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The Puritanical origins of the US reverberate to this day. While coming for "freedom of religion" sounds like a noble origin story, the context was that they wa
by RankingMember 1y ago
The Puritanical origins of the US reverberate to this day. While coming for "freedom of religion" sounds like a noble origin story, the context was that they wanted the freedom to practice a much stricter, restrictive form of religion than that allowed by the Church of England.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- dzonga 1y agoare you saying the puritans were the taliban equivalent of christianity. & want to bring back laws that sex would only be used to 'recreate' not recreation.
- kingkawn 1y agoYes that’s exactly what they were and are today
- varelse 1y ago[dead]
- potato3732842 1y agoWell not equivalent, they taught their women to read after all. But let's be real here, they were a bunch of jerks. There's a reason it took no time flat for Rhode Island to exist.
- matthewrobertso 1y agoThis is the result of campaigning by an Australian group
- teaearlgraycold 1y agoQuakers also came to the US early on to practice a peaceful an anarchistic form of Christianity.
- IncreasePosts 1y agoThis sounds like a just so story. There were all sorts of groups who set up shop in America, and all contributed to its success and influenced the culture. Virginia was the most populous colony during the revolution, did English planter society just disappear and the Puritans made it all the way down to the South? What about the Quakers in Pennsylvania? Dutch society in New York? Poor Scots in Appalachia? And, in any case, this campaign started in Australia. Were there a lot of Puritans there?
- huslage 1y agoThe actors in this are Australian, by the way.
- gspencley 1y agoI'm not so sure you can point the finger at the USA for this. I ran an online porn website for almost 20 years. For 15 years it was my primary source of income. I'm in Canada which, compared to the USA is extremely progressive. In 2022, after a decade of doing business with a certain bank as this business, never having hidden anything about what we did, my wife and I received an urgent, signature required, overnighted letter from our bank informing us that they were terminating our accounts and that we had one month until we would no longer have access to any funds. The way this played out was that we had an incoming wire transfer get flagged and they phoned us to ask us questions about the wire. We answered everything on the phone honestly and transparently. We were doing nothing wrong. A few months later we get another phone call from our branch asking us to come in in person, urgently, and do an "extreme due diligence" check. During this process we had to answer an insane amount of questions about our business activities. They saw a credit card transaction from JetBrains, for example, and asked us to explain who JetBrains was and why we were doing business with them etc. A couple of weeks later we were informed about the termination with a brief letter explaining that we fell outside of their "risk appetite." We managed to get an extension on the closure, and for two months we tried in vain to find any banking in Canada that would take us... and we ultimately ended up shutting down a business that represented two decades of our lives. During that time we reached out to industry insiders, some of which we happened to know were in Canada. They all told us that they bank in the USA. One branch manager at a bank we met with was extremely empathetic but obviously couldn't put her own job on the line, and she explained exactly what was going on. The issue is "Know Your Customer" regulations that are coming into effect that are meant to target things like money laundering. These regulations force banks to ask questions that they never really cared about before. This branch manager explained that a local strip club used to say they were a "banquet hall", and everyone at the branch knew exactly what they were but it was "don't ask / don't tell." But once they start digging into these details because the government is forcing them to, then these things get to their compliance departments. And the policies exist because they're afraid of things like human trafficking and other things. And our major banks have foreign investors from all around the world. Including from countries where porn is actually illegal. While you point the finger at puritanism in the USA ... consider that in countries like Iceland, producing porn can land you in jail. Now consider MAJOR investments originating in countries like Saudi Arabia etc. and consider how that might impact your bottom line if they all pull out due to nonsense morality conflicts.
- bko 1y agoI don't think you have to be Puritanical or particularly religious to realize that some content is generally not good for people. I've seen this destroy lives, drive addiction and lead to other forms of destructive behavior. Religion and taboo often exist for a reason, because endless self gratification does not lead to flourishing. You don't have to agree that it should be banned, but you can at least concede it's not entirely arbitrary content like say a sitcom.
- johnnyanmac 1y agoI'll take the hard stance on this. I don't see how Sex is anymore harmful, addicting, or dangerous as any other number of socialties. Including Alcohol, fast food, gambling, and simply getting to into any given hobby (be it video games or playing guitar). A habit I've noticed is that a person vulnerable to being addicted to X is more prone to fall back on Y, Z, etc. even when X is fixed. So I only see "this hurts certain people" as a scapegoat. Stairs probably hurt more people in any given day than many activities, we don't base law purely on harm and potential harm.
