22 ms·

Multiple issues with this. It starts off with arbitrary definitions of what pornography is (https://le.utah.gov/~2023/bills/static/SB0287.html https://le.utah.

Multiple issues with this. It starts off with arbitrary definitions of what pornography is (https://le.utah.gov/~2023/bills/static/SB0287.html https://le.utah.gov/~2023/bills/static/SB0287.html): "nipple of the female breast" You can suck on it when you are a baby, but god forbid you ever take a look at it again before you are married. What's wrong with these people? Even public nudity laws differ from city to city (e.g. in California), so clearly, people aren't aligned at all on this subject (I'm emphasizing the arbitrary nature here). Forbid and censor the things you're afraid of educating on. This trend reminds tangentially of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comics_Code_Authority https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comics_Code_Authority. On a closing note, I do recommend supporting organizations like https://www.aanr.com/ https://www.aanr.com/ who also provide legal help to citizens in states that'd rather have you wear a burka than show a nipple.

Barrin92 3y ago
>What's wrong with these people? someone told me once "Think of the US less like a secular Western European country and more like a very rich Iran" and that really does help to make sense of a lot of these decisions
- cpursley 3y ago
  When's the last time the US publicly executed a homosexual person or adulterer, with or without trial?
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - bragr 3y ago
    If you include lynchings (and I am), very recently: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_violence_against_LGBT_people_in_the_United_States#Violence_against_LGBT_people_since_1969 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_violence_against_LG...
    - haldujai 3y ago
      Mob violence and hate crimes =/= state sanctioned violence. Readers should note that all of the cited examples here are considered criminal and illegal in the United States.
      - bragr 3y ago
        They literally asked "with or without trial"
        haldujai 3y ago
        i.e. state sanctioned or publicly accepted execution without trial. No law on earth can physically prevent someone from acquiring a weapon and killing members of the LGBT community, the difference is whether this is tolerated and/or endorsed by the state and public, which it is not. You provided a list of heinous crimes that in no way reflects the views of the United States government or the general public. To make it even clearer, recent LGBT violence is not even remotely relatable to the widespread lynchings of Black Americans (which you are evoking with this word) that was 'illegal' yet systemically tolerated in the early-mid 1900s. Literally none of these LGBT crimes were associated with a mob proclaiming justice as was the case with historical lynchings.
  - I-M-S 3y ago
    With trial seems to be 1785 [1]. Without trial here's a list of killings in the last year: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_violence_against_LGBT_people_in_the_United_States#2022 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_violence_against_LG... [1] https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?referer=https://en.wikipedia.org/&httpsredir=1&article=1061&context=englishfacpubs https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?referer=h...
    - newfriend 3y ago
      I'm sure you understand the difference between an individual committing a crime and a state-sanctioned execution. So what's the purpose of this comment, other than to mislead? Here are some highlights from your misleading list: > April 26, 2022 – An unidentified individual threw a rock through the front door of the Pride Center VT office. As of April, 2022 the incident remains unsolved and is being investigated as a hate crime Only two items in the list are even killings, including this one: > June 23, 2022 – Naasire Johnson was killed by his gay lover, Kylen Pratt.
  - scarface74 3y ago
    Not execute. But there were laws against “sodomy” - ie consensual non heterosexual sex between adults in some southern states as late as the 80s and people went to jail.
    - steveklabnik 3y ago
      > there were There still are! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sodomy_laws_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sodomy_laws_in_the_United_Stat... > As of March 2023, 14 states either have not yet formally repealed their laws against sexual activity among consenting adults or have not revised them to accurately reflect their true scope as a result of Lawrence v. Texas. While Lawrence v Texas does limit these laws, there's a concerted effort to repeal it, and if that happens, these laws will go back into effect.
- haldujai 3y ago
  More correct and less inflammatory version: "Think of the US less like a single (European) country and more like a collection of countries (states) representing various different cultures, some of which have widely divergent or more conservative values."
  - jupp0r 3y ago
    Single European countries can have extreme differences in culture and politics as well. Go visit Berlin and rural Saxony in Germany and you'll feel like San Francisco and Mississippi culture wise.
- abakker 3y ago
  ummm. Don't think of the US this way? Think of it as a complex representative government that is federated and representing a highly diverse population, unlike Iran, which is not exactly pro-immigration. Our government is at least partly reactive to our votes. Utah is very different from Colorado or California or Connecticut. So, no, nothing like rich Iran.
  - Barrin92 3y ago
    >Our government is at least partly reactive to our votes So is Iran's. Keep in mind the country is a theocratic Republic that turned out this way because of a popular religious revolt against a secular absolutist monarch. That bottom up, democratic, religious zealotry is something you also have in the US but virtually nowhere in the developed world.
    - haldujai 3y ago
      So you're saying there is no religious zealotry in Europe? What about the Christian Democratic Union of Germany which officially believes in Catholic Democracy and didn't recognize same-sex marriage until 2017?
    - abakker 3y ago
      Don't know what to tell you, man. The US is drastically more diverse than Iran, and as a result is not nearly as hegemonic. Also, the US is a lot more moderate in its views and policies than Iran. The US political party rhetoric is quite different than a lot of our policies actually are. Sure, much of the political right in the US leans puritanical, but, that leaning is a still more lip service to a small, vocal base than broadly representative of our population.
- bitcharmer 3y ago
  My friend likes to refer to the US as a "third world country with a Gucci belt" and sadly I don't think this too far off.
  - mostlysimilar 3y ago
    Sounds like you and your friend both spend a little too much time on the internet.
  - dokem 3y ago
    Yea go tell that to someone actually living in a third world country. How out of touch and spoiled can you be?
    - _irfu 3y ago
      go to any impoverished town or neighborhood in any part of the USA and see for yourself: the running water is undrinkable, the food will slowly kill you, education is severely lacking, etc.
      - dbfx 3y ago
        Please stop reading reddit for your own good
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- mrweasel 3y ago
