I have to think about adult-animal porn. After all, one of the parties is unable to consent, so how can it be said it’s between “consenting adults?”
I don’t care about adult-adult porn, as long as are the participants are willing. Whatever fetish turns you on, fine. But child pornography should stay illegal.
Child & rape porn- capital offense
Bestiality porn- illegal
Exploited “sex slave” porn- illegal (example- foreign woman promised good job in US brought here to live in subsistence conditions forced/intimidated into porn)
Maybe the Fed has some authority in restricting interstate-porn access to kids.
Otherwise, porn is a local issue IF a gov’t issue at all.
Even simulated Child (I.E. young looking adult) and rape porn?
Why?
Of course not- if I’d meant “simulated”, I’d have said “simulated”- and what the heck kind of gov’t would execute someone for simulated criminal acts? :rolleyes:
RE bestiality porn as illegal- well, duh- because it’s bestiality! :rolleyes: :rolleyes:
BTW, the PROTECT Act of 2003 (the law that gave us Amber Alerts) revisited the 2002 SCOTUS decision on “virtual child porn” by making illegal any CGI simulation of child porn that is “indistinguishable” from that made with live models. So they have not given up on that. Just that it hasn’t been tested yet.
As long as there’s no reason to suspect a lack of consent on the part of the actors, what’s the big deal?
I think rape porn, while not totally nonexistent like snuff porn, is rare enough in the U.S. I am sure that eventually the censors will get their hands on someone who either has been or can be persuaded to say she has been forced to do porn against her will. But it’s undoubtedly a rare phenom in the US (I can’t speak for the Soviet Union or Asia, where I know human trafficking occurs.) There are a LOT of women in the US sex industry willing to participate in a make-believe rape porn video for cash, why set yourself up for a jail time by doing the real thing?
This is something that baffles me. It seems to me that this type of issue would be a deal-breaker. I’m sure it’d be quite the hijack so I won’t ask anyone to go to deep into it, but how could one reconcile these two drastically diverging viewpoints when voting Republican. Personally, I agree with many of the supposedly “conservative” viewpoints, but some of the big ones (separation of church-state, legislating morality, big business, defecit spending) are so vital that I’d never sacrifice them. It seems to me that a Libertarian voting Republican would be cutting off his nose to spite his face.
Of course I realize that the OP defined people as “conservatives” and not necessarily republicans, so people posting to this thread might not fit into my generalizations, but it still confuses me.
Also, the definition of “obscenity” is where the problem exists. The things that people tend to agree on being regulated (kiddie porn, rape, beastiality) are acts that in and of themselves are illegal. So it’d be safe to say the it shouldbe illegal to have porn that involves and illegal act. Why do you even need to have the suddenly vague concept of “obscenity” in the equation? The answer to that, of course, is so that the morality police can pervert it to their more dubious aims.
But wouldn’t a Libertarian voting Democratic be doing just as much? Democrats want to legislate morality just as much (via gun restriction laws, banning violent video games and music lyrics, etc.); in addition, Democrats want to create large government programs like health care management which will forever suck at the national teat no matter how boondogglish they are.
I’ve seen many ‘morality-based’ laws overturned and revised and voted out in my life. Only once have I seen a major government spending program - Welfare - ended. Given those trends, I feel safer voting for a party that will make ‘morality-based’ legislation that the opposition wants to overturn as opposed to voting for a party that will simply spend more, which neither party wants to stop.
Of course, recent antics by the Republican Congress are starting to make me rethink that.
I don’t think the Dems want to ban violent video games and obscene music lyrics, just put warning labels on them or age restrictions. Whether that is good or bad I’m torn.
I think it’s another example of government going where they have no business - into the bedrooms of law-abiding citizens. You don’t like it? Fine - don’t look at it. I don’t like your church, but I would never protest your right to attend. Just because your religion tells you what you can and cannot do, look at, read, believe, etc. doesn’t mean your religion has the right to tell me what I can and cannot do. And I’m getting pretty damned tired of it trying to.
I’m a conservative of the libertarian bent (or maybe a libertarian with conservative leanings?), and I find the use of government money to combat “Obscenity” to be, well, obscene. I am now, and have in all my adult life been, of the opinion that what consenting adults do is no one’s business but their own. Obviously, if any of the parties involved in making/using/viewing the pornography were either not adult or not willing, that’s a whole different story. But there are already enough laws against that. If you (meaning the gummint) feels a real need to spend more tax money on obscenity, why not use it to go harder against child pornographers and the like?
On the subject of whether or not bestiality should be legal, I’m undecided. If it’s written pornography, then obviously, no animals are being abused or mistreated, I don’t have a problem with that. But for videos? I dunno. Obviously, an animal cannot give consent. OTOH, anyone who’s ever witnessed one of these videos knows that the animal certainly doesn’t seem to have any objections. I would be interested to hear what others think of bestiality and whether it should be legal wrt porn, but maybe that would be a whole 'nother thread.
This new anti-obscenity initiative of Bush’s is really playing hell on my vanity searches.
Whats with the snarky response?
Sorry, but since I consider child & rape porn to be capital offenses, I thought it fairly obvious that I was talking about real child & rape porn- not similated.
And why wouldn’t one consider bestiality porn worthy of illegality?
Technically, yeah- any religion can tell anyone what they can or can’t do, they just can’t force it on people.
Sorry to be away from the web for so long. I wasn’t ignoring you.
I’m referring to a clash between the west and extreme Islam. This is IMHO, not GD (Thank God) so I won’t elaborate. If you disagree, that’s OK, but since this isn’t GD I won’t read your disagreement.
But if one accepts that there is such a clash, one might consider limitations on one’s freedoms in order to preserve freedom in the long run. I can understand a draft in order to avoid being defeated by Tojo and Hitler. Likewise, I think the idea of living under sharia is pretty repulsive.
Of course, one might ask what, if anything, a restriction on porn has to do with winning a war against the Wahabis. And I’d just say, well maybe it does, maybe it doesn’t, and that’s why in my earlier post I just said I’d be open to the idea.
I promise I won’t debate you, as this is IMHO, but in what possible way would restricting porn help with winning a war? I realize you said maybe it doesn’t, but you must have some idea that it might, or you wouldn’t have brought up the context of war.
I hadn’t really thought this out until now, but since you won’t debate I’ll give it a shot.
The first thought I have is about narcissism. At the extreme end you have people who are so concerned about themselves that they won’t have children. If they don’t have babies and the Muslims do, then we soon wind up in a situation like France or Holland. We lose. Our kids live under sharia. And one might make the case that overindulgence in pornography is extremely narcissistic. No ability to relate to others is required. No need lo master the give and take necessary to live with someone else. No need to get married. No need to raise children.
Of course one might say that I’m confusing legalized porn with compulsive masturbation.
But I think that it comes down to a society making a statement that we value families, we value children, we value commitments.
Ideally, I guess I’d like that kind of pressure and influence to come from non-governmental sources. No problem with POTUS and others using a bully pulpit, but let’s use legislation as a last resort.
First off, I think a better question would be “Why should it be illegal?”. I think the burden of proof should lie on those who favor censorship.
I don’t think bestiality porn should be illegal to sell unless the animals in the video are physically suffering. If they’re not clearly suffering, then I don’t have any objections other then an “ick factor,” and I don’t think that should be sufficient cause to take rights from others.
I’m sure you disagree, and that’s fine. This is IMHO. 