Not sure what you mean by factually incorrect, John. I’ve copped to the temporal lag of the OP, are you saying there was no change in the platform in 2012? The change as cited in the article was that the call for the vigorous enforcement of all federal laws against pornography was broadened to include all pornography, not just child porn as in previous platforms.
And vigorous enforcement of all laws does not equate to a ban.
The distinction would be: Playboy and Penthouse are clearly pornography, and clearly legal, so “vigorous enforcement” of the laws as to them would have no effect.
But there is other porn besides child porn which does not enjoy First Amendment protection and is thus reachable under the usual obscenity laws.
Bestiality, for one clear example, is not usually considered to pass the Miller test, and is typically considered a safe bet to be found obscene when challenged.
For those that may not recall, the Miller test was crafted in 1973 by the Supreme Court, and it says that a work is not entitled to First Amendment if the following three conditions are met:
[ul]
[li]whether the average person, applying contemporary community standards would find that the work, taken as a whole, appeals to the prurient interest[/li][li]whether the work depicts or describes, in a patently offensive way, sexual conduct specifically defined by the applicable state law[/li][li]whether the work, taken as a whole, lacks serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value[/ul][/li]
So calling for enforcement of existing law is not remotely the same as calling for a ban.
Yes, of course. But as the Miller case teaches, the First Amendment does not protect obscene material.
:mad: When they pry my cold, dead fingers off my penis!
The political cultures of Britain and the United States are quite different. European political culture (on both right and left) tends toward paternalism making things such as porn bans or bans on Nazi symbols or hijab-wearing more acceptable, while American political culture is far more libertarian.
Actually as I’ve said elsewhere, Obama can (and should) use his interventionist foreign policy to also be bolder in his domestic policy battles much as both Teddy and Franklin Roosevelt did.
It’s factually incorrect because the change doesn’t advocate a ban on all pornography. Vigorous enforcement of all laws regulating pornography wouldn’t result in a ban of all pornography any more than vigorous enforcement of emissions tests would result in a ban of all motor vehicles. They specifically are not calling for new laws:
Censorship is not unique to conservatives. Does anyone remember the PMRC, and Tipper Gore?
And don’t forget - this was around the time that the Clinton Administration pushed hard for the ‘Clipper Chip’ - an intentional backdoor into the internet that would allow the NSA to spy on everyone. The Clipper Chip idea was pushed heavily by Al Gore, who saw encryption as a ‘law and order issue’. There is also evidence that when the Clipper chip was shot down by 1996, the NSA started its program of subverting other encryption standards and creating back doors into various parts of the internet - under the Clinton Administration.
There was a recent letter signed by 42 Senators, urging Eric Holder to crack down on hardcore porn. That letter was signed by 6 Democrats, including Diane Feinstein. There are blue-bloods in every party.
The Republican Party is in the middle of a great Schism right now between social conservatives and Libertarians. It looks to me like the Libertarians are winning. Rand Paul is probably the most popular Washington Republican in the country right now. In the meantime, the Democrats have their own potential schism, as the growing importance of the Hispanic and Black communities in the Democratic Caucus is pushing them to the right socially. So this isn’t just a partisan issue - it’s a break between civil libertarians and social conservatives, and that break exists in both parties.
As for banning online gambling… If you look up the politicians in favor of a ban, you might notice that many of them come from states with traditional gambling interests that are threatened by online gambling. In other words, this isn’t a morals issue - it’s crony capitalism and protectionism for powerful political interests. And both side engage in it.
You would think that the revelations of what’s going on in the Obama administration with respect to the NSA, Syria, secrecy, the expansion of executive power, Wall Street insiders, and all the rest would put to bed the notion that Republicans are ‘bad’ and Democrats are ‘good’. Both sides suck from the corporate teat and both sides like having power and control. Both sides will be secretive when it suits them and overstep the bounds of the Constitution when it suits them - and both sides will try to convince their partisans that such behavior is only a problem when the opposition engages in it.
This is the essence of the libertarian argument: power corrupts. The more powerful you make Washington, the more corrupt it will become. You can’t control the beast by electing the ‘right kind’ of politician. You can’t get rid of corruption no matter how many ‘good government’ policies your guy promises. The root of the corruption lies in the incentives baked into the political system and by the amount of power that can be wielded by politicians. The only way to get rid of it is to limit the power itself. The only way to make government ‘transparent’ is to make it smaller so that oversight is feasible. The only way to stop government from encroaching on civil liberties is to make the Constitution actually matter, even if you don’t like the outcome some times.
Turning all these issues into attacks on Republicans from the left or on Democrats from the right plays right into the hands of those in power. THEY aren’t partisans - at least not once they’re in power. They’ll take money from anyone who wants to give to them, and trample any principle they once held so long as it helps them achieve their own goals.