  Isn't the US still the world largest producer of porn? Honestly we (Europeans) make the same mistake the Americans do in regards to us, we view the US as one homogeneous mass. The difference between states seems like it's often as great as between European nations. I'd be less concerned about the laws of the individual state, if companies did target the lowest common denominator for the entire US, just to make business easier. PornHub is in my mind doing the right thing, blocking the state that's causing issues.
  - throwaway743 3y ago
    > Isn't the US still the world largest producer of porn? Yeah, but only in a few areas in terms of studios, not individual creators. iirc studios/companies are mostly in California (LA mostly), Florida (Miami), and NYC. > PornHub is in my mind doing the right thing, blocking the state that's causing issues. Curious to know if this is strategic, in the sense that they're hoping their blocking of the state will piss off enough people to reverse the policy.
  - freedomben 3y ago
    Yes you have it correct. When introducing myself to Europeans now I've started saying the state I'm from, such as "I'm from the state of Idaho in the US". Utah is a different state/place than Idaho (see liquor laws, state lottery) and both are very different than California or New York. They're almost like different countries in some ways, especially over the last 10 or so years. Not too long ago you could pretty much live anywhere and the main difference would be where you buy your booze and your tax rates, but that's increasingly changing. On the rather extreme end, there are some serious movements for secession from the US. Funny enough they don't usually go very far because (shockingly /s) the red states drop their enthusiasm when a red president gets elected, and the blue states drop theirs when a blue get elected. But if we had a steady president for 3 or more terms, I would bet you it gets serious again.
    - yamtaddle 3y ago
      If every half-serious scheme for dividing the US didn't end up stranding some parts or splitting control of the Mississippi, I bet we'd have amicably split in two several decades ago, if not back in the 19th century.
padobson 3y ago
Is there a mechanism for empowering a polity to protect minors from certain things the polity deems they're not ready for that doesn't rely on arbitrary rules?
- honkycat 3y ago
  Why do we need a policy? Why aren't parents doing basic things like setting up content filters?
  - mattpallissard 3y ago
    > Why aren't parents doing basic things like setting up content filters? Not a comment on the policy; I'm a parent and AFAICT none of my cohorts in town know how to do this.
    - Osiris 3y ago
      My son runs a vpn to get around my dns enforced fillers. I’ve tried to block vpns but he still finds a way.
      - gambiting 3y ago
        I don't understand - if I did this kind of thing as a kid I'd just lose progressively more and more privileges. My parents never put technical obstacles in my way - there were just clear consequences for braking the rules. If your son keeps braking the rules you've set....surely there comes a point where he loses his phone/PC or whatever? No?
        tenacious_tuna 3y ago
        tldr: if your kid keeps breaking the rules, ramping up enforcement is not going to change that for the same reasons that punitive punishment in the judicial system is not effective. Your kid has to understand why the rules are if they're ever going to function well within them, and that also requires a level of parental compassion and understanding that often isn't present. > If your son keeps braking the rules you've set....surely there comes a point where he loses his phone/PC or whatever? The efficacy of this depends wildly on how the rules are explained and enforced, I think. This is a topic that comes up often between my aunt and I. She has two kids about 10 and 13 years younger than I am, and often asks my father and I, the tech people of the family, how to enforce content filtering and screen time limits for both kids. I've effectively refused to help on the basis that it'll only offer her a false sense of security, given that I was able to circumvent every control I faced with relative ease at the same age as her son. I felt that anything she tried to do on the "blind enforcement" angle would just encourage conflict with her oldest, who like me was rather technically inclined and often frustrated by parental oversight. Note, I'm not a parent, just an adult with some frustrations over how this stuff was handled when I was a kid, so I'm sure there's blindspots and misconceptions here. Take all this with a grain of salt. My mom embodied the philosophy of "these are the rules, and you lose privileges if you don't follow them." This most often came up in conflicts over technology. She would set rules over what kinds of games I could play (non violent only), when I could use the computer (not after like 7pm), and broadly how much time in a week I could spend on it (maybe 5 hours before I'd start getting pressure to hop off), in addition to the standard no-admin-rights and interent-content-filtering. I'd often circumvent this stuff through a combination of linux boot disks and just messing with the BIOS clock. Mom never really explained why the rules were what they were. Some I could extrapolate: the content filtering seemed to largely stem from her Puritan view of sex. Thou Shall Not, and no further discussion. The time-spent I was less clear on, but I think it was broadly just that "screen bad" and there were more interesting things to do in the world, in her opinion. For my part, games and computers were my only social connection to others, as an only child who lived across town from all his school friends. This means whenever I "lost privileges" for my phone/computer/etc, I was now socially isolated as well, which just made me more upset. There certainly were times she took everything away, as a "loss of privileges" for breaking the rules, but then I just got more miserable because the root problems for me still weren't being addressed. Moreover, that meant she was constantly framed as an adversary: enforcing the rules as a single parent takes significant effort, because there's no outlet. I had nobody to vent to, she had no other adults for backup or to bounce ideas off of. Plus, I needed the thing for school often: writing papers for class, or looking up how to do my math problems. There came a point where, philosophically, it was difficult to physically take things away because I'd bought them with my own money or they were gifts from other family members. Compare this to my dad's strategy: He knew there were plenty of things in the world he didn't want me having my life ruined by, so he went for education over prohibition: "You're too young for porn, because it gives you unrealistic expectations of both sex and relationships. Also it forms addictive habits. You can ask me questions, and I'll keep an eye on your internet usage in case I see anything we need to have a conversation about, but you should stay away from that." Infinitely more effective to a developing-me: now I understood his concerns, the goals, and had a method of recourse if I disagreed. As an adult, I 100% understand that there's good damn reason to prevent kids from having unfettered access to the internet. Especially preteens and younger: holy crap, youtube is a brain-melting attention-hacking cesspool. Simultaneously, I think it's insanely unreasonable to "walled garden" everything off and call it a day. That's not how the world works, and if that's the chosen method of "safety" then you're just making it so your kids will never come to you with questions during their own exploring while also leaving them unprepared once they're outside of your bubble. I was always insanely frustrated that my mom didn't just talk to me, or when she did, that her beliefs and concerns were always more important than mine. Again, I get it: kids are not always rational, it is the job of the parent to watch out for forms of harm that kids aren't paying attention to, etc--but I still hold a lot of those frustrations as an adult, especially because I never felt like I got to voice them as a kid. So, I just went around them. Constantly.
