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> conservative Christians are trying to eliminate ALL sexually-related speech online I don’t really appreciate this framing. Despite being a very conservative

> conservative Christians are trying to eliminate ALL sexually-related speech online I don’t really appreciate this framing. Despite being a very conservative Christian (at least in many ways, if not others) I don’t approve of or agree with the scope of SCOTUS’ current ruling, nor do I approve of all the age- verification laws as written. It seems futile to attempt to make everybody everywhere do this and create a locked-down “second internet” for minors. But I do understand the impetus. As a zoomer, I’ve heard the problems particularly young men addicted to pornography have caused with some gal friends of mine they’ve dated. I’ve seen the normalization of what I view as degenerate sex acts as the treadmill of endlessly-escalating erotic-novelism spins without ceasing. I’ve watched people become more absorbed in their strange autosexual fixations than their spouses. It doesn’t seem good, or healthy, or sustainable, and I resent the contributions the proliferation of online pornography has made to these issues. At some level I see this like sixties versus modern marijuana, where a more mild herb (or dad’s playboys beneath the mattress) has been supplanted by THC distilled and bottled into vapes (endlessly-available presence of any outlandish fetishistic stuff.) I wouldn’t like my child exposed to either but I can live with one. Of course, I see it as primarily the parent’s responsibility to inculcate the virtue to disdain both. The state can’t nanny its way out of this one. But it’s always easier to pick a scapegoat that can’t vote (tax the corporations/rich, make the corporations implement age-filtering, etc.) than to tell people to take a hike and learn to parent.

