their bodies. something women in America need to really work on as a whole. Body shaming because you lack something is called Jealousy. The people in this nation need to learn to Value self. Taking something away from men, is not helping per say. Instead i feel this is a way to punish men for their sexual drive. what else is crazy is not just men watch porn. So instead of making this based just off of marital problems, let’s evaluate the larger picture. Which is the lack of passion in the home.
While I agree that pornography is destructive, I don’t think it should be federally regulated.
There are so many lines to distinguish. Video, audio, written… how much skin is too much skin? Can you joke about sex? Elude to it? Post pre sexual acts? Or are you talking strictly about videos of penetrative intercourse? Do cartoons count? AI?
What about creative freedom? Many well known and loved movies have sexual scenes. And it seems like you’re aiming at taking men’s freedoms away, I assume because you’re talking about video porn which is biologically more stimulating for men than women. Are we not going to talk about how the current literary trend is “smut”? It’s just porn but in word form. Women are absolutely having the same reaction to it as men who prefer a video. Are you going to take away these author’s written freedom of speech in the name of equality?
I’m all for coming up with solutions that don’t include bans. Government funded supportive therapies could be an option. Better content labeling and warnings. But quite frankly even if we were going to turn to government bans to deal with the problem I don’t think we have enough research evidence to back that up. Some extensive studies need to be done on the long term effects before taking rights away should be a consideration
OF, Fansly, Loyalfans just to name a few already do require age verification for both models as well as subscribers. They also require us to send in consent forms along with age verification for anyone who film with regardless of whether their face shows. Its not those sites that are a problem. Its the free sites bc they don’t require any form of identification or age verification. And please dont come at me for being a fansly model. Money has been tight the past 3 yrs and my primary business has suffered so I had to do other things to make money and preferred those things to be legal.
Banning anything is the fastest way to make a underground market for that thing, just as prohibition laws of the 1920’s failed to end alcohol use a ban on pornography would surly fail and cause even more unintended harmful consequences. Pornography is also a first amendment issue and a ban would surly be unconstitutional. However there are things that can be done mitigate the harmful affects of porn, but we can not legislate morality. 1) devise a way that makes it not so easily accessible online, maybe the creation of a verifiable digital I.D. of some sort to limit it being so easily accessed by children. 2) Take responsibility as a parent talk to and teach your children right from wrong stop sticking your head in the sand when it comes time to talk to your kids about sex. Just like the cigarette smoking issue, if we have a concerted effort to educate about the harmful affects we could severely limit and decrease porn usage. but a ban will only make it or anything else worse, just ask yourselves, how did the war on drugs work out for ya ?
Ok, pornography bad. Freedom of speech good. Banning any expression outright is an infringement on rights, even when that said expression violates your morality. Freedom is one of the reasons so many people chose our President elect.
More stringent prosecution of child predators/child pornography is much easier to get behind.