gjsman-1000 3y ago
Mandatory reminder that the US covers more land area than the entire EU. And while the population is 185 million people smaller, think about how wildly different the various EU countries are culturally. While the US has something of a shared culture, the South has a wildly different culture than New York. It's OK for Germany and France to say that the politics of Hungary and Poland shouldn't represent them, and vice versa. Blanket statements about the US aren't much different than blanket statements about the EU. It greatly depends where you are. And in an alternate timeline, the US may have been more like the EU, especially back when US states had very large armies (er, "militias") of their own. And some still do though they are much smaller now (SDFs).
- renewiltord 3y ago
  My experience living in North Carolina, Texas, New York, and California gives me the picture that this is an exaggeration. Imho, the difference is somewhat like that between a northern town near Newcastle and Covent Garden. Most nations have regional differences in the realm of the US. Yes, a town like Alba in Texas isn't like NYC culturally or physically, but many countries have this difference. I suspect that of the many that I have lived in or visited, the only ones with apparent uniformity are ones I haven't really seen deeply: Iceland and Norway perhaps.
edgyquant 3y ago
Way to regurgitate a tired argument. Kids are addicted to porn before they’re old enough to drive these days and it’s messes them up for life (see: the incel movement.) Something has to be done about corporations that profit off of showing literal children hardcore porn. “Talking to your kids” doesn’t work when multinational corporations are incentivized to addict them for ad revenue.
- scarface74 3y ago
  If only most internet connected devices came with parental controls…
- femiagbabiaka 3y ago
  Blocking access to pornographic websites is the responsibility of parents or other responsible adults absent a federal ID verification system that would enable websites to reliably block kids (similar to S. Korea). You can justify almost any amount of censorship based on "thinking about the kids". But our society is built for more than just the first 20% of human life. The proliferation of this argument that everything from the internet to IRL bookstores need to be censored to protect children starts from a good place, but it jumped the shark a long time ago.
- tedivm 3y ago
  What evidence do you have that the incel movement is driven by pornography? I always attributed it to the recruitment efforts of the alt-right and other misogynistic groups.
  - softfalcon 3y ago
    In my experience, you are correct. The incel movement (and others like it) is a targeted attempt to enflame naive and susceptible target(s) to a polarized view of the world. This is beneficial to the manipulators for various reasons, be they financial or political.
  - bradlys 3y ago
    Guys, the incel “movement” is just dudes not getting laid and whining about it. It’s as old as time. They just happen to be on the Internet now and we’ve atomized society to the point where they’re super common. Most everyone is an incel until they’re not. After all - there’s a point where you want sex and aren’t getting it. Thus, an incel.
tristor 3y ago
> What's wrong with these people? It's Utah. Utah, for all the ways that actually matter, is effectively a theocracy operated by an ultra-conservative religious minority. Utah is about as similar to the rest of the United States as the rest of the United States is similar to the Middle East.
- tempsy 3y ago
  Ehh it's definitely not just the ultra religious conservatives who are raising issues with pornography. I see a lot more "health bro influencer"/Andrew Tate types warn against watching porn because they think it makes people weak minded, which I would agree with when it turns into an addiction and actually impacts your ability to form real life relationships.
  - lesona 3y ago
    You might see a lot of that personally, but the Utah legislature has a dearth of "health bro influencer" types, especially in its Senate. The chief sponsor of the bill went to BYU.[1] The co-sponsor of the bill went to BYU [2] [1] https://senate.utah.gov/sen/WEILET/ https://senate.utah.gov/sen/WEILET/ [2] https://house.utleg.gov/rep/PULSIS/ https://house.utleg.gov/rep/PULSIS/ Edit: spacing
    - tristor 3y ago
      Roughly 1/3rd of the House and Senate of Utah are BYU grads [1], and BYU is not the only religious Mormon university in Utah, just the largest. Utah was literally founded as a state to be a place for Mormons[2], because they were a persecuted religious minority in other states. I grew up in Missouri, and part of Missouri state history is that of the 1838 Mormon War[3]. At one point the Governor of Missouri signed an order that paid out for the scalps of Mormons[4]. The aftermath was a mass migration of Mormons from Missouri to what became Utah, literally founded as a place for Mormons, to this day Mormons consider Independence, Missouri as a holy site, but Utah is the headquarters of the LDS Church and the predominant residence of Mormons in the US. It is for all intents and purposes a theocratic state within the US. [1]: https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/govbeat/wp/2014/07/23/byu-grads-basically-run-utahs-government/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/govbeat/wp/2014/07/23/b... [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Utah#Settlement_by_The_Church_of_Jesus_Christ_of_Latter-day_Saints https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Utah#Settlement_by_... [3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1838_Mormon_War https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1838_Mormon_War [4]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mormon_Extermination_Order https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mormon_Extermination_Order
throwaw12 3y ago
[flagged]
- sb8244 3y ago
  Addiction to anything is harmful. I don't make the leap that everything should be banned.
brightball 3y ago
There’s such a strange dichotomy in these conversations. 1. Porn shouldn’t be available to kids and it’s on the vendors legally to ensure that. 2. Porn should be unrestricted, it’s up to parents to do something about it. What I can’t understand is if the people in camp 2 are so unashamed of the porn advocacy then why is age verification such a big deal? If it’s not a big deal then verifying your age shouldn’t phase you anymore than verifying your age to buy alcohol. If it is then you know exactly why kids should be kept away from it.
- rgavuliak 3y ago
  Because when buying alcohol, you can for the most part (outside of online purchases, but even then the courier can check an ID upon delivery hypothetially) verify it fairly easily. With online porn, the scale and complications doing it put a much bigger burden on the providers. Additionally porn has a much bigger stigma than alcohol, so keeping record of what you watch, especially if you're into something more niche connected to your name can be used to discredit political opponents or even single out certain group due to abuse of power. A good example would be exposing a conservative politician that watches gay porn. Not that would necessarily be a bad thing, but there is no equivalent to this with alcohol - oh you drink tequilla, but you're whole ideology is based on drinking whiskey...