To the powerful in Washington, partisanship is just a useful tool to keep their base in line and to keep them from looking too closely at what their ‘own side’ is doing while they wield the levers of power. Stop playing that game.
I dunno – I can see how if it’s obscene you may want to enforce the laws against it, but if it’s ***not ***obscene (legally, not qualitatively) then most authorities find they’ve got more pressing things to invest their resources on. What are you gonna do, demand that the truck stop give you the description and plates of everyone who picked up this month’s Hustler?
“Vigorously enforcing current laws” could be a reference to trying to use the “community standard” for obscenity liberally (ha!) so that someone producing porn in LA gets the torment of a thousand cuts having to face legal expense every time their goods turn up in Maker Holler, WV and a hundred other “heartland” locations, so they have to tone things down or limit distribution. However, I’ve not seen/heard/read much publicity about that happening in the “red” states, may or may not be getting followed upon in those places where the Cons are in office.
As **Sam Stone **and others point out, there’s quite a number of my fellow liberals who’d favor a crackdown on even regular porn, be it from the feministic angle or just from the annoying “you should not be able to choose things that we who know better think are bad for you” angle.
That line seems to have been something of a facile item to throw in, “hey, look, here we have something that will please the Jesus Freaks, the Thinkofthechildreners, and even the women’s caucus.”
This does not reflect well on the residents of Utah. I mean, who PAYS for porn these days?
(thinking)
Except for those whose tastes run to the more exotic and less legal. :dubious:
But, does that apply to British political culture? The Brits have long held the conceit that they are not really part of Europe, that they are something different from Continental Europeans.
I recently overcame a porn addiction that began when I was twelve. I don’t believe porn should be banned, but I fervently believe that it shouldn’t be available to children at all. Any kid with a computer access can pull up some pretty extreme stuff in seconds, sometimes even accidentally (bravo to Google for taking some rather conservative steps to prevent that kind of thing). The laws in place to “protect children” from porn are utter bullshit.
Don’t tell me that porn isn’t dangerous. It releases some very powerful and very addictive reward-related hormones that are nigh impossible to ignore. Porn and masturbation also affect people’s personalities in negative ways, in my experience.
By the way, expecting parents to monitor everything a child does with technology in such a technological age is kind of ridiculous. My parents both worked. It’s not their fault I became addicted to porn, but my own… with some extensive help from the internet.
Interesting! Please, do go on, dzylon. And welcome to the SDMB.
Porn isn’t dangerous.
You find porn offensive and destructive; I consider religion offensive and destructive. If finding something offensive is a good enough reason for someone else’s children to be forbidden from seeing it, would you therefore support it being forbidden for children to be exposed to religion? How about politics? Given that every political opinion is offensive to someone, we should protect children from any mention of politics. Right? In fact we should probably just seal kids up in closets until they reach 18, lest they be contaminated. :rolleyes:
And the evidence I’m aware of says that porn and masturbation have a positive effect on people, not a negative one; like lowering the rate of sex crimes. It’s better for someone to relieve themselves by masturbation, instead of being massively frustrated and contemplating rape or suicide because that’s the only way they can relieve themselves.
Thanks, dropzone!
On second thought, my idea is a pipe dream. Such a world could not exist without some censorship and other highly authoritarian policies. The best I could hope for is some PSAs urging parents to keep an eye on children, which, as I mentioned, is next to worthless.
I agree that masturbation is healthy. The symptoms I experienced after masturbating around once a day for several years included a dulled personality, dulled outlook on life, dulled experiences, and the like. After I stopped, my life improved in all of these regards; but perhaps I was masturbating too much, and perhaps the porn had a lot to do with it.
Anyway, what I was talking about was a restriction on porn, not on masturbation. And I don’t think very many teens would commit rape or suicide because they couldn’t obtain porn.
I rather doubt that masturbation could do any of that to someone.
I’d like it to be at least a little more difficult for kids to see porn. Right now, if a parent wanted to keep his kids free of it…he hasn’t got a prayer. Kids are seeing rawer and rawer stuff – the nasty, hard stuff – at younger and younger ages.
I don’t think this is all that harmful, but it violates the principle of parental discretion. A fuddy-duddy parent should have the right to keep his kids from seeing certain very graphic depictions of both sex and violence. Again, I don’t think such exposure is going to do the kids any deep damage, but parents should retain at least that much control.
For us adults? Hey, bring it on! Nobody stands between me and my “erotica.” (Smut!)
yourbrainonporn.com has some studies, testimonials, and the like that you could look at if you wished. It’s not hard to believe that too much of a pleasurable thing could have adverse effects.
So what kind of porn were you looking for that lead you to this thread?