U.K. making porn less accessible
by Charlie Butts
According to Morality in Media (MIM) president Pat Trueman, it is “a major step forward from an influential country that could have worldwide effects,” as the idea is to shield children from explicit material. To help accomplish this, parents and guardians will be able to use a site called Parentport that allows them to complain about websites, products, services, or programming that they believe is not appropriate for children.
“I long for the day that our Internet service providers [in the United States] would agree that porn harms and we have an untreated pandemic of harm that must be addressed,” he adds.
And Trueman points out that though a number of U.S. laws prohibit the distribution of obscene pornography on the Internet, they are not being enforced by the federal government. So he believes the country needs a president who will actually carry those measures out.
“But failing that, what about some leadership from the Internet service providers? And the president could exert his leadership and tell those service providers that just like in the United Kingdom, we would like to see a clean Internet,” the MIM president suggests. “And if people want to opt in and get that kind of filth, that’s one thing.” But for pornographers to offer obscenity that is available to everyone, including children, that “is a terrible offense against humanity.”
Further, Trueman believes the biggest stumbling block to accomplishing a clean Internet in the U.S. is the amount of money pornographers and Internet providers make from the material.
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Yeah, too bad America has that pesky first amendment thing. Makes it real hard to make things you don’t like disappear.
See http://www.nap.edu/netsafekids/pp_li_pfa.html for a balanced discussion of the First Amendment and pornography. Pornography is not automatically shielded by the First Amendment, especially where children are concerned.
Basically what it amounts to, is other than child pornography, its essentially impossible to restrict. What is obscenity? Don’t ask the Supreme Court, even they have never been able to really define it, and to my knowledge have never used it in another case.
Interesting news coming from the group who oppose the UK’s strict restrictions on hate speech?
See United States v. Extreme Associates. It is possible to shut down an adult pornographic enterprise if the government has the will, Roivas notwithstanding. But maybe he would still defend them.
Bob makes a good point. But his point cuts both ways!
The SCOTUS has also grappled with limits on hate speech. See, for example,
Chaplinksy v. New Hampshire
Wisconsin v. Mitchell
Virginia v Black
Snyder v Phelps
One thing the Court has been able to discern is that political speech has value that commercially motivated appeals to prurient interests do not.
Leo, furthermore, here in the U.S. only sex is seen as obscene, gratuitous violence and murder is Religious-right approved for young teen consumption. Sure on a personal level some may object, but I’ve yet to hear a boycott of any slasher movie.
@Bob Barnes
I hate “slasher” movies. With that said, at least in slasher movies the actors are not truly murdered. But in porn the “actors” are truly having sex. So, from a religious standpoint, the two movies are not morally equivalent. But I still hate gratuitous violence and even swearing in movies and boycott them. Just so you know.
I hate slasher movies too. But when has the Catholic church of the moral majority ever had a boycott of one?