  - maerF0x0 3y ago
    > With online porn, the scale and complications doing it put a much bigger burden This could be very easily done at the ISP level for the whole connection. (I'm talking best effort not a perfect implementation) Why not just block all "Adult" content by default and allow the buyer to opt in (both temporarily via password, and permanently). Then it would be a decision each household could easily make about what they want. edit: I love the downvotes without rebuttal. Reminder that the downvote in this community is not "I disagree with you"
    - freedomben 3y ago
      Aside from the implications of turning an ISP into a decider of what you get to see rather than being a "dumb pipe," what about parents who want to view porn but don't want their kids to? Should they be forced to choose between 20 years of abstinence or potentially exposing their kids? The "household" is a pretty bad level at which to have to make these decisions, given that people of all age ranges share the same household. It seems to me that age verification makes a lot more sense than this, (and ftr I think Utah's bill is ridiculous overreach and would have massive privacy implications that are highly problematic).
LegitShady 3y ago
Canada's similar bill just passed senate reading on the 18th and needs to go to the house. It just says "sexually explicit material" and I'm having trouble finding an exact definition because its changed a bunch and I can't find the current definition. https://www.parl.ca/legisinfo/en/bill/44-1/s-210 https://www.parl.ca/legisinfo/en/bill/44-1/s-210 UK https://bills.parliament.uk/bills/3137 https://bills.parliament.uk/bills/3137 https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-65388255 https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-65388255 I'm not sure where else these bills are being passed but it seems more or less in concert you will have to use a government approved age verification system to access porn, which may kill it off as I don't think people want to give the government information on what porn they watch.
- Mindwipe 3y ago
  France and Germany too.
- int_19h 3y ago
  It won't kill it, it just means that porn sites will be hosted outside of those jurisdictions, and people will use VPNs to access them if needed (which, ironically, might actually spread awareness of VPNs in general, making it harder to regulate other online content in the future).
  - LegitShady 3y ago
    I believe one of the largest companies, mindgeek, is luxembourghian for tax status but operates more or less out of canada.
PathOfEclipse 3y ago
> You can suck on it when you are a baby, but god forbid you ever take a look at it again before you are married. It turns out, a mother's nipple has a far different effect on an infant than a young adult female nipple does on a teenage boy. If this is difficult for you to grasp, then you should consider stepping away from this conversation, as there is clearly nuance here that the average person can easily understand but that you can't. > What's wrong with these people? What's wrong with you? > Even public nudity laws differ from city to city (e.g. in California), so clearly, people aren't aligned at all on this subject (I'm emphasizing the arbitrary nature here). I don't think "arbitrary" means what you think it means. Just because people don't all agree on the definition of something doesn't make one person's definition arbitrary. > Forbid and censor the things you're afraid of educating on. "Education" has nothing to do with it. Pornography has been proven to be devastatingly harmful for many, many people. There is no world in which you can be morally consistent, for instance, in supporting an age minimum for alcohol consumption but not for pornography consumption. > On a closing note, I do recommend supporting organizations like https://www.aanr.com/ https://www.aanr.com/ who also provide legal help to citizens in states that'd rather have you wear a burka than show a nipple. If your moral code drives you to make the world a better place by liberating people from restrictions on viewing pornography, then I contend that your moral code is corrupt or severely misguided.
- solarmist 3y ago
  If your moral code dictates what other people can or cannot do with their own lives in their homes then I contend that your moral code may be corrupt or severely misguided.
  - haldujai 3y ago
    I'm unclear whether you're arguing that obscene/pornographic material should be accessible/distributed to minors as the distinction here is that this activity is in fact a federal crime in the US (and most of the world). The government unequivocally has the right and obligation to enforce federal law. To what extent and by which mechanisms they should do this is a different question altogether but this issue is hardly about 'dictating what other people can do with their own lives in their homes' as was the case with other laws like anti-LGBT.
firstlink 3y ago
Not exactly on-topic but: it appears this bill carefully defines "the Internet" as the global packet-switched network (!) but then fails to define "website", which is used (as "internet website") in the actual law. This isn't necessarily a drafting error because laws must always have undefined terms, but it is rather odd. I'm perennially concerned at the conflation of these two concepts, internet and www, because it makes it easier for malicious actors to seize personal domains and generally gatekeep the internet for use by the (commercial) web. Anyways, back to debating porn.
erenyeager 3y ago
Nothing wrong with government wanting people to wear burkas and cover up some more, it’s part of respectful and dignified society. Maybe don’t insult and denigrate modesty and other cultures next time.
Waterluvian 3y ago
One of my favourite concepts in "late night" style comedy is when they test the censors by gradually incrementing something boring into something "unacceptable," whether it be language, the context of a sketch, or something graphic. And then once they've got the line they play with that line (eg. words/names that sound like "fuck", or Cecily Strong having sex with Bill Hader under a small throw). One of the best ways to demonstrate how ridiculous and un-thinking this position is would be to do just that. If they "know it when they see it", just say "when!" as we systematically wax, outfit, camera angle, and contextualize this stereotypical, upper-endowed male football fan into a gorgeous female, who then slowly gets topless.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
jeroenhd 3y ago
> "nipple of the female breast" IANAL, but what would happen if you took a picture of a male nipple and used that to censor the female nipple? Would it be okay?
- russdill 3y ago
  I think it would fall under "depiction". Something doesn't have to be a photo to be considered pornographic by legal or even lay standards.
aaron695 3y ago
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nitwit005 3y ago
That list doesn't seem particularly arbitrary. It's basically "nudity or sex", which is what you'd expect. Traditionally, obscenity laws have been extremely vague. Having a fairly clear list of what counts is an improvement.
Slava_Propanei 3y ago
[dead]