- ndriscoll 1y agoAlcohol and gambling are commonly restricted if not outright banned in various localities though, and most people would consider those and fast food to be harmful. So you seem to be agreeing with GP that while you may not think it should be banned, you find it comparable to things that are widely recognized as "generally not good for people".
- fc417fc802 1y agoPorn is also typically restricted. Just as many jurisdictions permit neither public consumption nor intoxication, everywhere I've lived had laws against publicly displaying "obscene" content. The issue with GGP is that in context it appears to be an argument in favor of increasing restrictions (ie in favor of the events that the article is talking about) despite disclaiming that "You don't have to agree that it should be banned". That's analogous to a loaded question. Expressing agreement with the literal wording of GGP seems to also carry an implication of agreement with some rather different things as well.
- bloqs 1y agothe group behind this, collective shout are Aussies
- dandellion 1y agoThe groups behind are two US companies. Some random group of weirdos from Australia are just a good excuse, at best.
- trothamel 1y agoCollective Shout, which organized this, claims to be an Australian feminist organization. (Admittedly, this may be an act.)
- JumpCrisscross 1y ago> laims to be an Australian feminist organization I'm genuinely curious to see how this plays out in the American partisan landscape.
- dr-detroit 1y agothere's a big push to classify fleshlights and dolls as rape because the extreme right won every battle there is to fight they need more battles. porn is next.
- pjc50 1y agoThey are however influenced by the American discourse soup of lies and talking points, in the same way that the NZ mosque shooter was. Conservatives around the world talk to each other.
- swiftcoder 1y agoAlso Murdoch's conservative media empire has had a strong influence in both Australia and the US
- anonym29 1y ago"Protecting women" is an incoherent excuse for pressuring websites to pull romantic games that feature consensual, loving, respectful homosexual male-male relationships, with no women even present in the game. The real motivations seemingly have nothing to do with protecting women, which appears to simply be a palatable facade for the true intention to suppress all depictions of sexuality, including the depictions that offer good-faith representation of historically marginalized groups.
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- pyuser583 1y agoNo this isn't just American. Most of the world is very anti-porn. The BRICS countries mostly outlaw porn. Even Nordic countries, which are very socially liberal, discourage it (at least production). There's a tendency for social liberals to see their view as the only legitimate one. Sometimes they are right. But this is an area where there is lots of international push back from undeveloped, developing, and even many developed socially liberal countries.
- anonym29 1y agoSeveral of the BRICS (& other "global south" / non-neoliberal / non-western) countries also imprison journalists and nonviolent political opposition groups, and some even have the death penalty for minor cannabis possession. "Everyone else does things this way" isn't a legitimate justification.
- fc417fc802 1y agoA justification of what, though? It isn't a cohesive argument on it's own but it is important perspective. If a significant fraction of societies have arrived at policies that contradict your worldview I think that ought to give you pause. (Note that I say that as someone who holds far more extreme views about legal freedom of expression than the vast majority of people out there.) That's getting somewhat off topic though. In the context of this thread it's merely the observation that attributing this to "puritans" or "christianity" or "US history" is rather misguided. The US and western Europe are very much the outliers here.
- anonym29 1y agoAre you defending the morality of authoritarian states imprisoning journalists and nonviolent political opposition groups? It's one thing to recognize that it happens, another to recognize the practice as legitimate, virtuous, or even desirable. To be clear, I'm not accusing you of promoting these practices, just asking you to clarify your position.
- deleted 1y ago
- pnw 1y agoThe Collective Shout group pushing for the censorship is Australian, not American. Most people are unaware of Australia's long history of censorship which continues to this day.
- reaperducer 1y agoThe Puritanical origins of the US Like slavery, smallpox, and tipping, Puritanism was Europe's gift to the new world.
- lupusreal 1y agoAlso penicillin, trains, and the Haber-Bosch process.
- potato3732842 1y agoA couple of the groups that founded what would become US states were decent. Of course those decent groups got outcompeted by the authoritarian weirdos because live and let lives types and insular communities don't see the need to grab state power.
- UltraSane 1y agoYou do know that porn is legal to produce and view in the US and the US produces a LOT of porn? This hardly seems puritanical.
- phyzix5761 1y agoWeren't the Pilgrims, also known as Separatists, being jailed if they didn't attend Church of England services per the Act of Uniformity of 1559? And weren't they jailed without trial if they tried to have their own religious services in private homes?
- unnamed76ri 1y agoShh don’t bring facts in here.
- pdonis 1y agoExactly. The Puritans didn't leave England because the church there was too intolerant. They left because it wasn't intolerant enough.