DonHopkins 1y ago
[flagged]
rstat1 1y ago
What people do in their private time is none of anyone's business. Period. Especially the government.
- landl0rd 1y ago
  Did something I wrote read like I disagreed with this? What children do in their private time is their parents’ business. What children do can sometimes be the business of the state; there’s tons of precedent for it acting in loco parentis. I just don’t find this to be the best solution.
const_cast 1y ago
You might not be pushing for it, but certainly your fellow conservative Christians are. The problem with moralistic thinking is that it's stupid and it blows up, and we've known this for hundreds of years. What you view as moral means fuck-all. I don't particularly care if you think something is degenerate, and in fact by using a term like degenerate I respect you less as a person. So when morals are used as the sole reason to justify law, we have a problem. Morals were used to justify slavery. To justify a lack of suffrage. To justify legal domestic abuse. What's changed since then? Time. The passage of time. But time does not stop. Where will we be in 10 years, or 20? Progressing forward, ideally, but that's not a guarantee. We're laying the ground work for abuse. For a large part of the American constituency, anything containing homosexuals is degenerate pornography. Right now. So if "it's pornography" is our justification, we have a problem. I think we agree that said laws are bad, but why they're bad matters. The wider-scale implication is that moralistic law making is bad. Listening to Christians and having them come up with laws based on their personal beliefs is bad. Appealing to the American purity culture is bad. This is all ripe for abuse.
- landl0rd 1y ago
  No, some of them are. More evangelicals than my crowd. Morality bears directly on what we consider to be a just society, so I don’t care if you don’t care. You’re broadening the scope beyond this particular issue, where I’m guessing I agree with you. It’s not virtuous to act right because the state makes you, but the question of what we require and preclude is defined by our moral frameworks at some level. I’m not sure with whom you’re arguing about the homosexuals point. I view a lot of things of degenerate I wouldn’t ban. Most adults I see are fat, thus gluttons, thus are committing a sin. It’s just not particularly my business to meddle in what’s between them and God and Satan. I didn’t suggest we “retvrn to Comstock” or something. I don’t see how you can ignore the massively negative effects pornography has on mostly young men, particularly if you think about the marijuana analogy and how it’s increased in strength and availability. Novel hyperstimuli are a big issue. Just like supernormal stimuli tend to increase obesity and cause metabolic dysfunction. A ton of lawmaking is moralistic. Eg the way I grew up I think it’s fine for two guys to settle something with a fight provided it’s clean and nobody’s kicking someone when he’s down. A bunch of people with different morals (“all violence is wrong”) told the cops to start arresting people for that sort of thing. I think stealing is wrong and vote to tell the cops to arrest people for that, while others (because of their morality) say that “it’s systemic factors” and turn people loose for sub-$1k or so, or sometimes don’t believe in property rights the same way I do. I don’t believe that income tax is just, nor federally-administered welfare, but a ton of people voted to tell the feds to take money and do just that. I’m not sure how you can suddenly flip to “moralistic legislation is wrong actually” in such a selective sense just because it’s movitated by Christianity or right-wing ideology for once.
stego-tech 1y ago
Alright, you seem receptive to arguments so I'll take a crack at this. > I don’t approve of or agree with the scope of SCOTUS’ current ruling, nor do I approve of all the age- verification laws as written. It seems futile to attempt to make everybody everywhere do this and create a locked-down “second internet” for minors. That's not the intent. The intent from the get-go has been to "Baptise" the internet as "God's creation", and to shove out anyone not worthy of God's salvation - as determined by religious leaders. When the initial argument of "the internet is a creation of Satan" didn't work out, the religious leaders in the USA pivoted towards calling it a gift from God and demonizing anyone who "sullied" that gift in their eyes. > I’ve heard the problems particularly young men addicted to pornography have caused with some gal friends of mine they’ve dated. I’ve seen the normalization of what I view as degenerate sex acts as the treadmill of endlessly-escalating erotic-novelism spins without ceasing. I’ve watched people become more absorbed in their strange autosexual fixations than their spouses. It doesn’t seem good, or healthy, or sustainable, and I resent the contributions the proliferation of online pornography has made to these issues. Your observations are completely valid. As someone who creates smut (let's just call it what it is), there's a very real problem with people in general getting caught up in fantasies and ignoring reality. However, my observations suggest that pornography is just the convenient scapegoat for a society that constantly markets escapism as entertainment and penalizes anything that doesn't involve spending money. All forms of entertainment have been perverted to maximize chemical responses in humans, in order to sell more stuff. Your beef isn't with pornography so much as it is with the present consumerist hellscape, and a society that demands both spouses work full-time to have a chance at survival rather than balance the needs of the family by allowing every couple to have a spouse stay at home and make the house, if they so choose. Which brings me to your next point... > At some level I see this like sixties versus modern marijuana, where a more mild herb (or dad’s playboys beneath the mattress) has been supplanted by THC distilled and bottled into vapes (endlessly-available presence of any outlandish fetishistic stuff.) I wouldn’t like my child exposed to either but I can live with one. That's...man, I want to argue this, but I got nothing. You're basically describing what I did up above, with the proper analogy. As a cannabis user myself, you're entirely correct about the potency and convenient availability being an issue, and I'd absolutely like to see more penalties for physical distribution of these things to minors while also de-glamorizing some of this stuff. Sell the product, not the experience, basically. > Of course, I see it as primarily the parent’s responsibility to inculcate the virtue to disdain both. That's where we align - the avowed democratic socialist and the conservative Christian agreeing that, at the end of the day, it's the parent's responsibility to parent, and it's the individual's responsibility to make better choices - including seeking help for problems they're having. Where we may disagree on approach, however (I dunno, this is kinda speculating here based on other CC's I know/lived with/attended Church with), is that I believe the steps towards minimizing or eliminating harms is destigmatizing these things in the first place. It means getting over our societal aversion to SEX, a natural biological thing we've been doing as a species for millennia. It means getting over our disdain for addicts, and offering help. If these ghouls (passing the laws) actually cared about children, families, or humans in general, they'd be supporting rehabilitation instead of penalizing consenting adults. They'd be penalizing exploitative employers and creating a tax structure that rewards stay-at-home partners while enabling every couple to have one such partner. That's not what's happening, though, and I resent being denigrated as some sort of sick degenerate by a government that won't even feed its fucking kids.
ujkhsjkdhf234 1y ago
I come from a small town and know many conservative Christians. They are pushing for this. Like you said, it is easier to blame external sources than to accept you need to do better as parent.
- landl0rd 1y ago
  Many of them are. I just don’t see any reason to say “I disagree with the conservative Christians pushing this” rather than “I disagree with the people who support this.” There are secular folks who also support such legislation. It hints at a generalized animus towards religion and likely in particular towards Christianity, kind of like Fox News boomers complaining Obama wouldn’t say “radical Islamic terrorism”.
  - ujkhsjkdhf234 1y ago
    I understand what you're saying but when you have Trump and his cohorts fake praying in the oval office with the support of conservative Christians who abandon all of Jesus' teachings of love and compassion and embrace Trump's hate, you might understand why people take a specific issue with that.
    - landl0rd 1y ago
      I'm fine with criticizing that, and actually agree with that criticism. "Take heed that ye do not your alms before men, to be seen of them: otherwise ye have no reward of your Father which is in heaven."
  - DangitBobby 1y ago
    People need to understand that there is a radical Christian element trying to impose its beliefs on everyone. They should be called out continuously and especially when they successfully modify any laws, state or federal.
    - landl0rd 1y ago
      There is a radical proportion of American Christians which believes this, yes. I'm fine with calling out those beliefs. That's not my issue here, more tarring Christianity broadly, or even specifically those of us who hold conservative social beliefs but don't believe in imposing those via state coercion. I don't see any moral benefit to forcing people not to sin. There's no virtue when there's no choice.
antonvs 1y ago
> I don’t really appreciate this framing. The framing is objectively accurate. Perhaps you should reconsider the group you identify with.
- landl0rd 1y ago
  You're the one identifying me with them. That's my point. The group you dislike is "people who support this policy" or "Christians who want to enshrine their social policy via legislation." That's not what you said though.
gamblor956 1y ago
normalization of what I view as degenerate sex acts Those "degenerate sex acts" were normal enough when the Bible was written that they were included in the Bible. Most of our ancestors would regard modern Americans as hideously prudish.
- landl0rd 1y ago
  Something being normal doesn’t make it right. Obesity is normal. Shoplifting has become normal in many places. People getting drunk is normal. Normalcy doesn’t equal moral rectitude. Why do the opinions of my ancestors bear on that, and which ones are you talking about? Most of the ones I can think of, unless you run back to the days of tribal europe, would see the culture today as hideously liberalized. Regardless a lot of my ancestors probably did a lot of things I don’t think are right. Heck, I’ve done plenty of things I don’t think are right. None of that effects what actually is and isn’t morally good. If I’m not running around telling off couples who leave the bar together, what do you care?
  - peterlk 1y ago
    Hijacking this comment because it seems to be the most recent. I’d love to start a private email thread with you if you’re willing to do so. After the previous election, I felt wildly out of touch, and I’ve been trying to find people who I can talk to who might be able to help me improve understanding of my (metaphorical) neighbors. I suspect that our beliefs will be quite different, but I appreciate your willingness to provide long-form, respectful responses to so many comments here. If you’re up for it, my email is in my profile
  - DonHopkins 1y ago
    [flagged]
    - landl0rd 1y ago
      What makes me a "homophobic bigot"? If I believe sleeping with a woman before y'all marry is wrong, am I a premarital-sex-phobic bigot? Maybe standing with signs and saying mean things to people who do so, or lobbying to ban doing so, would qualify, but I'm not doing those things with either belief.
intermerda 1y ago
Would you also understand impetus behind any proposed hypothetical ban on alcohol, tobacco, firearms, or anything else that causes harm to the society?
- landl0rd 1y ago
  Yes, I would. Just like with proposed bans on alcohol, tobacco, and firearms, I understand the motives (particularly when I look at the rash of wife-beating that encouraged the temperance movement, for instance) but oppose the proposed solution (banning those things).
EasyMark 1y ago
If you look at the goals of christofascists this is really just the beginning of incrementally becoming a theocracy run by them rather than a democracy with a diversity of thoughts and freedoms. That is the antithesis of what they want.
kjkjadksj 1y ago
The thing most people misunderstand with weed getting strong is that in the past people would smoke way more. They’d smoke joints like cigarettes. Unless you’ve built up a tolerance you are smoking far less today to get high. And once you’ve built a tolerance that hardly matters too you just smoke more.