Barrin92 3y ago

>What's wrong with these people? someone told me once "Think of the US less like a secular Western European country and more like a very rich Iran" and that really does help to make sense of a lot of these decisions

cpursley 3y ago
When's the last time the US publicly executed a homosexual person or adulterer, with or without trial?
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- bragr 3y ago
  If you include lynchings (and I am), very recently: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_violence_against_LGBT_people_in_the_United_States#Violence_against_LGBT_people_since_1969 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_violence_against_LG...
  - haldujai 3y ago
    Mob violence and hate crimes =/= state sanctioned violence. Readers should note that all of the cited examples here are considered criminal and illegal in the United States.
    - bragr 3y ago
      They literally asked "with or without trial"
      - haldujai 3y ago
        i.e. state sanctioned or publicly accepted execution without trial. No law on earth can physically prevent someone from acquiring a weapon and killing members of the LGBT community, the difference is whether this is tolerated and/or endorsed by the state and public, which it is not. You provided a list of heinous crimes that in no way reflects the views of the United States government or the general public. To make it even clearer, recent LGBT violence is not even remotely relatable to the widespread lynchings of Black Americans (which you are evoking with this word) that was 'illegal' yet systemically tolerated in the early-mid 1900s. Literally none of these LGBT crimes were associated with a mob proclaiming justice as was the case with historical lynchings.
- I-M-S 3y ago
  With trial seems to be 1785 [1]. Without trial here's a list of killings in the last year: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_violence_against_LGBT_people_in_the_United_States#2022 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_violence_against_LG... [1] https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?referer=https://en.wikipedia.org/&httpsredir=1&article=1061&context=englishfacpubs https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?referer=h...
  - newfriend 3y ago
    I'm sure you understand the difference between an individual committing a crime and a state-sanctioned execution. So what's the purpose of this comment, other than to mislead? Here are some highlights from your misleading list: > April 26, 2022 – An unidentified individual threw a rock through the front door of the Pride Center VT office. As of April, 2022 the incident remains unsolved and is being investigated as a hate crime Only two items in the list are even killings, including this one: > June 23, 2022 – Naasire Johnson was killed by his gay lover, Kylen Pratt.
- scarface74 3y ago
  Not execute. But there were laws against “sodomy” - ie consensual non heterosexual sex between adults in some southern states as late as the 80s and people went to jail.
  - steveklabnik 3y ago
    > there were There still are! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sodomy_laws_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sodomy_laws_in_the_United_Stat... > As of March 2023, 14 states either have not yet formally repealed their laws against sexual activity among consenting adults or have not revised them to accurately reflect their true scope as a result of Lawrence v. Texas. While Lawrence v Texas does limit these laws, there's a concerted effort to repeal it, and if that happens, these laws will go back into effect.
haldujai 3y ago
More correct and less inflammatory version: "Think of the US less like a single (European) country and more like a collection of countries (states) representing various different cultures, some of which have widely divergent or more conservative values."
- jupp0r 3y ago
  Single European countries can have extreme differences in culture and politics as well. Go visit Berlin and rural Saxony in Germany and you'll feel like San Francisco and Mississippi culture wise.
abakker 3y ago
ummm. Don't think of the US this way? Think of it as a complex representative government that is federated and representing a highly diverse population, unlike Iran, which is not exactly pro-immigration. Our government is at least partly reactive to our votes. Utah is very different from Colorado or California or Connecticut. So, no, nothing like rich Iran.
- Barrin92 3y ago
  >Our government is at least partly reactive to our votes So is Iran's. Keep in mind the country is a theocratic Republic that turned out this way because of a popular religious revolt against a secular absolutist monarch. That bottom up, democratic, religious zealotry is something you also have in the US but virtually nowhere in the developed world.
  - haldujai 3y ago
    So you're saying there is no religious zealotry in Europe? What about the Christian Democratic Union of Germany which officially believes in Catholic Democracy and didn't recognize same-sex marriage until 2017?
  - abakker 3y ago
    Don't know what to tell you, man. The US is drastically more diverse than Iran, and as a result is not nearly as hegemonic. Also, the US is a lot more moderate in its views and policies than Iran. The US political party rhetoric is quite different than a lot of our policies actually are. Sure, much of the political right in the US leans puritanical, but, that leaning is a still more lip service to a small, vocal base than broadly representative of our population.
bitcharmer 3y ago
My friend likes to refer to the US as a "third world country with a Gucci belt" and sadly I don't think this too far off.
- mostlysimilar 3y ago
  Sounds like you and your friend both spend a little too much time on the internet.
- dokem 3y ago
  Yea go tell that to someone actually living in a third world country. How out of touch and spoiled can you be?
  - _irfu 3y ago
    go to any impoverished town or neighborhood in any part of the USA and see for yourself: the running water is undrinkable, the food will slowly kill you, education is severely lacking, etc.
    - dbfx 3y ago
      Please stop reading reddit for your own good
deleted 3y ago
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mrweasel 3y ago
Isn't the US still the world largest producer of porn? Honestly we (Europeans) make the same mistake the Americans do in regards to us, we view the US as one homogeneous mass. The difference between states seems like it's often as great as between European nations. I'd be less concerned about the laws of the individual state, if companies did target the lowest common denominator for the entire US, just to make business easier. PornHub is in my mind doing the right thing, blocking the state that's causing issues.
- throwaway743 3y ago
  > Isn't the US still the world largest producer of porn? Yeah, but only in a few areas in terms of studios, not individual creators. iirc studios/companies are mostly in California (LA mostly), Florida (Miami), and NYC. > PornHub is in my mind doing the right thing, blocking the state that's causing issues. Curious to know if this is strategic, in the sense that they're hoping their blocking of the state will piss off enough people to reverse the policy.
- freedomben 3y ago
  Yes you have it correct. When introducing myself to Europeans now I've started saying the state I'm from, such as "I'm from the state of Idaho in the US". Utah is a different state/place than Idaho (see liquor laws, state lottery) and both are very different than California or New York. They're almost like different countries in some ways, especially over the last 10 or so years. Not too long ago you could pretty much live anywhere and the main difference would be where you buy your booze and your tax rates, but that's increasingly changing. On the rather extreme end, there are some serious movements for secession from the US. Funny enough they don't usually go very far because (shockingly /s) the red states drop their enthusiasm when a red president gets elected, and the blue states drop theirs when a blue get elected. But if we had a steady president for 3 or more terms, I would bet you it gets serious again.
  - yamtaddle 3y ago
    If every half-serious scheme for dividing the US didn't end up stranding some parts or splitting control of the Mississippi, I bet we'd have amicably split in two several decades ago, if not back in the 19th century.

