The nation’s first state porn czar ever (Utah) is a 40 year-old female virgin who, as a devout Mormon, is not even supposed to watch R-rated movies. Is this the beginning of a national trend? Is a subjective local standard the ultimate danger to an information-based society? Can this porn czar physically filter the entire internet in Utah? How difficult would it be to do so?
Give me strength. I will be very interested to see how she deals with her job. Her job is stupid, in my opinion, but it will be much to her credit if she manages it do it without outlawing adult entertainment of every stripe within the first 6 months of her tenure.
Her job is to make sure that pornography is not used to exploit children, or be made freely available to children. I think that she, unlike Guiliani, recognizes what obscene porn is and how it is and is not to be distributed. That was probably why she was picked. Give her a chance.
That being said, I think that the child porn industry is slowing down a lot, thanks to vigilant police enforement. The police will have to be careful not to overreact and do something stupid like arresting somone for having pictures of Michelangelo’s David or something like that.
Her job is to eliminate any depiction of “penetrating” intercourse, not child porn specifically. That child stuff in the article was a smokescreen by her supporters who know they are treading thin legal ice. Provo, in Utah, just voted to buy and utilitize all telecommunications, opposing the free-market and specifically AT&T, who many Utah ultra-conservatives branded as purveyors of sleaze and porn by association.
I’m still curious as to how easy or difficult it would be to filter the entire state. Anyone?
There are some very disturbing things in that article.
For one, I’m concerned about the “hours” Utah’s czarette of porn (a very striking hunk of womanflesh, by the way) is spending “playing catch with her nieces and nephews”. One reels from the mental images.
Evil and porn weren’t equated directly (in that particular quote); evil and sexual intercourse were.
She is responding to those who say, in effect, that because she does not partake of sexual intercourse she is unqualified to fight pornography. That response is “You don’t need to partake of evil to fight evil.” There is absolutely no reason to believe that “evil” here is merely an analogy. She is characterizing intercourse as pornography and both of them as evil. Her following statement that she is “morally clean” because of her virginity necessarily implies that were she not a virgin, she would not be morally clean. Even if we give her the benefit of the doubt and assume that she is referring only to sex out of wedlock as “evil,” that is still a very intolerant and inflexible outlook for someone whose job it is to judge for others what is appropriate (a job which is inherently odious to begin with).
“Hey, Betty, it’s going to take me a little longer than I thought to evaluate this month’s issue of Big 'Uns. Cancel my 3:00, and send in a six-pack and another bottle of Jergens, would ya?”
I hope her ‘above reproach’ status is based on more than her virginity. One could argue(not me, mind you) that her virginity is based not on high morals, but on a hysterical fear of physical intimacy.
I have no opinion on whether or not she can do the job, though.
FROM: Celestial Throne, God Almighty, etc.
TO: Porn Czarette, Utah
SUBJECT: FYI
You appear to be laboring under delusions.
The urge to reproduce is built-in to all species, from paramecium on up. It was not necessary to build enormous pleasure into sex in order to make it happen, the imperative to reproduce works equally well for species that utterly lack any nervous system with which to percieve pleasure.
So why did I make sex so much fun for people?
Because I love you. Go get some. If it ain’t perfectly kosher, I’ll forgive you. It’s what I do.
PS: all that stuff about the Archangel Moroni is a crock.