DonHopkins 1y ago

[flagged]

rstat1 1y ago

What people do in their private time is none of anyone's business. Period. Especially the government.

landl0rd 1y ago
Did something I wrote read like I disagreed with this? What children do in their private time is their parents’ business. What children do can sometimes be the business of the state; there’s tons of precedent for it acting in loco parentis. I just don’t find this to be the best solution.

const_cast 1y ago

You might not be pushing for it, but certainly your fellow conservative Christians are. The problem with moralistic thinking is that it's stupid and it blows up, and we've known this for hundreds of years. What you view as moral means fuck-all. I don't particularly care if you think something is degenerate, and in fact by using a term like degenerate I respect you less as a person. So when morals are used as the sole reason to justify law, we have a problem. Morals were used to justify slavery. To justify a lack of suffrage. To justify legal domestic abuse. What's changed since then? Time. The passage of time. But time does not stop. Where will we be in 10 years, or 20? Progressing forward, ideally, but that's not a guarantee. We're laying the ground work for abuse. For a large part of the American constituency, anything containing homosexuals is degenerate pornography. Right now. So if "it's pornography" is our justification, we have a problem. I think we agree that said laws are bad, but why they're bad matters. The wider-scale implication is that moralistic law making is bad. Listening to Christians and having them come up with laws based on their personal beliefs is bad. Appealing to the American purity culture is bad. This is all ripe for abuse.