padobson 3y ago

Is there a mechanism for empowering a polity to protect minors from certain things the polity deems they're not ready for that doesn't rely on arbitrary rules?

honkycat 3y ago
Why do we need a policy? Why aren't parents doing basic things like setting up content filters?
- mattpallissard 3y ago
  > Why aren't parents doing basic things like setting up content filters? Not a comment on the policy; I'm a parent and AFAICT none of my cohorts in town know how to do this.
  - Osiris 3y ago
    My son runs a vpn to get around my dns enforced fillers. I’ve tried to block vpns but he still finds a way.
    - gambiting 3y ago
      I don't understand - if I did this kind of thing as a kid I'd just lose progressively more and more privileges. My parents never put technical obstacles in my way - there were just clear consequences for braking the rules. If your son keeps braking the rules you've set....surely there comes a point where he loses his phone/PC or whatever? No?
      - tenacious_tuna 3y ago
        tldr: if your kid keeps breaking the rules, ramping up enforcement is not going to change that for the same reasons that punitive punishment in the judicial system is not effective. Your kid has to understand why the rules are if they're ever going to function well within them, and that also requires a level of parental compassion and understanding that often isn't present. > If your son keeps braking the rules you've set....surely there comes a point where he loses his phone/PC or whatever? The efficacy of this depends wildly on how the rules are explained and enforced, I think. This is a topic that comes up often between my aunt and I. She has two kids about 10 and 13 years younger than I am, and often asks my father and I, the tech people of the family, how to enforce content filtering and screen time limits for both kids. I've effectively refused to help on the basis that it'll only offer her a false sense of security, given that I was able to circumvent every control I faced with relative ease at the same age as her son. I felt that anything she tried to do on the "blind enforcement" angle would just encourage conflict with her oldest, who like me was rather technically inclined and often frustrated by parental oversight. Note, I'm not a parent, just an adult with some frustrations over how this stuff was handled when I was a kid, so I'm sure there's blindspots and misconceptions here. Take all this with a grain of salt. My mom embodied the philosophy of "these are the rules, and you lose privileges if you don't follow them." This most often came up in conflicts over technology. She would set rules over what kinds of games I could play (non violent only), when I could use the computer (not after like 7pm), and broadly how much time in a week I could spend on it (maybe 5 hours before I'd start getting pressure to hop off), in addition to the standard no-admin-rights and interent-content-filtering. I'd often circumvent this stuff through a combination of linux boot disks and just messing with the BIOS clock. Mom never really explained why the rules were what they were. Some I could extrapolate: the content filtering seemed to largely stem from her Puritan view of sex. Thou Shall Not, and no further discussion. The time-spent I was less clear on, but I think it was broadly just that "screen bad" and there were more interesting things to do in the world, in her opinion. For my part, games and computers were my only social connection to others, as an only child who lived across town from all his school friends. This means whenever I "lost privileges" for my phone/computer/etc, I was now socially isolated as well, which just made me more upset. There certainly were times she took everything away, as a "loss of privileges" for breaking the rules, but then I just got more miserable because the root problems for me still weren't being addressed. Moreover, that meant she was constantly framed as an adversary: enforcing the rules as a single parent takes significant effort, because there's no outlet. I had nobody to vent to, she had no other adults for backup or to bounce ideas off of. Plus, I needed the thing for school often: writing papers for class, or looking up how to do my math problems. There came a point where, philosophically, it was difficult to physically take things away because I'd bought them with my own money or they were gifts from other family members. Compare this to my dad's strategy: He knew there were plenty of things in the world he didn't want me having my life ruined by, so he went for education over prohibition: "You're too young for porn, because it gives you unrealistic expectations of both sex and relationships. Also it forms addictive habits. You can ask me questions, and I'll keep an eye on your internet usage in case I see anything we need to have a conversation about, but you should stay away from that." Infinitely more effective to a developing-me: now I understood his concerns, the goals, and had a method of recourse if I disagreed. As an adult, I 100% understand that there's good damn reason to prevent kids from having unfettered access to the internet. Especially preteens and younger: holy crap, youtube is a brain-melting attention-hacking cesspool. Simultaneously, I think it's insanely unreasonable to "walled garden" everything off and call it a day. That's not how the world works, and if that's the chosen method of "safety" then you're just making it so your kids will never come to you with questions during their own exploring while also leaving them unprepared once they're outside of your bubble. I was always insanely frustrated that my mom didn't just talk to me, or when she did, that her beliefs and concerns were always more important than mine. Again, I get it: kids are not always rational, it is the job of the parent to watch out for forms of harm that kids aren't paying attention to, etc--but I still hold a lot of those frustrations as an adult, especially because I never felt like I got to voice them as a kid. So, I just went around them. Constantly.

