A couple of good reads on why regulating pornography is a good thing and not at all a “freedom of speech” issue:
First, Tim Stanley writes at the Telegraph: Margaret Thatcher wanted to regulate internet porn – and so should all true conservatives
“Comrades, hardcore violent porn that degrades women, corrupts the minds of children and tears our society apart is not a “free speech” issue. To call it such is to equate the rights of artists and dissidents with the rights of smut peddlers and pimps, and they’re just not the same. Moreover, we on the Right might be capitalists by instinct, but we surely cannot support the commodification of bodies. The whole point of conservatism is to conserve – to conserve order, social stability, the family, tradition and the sacred. Without these things we have anarchy; anarchies lead to tyrannies and tyranny is bad for the individual. You can’t have liberty without moral order. To maximize liberty we must have a healthy culture. And, QED, we must regulate porn.”
Next, Simcha Fisher puts the issue into more…umm…shall we say, layman’s terms:
“But what about free speech? I’ve been around and around that mulberry bush more times than I can count, so I’m no longer surprised when people imagine that a free society entitles them to shit all over the whole world — and that it’s parents’ job to shovel a little path through the shit for their kids, if they’re going to be super uptight about it.
This law doesn’t outlaw pooping. It just acknowledges that shit is shit, and it should be treated accordingly.
It should be hard to find porn. It should be embarrassing. Using it should make you feel nervous and guilty, because it is bad for you, bad for your family, and bad for society. And if you are enslaved to it, you should be grateful that the public and private sectors are working together to make it less accessible and normalized.”
Whatever you ultimately think about whether or not it should be regulated, I hope we can all agree with this fact: pornography “is vicarious prostitution (you pay other people to have sex on your behalf, which is just sad)” -Tim Stanley.
As I’ve said here many times, this is a very serious issue. According to some statistics, the average age at which a child first sees porn online is 11 with 90 percent of children ages 8-16 having viewed pornography online!
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