landl0rd 1y ago
No, some of them are. More evangelicals than my crowd. Morality bears directly on what we consider to be a just society, so I don’t care if you don’t care. You’re broadening the scope beyond this particular issue, where I’m guessing I agree with you. It’s not virtuous to act right because the state makes you, but the question of what we require and preclude is defined by our moral frameworks at some level. I’m not sure with whom you’re arguing about the homosexuals point. I view a lot of things of degenerate I wouldn’t ban. Most adults I see are fat, thus gluttons, thus are committing a sin. It’s just not particularly my business to meddle in what’s between them and God and Satan. I didn’t suggest we “retvrn to Comstock” or something. I don’t see how you can ignore the massively negative effects pornography has on mostly young men, particularly if you think about the marijuana analogy and how it’s increased in strength and availability. Novel hyperstimuli are a big issue. Just like supernormal stimuli tend to increase obesity and cause metabolic dysfunction. A ton of lawmaking is moralistic. Eg the way I grew up I think it’s fine for two guys to settle something with a fight provided it’s clean and nobody’s kicking someone when he’s down. A bunch of people with different morals (“all violence is wrong”) told the cops to start arresting people for that sort of thing. I think stealing is wrong and vote to tell the cops to arrest people for that, while others (because of their morality) say that “it’s systemic factors” and turn people loose for sub-$1k or so, or sometimes don’t believe in property rights the same way I do. I don’t believe that income tax is just, nor federally-administered welfare, but a ton of people voted to tell the feds to take money and do just that. I’m not sure how you can suddenly flip to “moralistic legislation is wrong actually” in such a selective sense just because it’s movitated by Christianity or right-wing ideology for once.

stego-tech 1y ago

Alright, you seem receptive to arguments so I'll take a crack at this. > I don’t approve of or agree with the scope of SCOTUS’ current ruling, nor do I approve of all the age- verification laws as written. It seems futile to attempt to make everybody everywhere do this and create a locked-down “second internet” for minors. That's not the intent. The intent from the get-go has been to "Baptise" the internet as "God's creation", and to shove out anyone not worthy of God's salvation - as determined by religious leaders. When the initial argument of "the internet is a creation of Satan" didn't work out, the religious leaders in the USA pivoted towards calling it a gift from God and demonizing anyone who "sullied" that gift in their eyes. > I’ve heard the problems particularly young men addicted to pornography have caused with some gal friends of mine they’ve dated. I’ve seen the normalization of what I view as degenerate sex acts as the treadmill of endlessly-escalating erotic-novelism spins without ceasing. I’ve watched people become more absorbed in their strange autosexual fixations than their spouses. It doesn’t seem good, or healthy, or sustainable, and I resent the contributions the proliferation of online pornography has made to these issues. Your observations are completely valid. As someone who creates smut (let's just call it what it is), there's a very real problem with people in general getting caught up in fantasies and ignoring reality. However, my observations suggest that pornography is just the convenient scapegoat for a society that constantly markets escapism as entertainment and penalizes anything that doesn't involve spending money. All forms of entertainment have been perverted to maximize chemical responses in humans, in order to sell more stuff. Your beef isn't with pornography so much as it is with the present consumerist hellscape, and a society that demands both spouses work full-time to have a chance at survival rather than balance the needs of the family by allowing every couple to have a spouse stay at home and make the house, if they so choose. Which brings me to your next point... > At some level I see this like sixties versus modern marijuana, where a more mild herb (or dad’s playboys beneath the mattress) has been supplanted by THC distilled and bottled into vapes (endlessly-available presence of any outlandish fetishistic stuff.) I wouldn’t like my child exposed to either but I can live with one. That's...man, I want to argue this, but I got nothing. You're basically describing what I did up above, with the proper analogy. As a cannabis user myself, you're entirely correct about the potency and convenient availability being an issue, and I'd absolutely like to see more penalties for physical distribution of these things to minors while also de-glamorizing some of this stuff. Sell the product, not the experience, basically. > Of course, I see it as primarily the parent’s responsibility to inculcate the virtue to disdain both. That's where we align - the avowed democratic socialist and the conservative Christian agreeing that, at the end of the day, it's the parent's responsibility to parent, and it's the individual's responsibility to make better choices - including seeking help for problems they're having. Where we may disagree on approach, however (I dunno, this is kinda speculating here based on other CC's I know/lived with/attended Church with), is that I believe the steps towards minimizing or eliminating harms is destigmatizing these things in the first place. It means getting over our societal aversion to SEX, a natural biological thing we've been doing as a species for millennia. It means getting over our disdain for addicts, and offering help. If these ghouls (passing the laws) actually cared about children, families, or humans in general, they'd be supporting rehabilitation instead of penalizing consenting adults. They'd be penalizing exploitative employers and creating a tax structure that rewards stay-at-home partners while enabling every couple to have one such partner. That's not what's happening, though, and I resent being denigrated as some sort of sick degenerate by a government that won't even feed its fucking kids.