gjsman-1000 3y ago

Mandatory reminder that the US covers more land area than the entire EU. And while the population is 185 million people smaller, think about how wildly different the various EU countries are culturally. While the US has something of a shared culture, the South has a wildly different culture than New York. It's OK for Germany and France to say that the politics of Hungary and Poland shouldn't represent them, and vice versa. Blanket statements about the US aren't much different than blanket statements about the EU. It greatly depends where you are. And in an alternate timeline, the US may have been more like the EU, especially back when US states had very large armies (er, "militias") of their own. And some still do though they are much smaller now (SDFs).

renewiltord 3y ago
My experience living in North Carolina, Texas, New York, and California gives me the picture that this is an exaggeration. Imho, the difference is somewhat like that between a northern town near Newcastle and Covent Garden. Most nations have regional differences in the realm of the US. Yes, a town like Alba in Texas isn't like NYC culturally or physically, but many countries have this difference. I suspect that of the many that I have lived in or visited, the only ones with apparent uniformity are ones I haven't really seen deeply: Iceland and Norway perhaps.

edgyquant 3y ago

Way to regurgitate a tired argument. Kids are addicted to porn before they’re old enough to drive these days and it’s messes them up for life (see: the incel movement.) Something has to be done about corporations that profit off of showing literal children hardcore porn. “Talking to your kids” doesn’t work when multinational corporations are incentivized to addict them for ad revenue.

scarface74 3y ago
If only most internet connected devices came with parental controls…
femiagbabiaka 3y ago
Blocking access to pornographic websites is the responsibility of parents or other responsible adults absent a federal ID verification system that would enable websites to reliably block kids (similar to S. Korea). You can justify almost any amount of censorship based on "thinking about the kids". But our society is built for more than just the first 20% of human life. The proliferation of this argument that everything from the internet to IRL bookstores need to be censored to protect children starts from a good place, but it jumped the shark a long time ago.
tedivm 3y ago
What evidence do you have that the incel movement is driven by pornography? I always attributed it to the recruitment efforts of the alt-right and other misogynistic groups.
- softfalcon 3y ago
  In my experience, you are correct. The incel movement (and others like it) is a targeted attempt to enflame naive and susceptible target(s) to a polarized view of the world. This is beneficial to the manipulators for various reasons, be they financial or political.
- bradlys 3y ago
  Guys, the incel “movement” is just dudes not getting laid and whining about it. It’s as old as time. They just happen to be on the Internet now and we’ve atomized society to the point where they’re super common. Most everyone is an incel until they’re not. After all - there’s a point where you want sex and aren’t getting it. Thus, an incel.

tristor 3y ago

> What's wrong with these people? It's Utah. Utah, for all the ways that actually matter, is effectively a theocracy operated by an ultra-conservative religious minority. Utah is about as similar to the rest of the United States as the rest of the United States is similar to the Middle East.

tempsy 3y ago
Ehh it's definitely not just the ultra religious conservatives who are raising issues with pornography. I see a lot more "health bro influencer"/Andrew Tate types warn against watching porn because they think it makes people weak minded, which I would agree with when it turns into an addiction and actually impacts your ability to form real life relationships.
- lesona 3y ago
  You might see a lot of that personally, but the Utah legislature has a dearth of "health bro influencer" types, especially in its Senate. The chief sponsor of the bill went to BYU.[1] The co-sponsor of the bill went to BYU [2] [1] https://senate.utah.gov/sen/WEILET/ https://senate.utah.gov/sen/WEILET/ [2] https://house.utleg.gov/rep/PULSIS/ https://house.utleg.gov/rep/PULSIS/ Edit: spacing
  - tristor 3y ago
    Roughly 1/3rd of the House and Senate of Utah are BYU grads [1], and BYU is not the only religious Mormon university in Utah, just the largest. Utah was literally founded as a state to be a place for Mormons[2], because they were a persecuted religious minority in other states. I grew up in Missouri, and part of Missouri state history is that of the 1838 Mormon War[3]. At one point the Governor of Missouri signed an order that paid out for the scalps of Mormons[4]. The aftermath was a mass migration of Mormons from Missouri to what became Utah, literally founded as a place for Mormons, to this day Mormons consider Independence, Missouri as a holy site, but Utah is the headquarters of the LDS Church and the predominant residence of Mormons in the US. It is for all intents and purposes a theocratic state within the US. [1]: https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/govbeat/wp/2014/07/23/byu-grads-basically-run-utahs-government/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/govbeat/wp/2014/07/23/b... [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Utah#Settlement_by_The_Church_of_Jesus_Christ_of_Latter-day_Saints https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Utah#Settlement_by_... [3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1838_Mormon_War https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1838_Mormon_War [4]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mormon_Extermination_Order https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mormon_Extermination_Order

throwaw12 3y ago

[flagged]

sb8244 3y ago
Addiction to anything is harmful. I don't make the leap that everything should be banned.

brightball 3y ago

There’s such a strange dichotomy in these conversations. 1. Porn shouldn’t be available to kids and it’s on the vendors legally to ensure that. 2. Porn should be unrestricted, it’s up to parents to do something about it. What I can’t understand is if the people in camp 2 are so unashamed of the porn advocacy then why is age verification such a big deal? If it’s not a big deal then verifying your age shouldn’t phase you anymore than verifying your age to buy alcohol. If it is then you know exactly why kids should be kept away from it.