ujkhsjkdhf234 1y ago

I come from a small town and know many conservative Christians. They are pushing for this. Like you said, it is easier to blame external sources than to accept you need to do better as parent.

landl0rd 1y ago
Many of them are. I just don’t see any reason to say “I disagree with the conservative Christians pushing this” rather than “I disagree with the people who support this.” There are secular folks who also support such legislation. It hints at a generalized animus towards religion and likely in particular towards Christianity, kind of like Fox News boomers complaining Obama wouldn’t say “radical Islamic terrorism”.
- ujkhsjkdhf234 1y ago
  I understand what you're saying but when you have Trump and his cohorts fake praying in the oval office with the support of conservative Christians who abandon all of Jesus' teachings of love and compassion and embrace Trump's hate, you might understand why people take a specific issue with that.
  - landl0rd 1y ago
    I'm fine with criticizing that, and actually agree with that criticism. "Take heed that ye do not your alms before men, to be seen of them: otherwise ye have no reward of your Father which is in heaven."
- DangitBobby 1y ago
  People need to understand that there is a radical Christian element trying to impose its beliefs on everyone. They should be called out continuously and especially when they successfully modify any laws, state or federal.
  - landl0rd 1y ago
    There is a radical proportion of American Christians which believes this, yes. I'm fine with calling out those beliefs. That's not my issue here, more tarring Christianity broadly, or even specifically those of us who hold conservative social beliefs but don't believe in imposing those via state coercion. I don't see any moral benefit to forcing people not to sin. There's no virtue when there's no choice.

antonvs 1y ago

> I don’t really appreciate this framing. The framing is objectively accurate. Perhaps you should reconsider the group you identify with.

landl0rd 1y ago
You're the one identifying me with them. That's my point. The group you dislike is "people who support this policy" or "Christians who want to enshrine their social policy via legislation." That's not what you said though.

gamblor956 1y ago

normalization of what I view as degenerate sex acts Those "degenerate sex acts" were normal enough when the Bible was written that they were included in the Bible. Most of our ancestors would regard modern Americans as hideously prudish.

landl0rd 1y ago
Something being normal doesn’t make it right. Obesity is normal. Shoplifting has become normal in many places. People getting drunk is normal. Normalcy doesn’t equal moral rectitude. Why do the opinions of my ancestors bear on that, and which ones are you talking about? Most of the ones I can think of, unless you run back to the days of tribal europe, would see the culture today as hideously liberalized. Regardless a lot of my ancestors probably did a lot of things I don’t think are right. Heck, I’ve done plenty of things I don’t think are right. None of that effects what actually is and isn’t morally good. If I’m not running around telling off couples who leave the bar together, what do you care?
- peterlk 1y ago
  Hijacking this comment because it seems to be the most recent. I’d love to start a private email thread with you if you’re willing to do so. After the previous election, I felt wildly out of touch, and I’ve been trying to find people who I can talk to who might be able to help me improve understanding of my (metaphorical) neighbors. I suspect that our beliefs will be quite different, but I appreciate your willingness to provide long-form, respectful responses to so many comments here. If you’re up for it, my email is in my profile
- DonHopkins 1y ago
  [flagged]
  - landl0rd 1y ago
    What makes me a "homophobic bigot"? If I believe sleeping with a woman before y'all marry is wrong, am I a premarital-sex-phobic bigot? Maybe standing with signs and saying mean things to people who do so, or lobbying to ban doing so, would qualify, but I'm not doing those things with either belief.

intermerda 1y ago

Would you also understand impetus behind any proposed hypothetical ban on alcohol, tobacco, firearms, or anything else that causes harm to the society?

landl0rd 1y ago
Yes, I would. Just like with proposed bans on alcohol, tobacco, and firearms, I understand the motives (particularly when I look at the rash of wife-beating that encouraged the temperance movement, for instance) but oppose the proposed solution (banning those things).

EasyMark 1y ago

If you look at the goals of christofascists this is really just the beginning of incrementally becoming a theocracy run by them rather than a democracy with a diversity of thoughts and freedoms. That is the antithesis of what they want.

kjkjadksj 1y ago

The thing most people misunderstand with weed getting strong is that in the past people would smoke way more. They’d smoke joints like cigarettes. Unless you’ve built up a tolerance you are smoking far less today to get high. And once you’ve built a tolerance that hardly matters too you just smoke more.