rgavuliak 3y ago
Because when buying alcohol, you can for the most part (outside of online purchases, but even then the courier can check an ID upon delivery hypothetially) verify it fairly easily. With online porn, the scale and complications doing it put a much bigger burden on the providers. Additionally porn has a much bigger stigma than alcohol, so keeping record of what you watch, especially if you're into something more niche connected to your name can be used to discredit political opponents or even single out certain group due to abuse of power. A good example would be exposing a conservative politician that watches gay porn. Not that would necessarily be a bad thing, but there is no equivalent to this with alcohol - oh you drink tequilla, but you're whole ideology is based on drinking whiskey...
- maerF0x0 3y ago
  > With online porn, the scale and complications doing it put a much bigger burden This could be very easily done at the ISP level for the whole connection. (I'm talking best effort not a perfect implementation) Why not just block all "Adult" content by default and allow the buyer to opt in (both temporarily via password, and permanently). Then it would be a decision each household could easily make about what they want. edit: I love the downvotes without rebuttal. Reminder that the downvote in this community is not "I disagree with you"
  - freedomben 3y ago
    Aside from the implications of turning an ISP into a decider of what you get to see rather than being a "dumb pipe," what about parents who want to view porn but don't want their kids to? Should they be forced to choose between 20 years of abstinence or potentially exposing their kids? The "household" is a pretty bad level at which to have to make these decisions, given that people of all age ranges share the same household. It seems to me that age verification makes a lot more sense than this, (and ftr I think Utah's bill is ridiculous overreach and would have massive privacy implications that are highly problematic).

LegitShady 3y ago

Canada's similar bill just passed senate reading on the 18th and needs to go to the house. It just says "sexually explicit material" and I'm having trouble finding an exact definition because its changed a bunch and I can't find the current definition. https://www.parl.ca/legisinfo/en/bill/44-1/s-210 https://www.parl.ca/legisinfo/en/bill/44-1/s-210 UK https://bills.parliament.uk/bills/3137 https://bills.parliament.uk/bills/3137 https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-65388255 https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-65388255 I'm not sure where else these bills are being passed but it seems more or less in concert you will have to use a government approved age verification system to access porn, which may kill it off as I don't think people want to give the government information on what porn they watch.

Mindwipe 3y ago
France and Germany too.
int_19h 3y ago
It won't kill it, it just means that porn sites will be hosted outside of those jurisdictions, and people will use VPNs to access them if needed (which, ironically, might actually spread awareness of VPNs in general, making it harder to regulate other online content in the future).
- LegitShady 3y ago
  I believe one of the largest companies, mindgeek, is luxembourghian for tax status but operates more or less out of canada.

PathOfEclipse 3y ago

> You can suck on it when you are a baby, but god forbid you ever take a look at it again before you are married. It turns out, a mother's nipple has a far different effect on an infant than a young adult female nipple does on a teenage boy. If this is difficult for you to grasp, then you should consider stepping away from this conversation, as there is clearly nuance here that the average person can easily understand but that you can't. > What's wrong with these people? What's wrong with you? > Even public nudity laws differ from city to city (e.g. in California), so clearly, people aren't aligned at all on this subject (I'm emphasizing the arbitrary nature here). I don't think "arbitrary" means what you think it means. Just because people don't all agree on the definition of something doesn't make one person's definition arbitrary. > Forbid and censor the things you're afraid of educating on. "Education" has nothing to do with it. Pornography has been proven to be devastatingly harmful for many, many people. There is no world in which you can be morally consistent, for instance, in supporting an age minimum for alcohol consumption but not for pornography consumption. > On a closing note, I do recommend supporting organizations like https://www.aanr.com/ https://www.aanr.com/ who also provide legal help to citizens in states that'd rather have you wear a burka than show a nipple. If your moral code drives you to make the world a better place by liberating people from restrictions on viewing pornography, then I contend that your moral code is corrupt or severely misguided.

solarmist 3y ago
If your moral code dictates what other people can or cannot do with their own lives in their homes then I contend that your moral code may be corrupt or severely misguided.
- haldujai 3y ago
  I'm unclear whether you're arguing that obscene/pornographic material should be accessible/distributed to minors as the distinction here is that this activity is in fact a federal crime in the US (and most of the world). The government unequivocally has the right and obligation to enforce federal law. To what extent and by which mechanisms they should do this is a different question altogether but this issue is hardly about 'dictating what other people can do with their own lives in their homes' as was the case with other laws like anti-LGBT.

firstlink 3y ago

Not exactly on-topic but: it appears this bill carefully defines "the Internet" as the global packet-switched network (!) but then fails to define "website", which is used (as "internet website") in the actual law. This isn't necessarily a drafting error because laws must always have undefined terms, but it is rather odd. I'm perennially concerned at the conflation of these two concepts, internet and www, because it makes it easier for malicious actors to seize personal domains and generally gatekeep the internet for use by the (commercial) web. Anyways, back to debating porn.

erenyeager 3y ago

Nothing wrong with government wanting people to wear burkas and cover up some more, it’s part of respectful and dignified society. Maybe don’t insult and denigrate modesty and other cultures next time.

Waterluvian 3y ago

One of my favourite concepts in "late night" style comedy is when they test the censors by gradually incrementing something boring into something "unacceptable," whether it be language, the context of a sketch, or something graphic. And then once they've got the line they play with that line (eg. words/names that sound like "fuck", or Cecily Strong having sex with Bill Hader under a small throw). One of the best ways to demonstrate how ridiculous and un-thinking this position is would be to do just that. If they "know it when they see it", just say "when!" as we systematically wax, outfit, camera angle, and contextualize this stereotypical, upper-endowed male football fan into a gorgeous female, who then slowly gets topless.

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jeroenhd 3y ago

> "nipple of the female breast" IANAL, but what would happen if you took a picture of a male nipple and used that to censor the female nipple? Would it be okay?

russdill 3y ago
I think it would fall under "depiction". Something doesn't have to be a photo to be considered pornographic by legal or even lay standards.

aaron695 3y ago

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nitwit005 3y ago

That list doesn't seem particularly arbitrary. It's basically "nudity or sex", which is what you'd expect. Traditionally, obscenity laws have been extremely vague. Having a fairly clear list of what counts is an improvement.

Slava_Propanei 3y ago

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