Can Congress pass a law outlawing giving bills cute names that are completely irrelevant to the intent of the law? Once they get that accomplished they can work on something else
That doesn't mean shorter is always better. When you take away necessary detail to make things shorter, you wind up with a shorter, less perfect law.
For instance, if the law was "No driving over 70mph on I-75", shortening the law to "No driving" isn't an improvement. And even if we maintain the detail and shorten to "No 70+mph driving @ I-75" it doesn't improve things.
Concise is good. shortness for shortness sake is not. We don't need to be playing code golf with laws.
People who trust government often want general laws that give the state maximal flexibility and power. Such laws can be very short, e.g. "Let there be justice."
Think of it as negotiating your three wishes with an adversarial genie. You might find yourself adding a lot of detail.
Budget bills in particular can get really tedious. And any bill that, say, strikes or adds a word to already extant law, would require reading the entirety of the law so changed.
I don’t care if they stay awake, I want to end omnibus Bible sized bills full of pork and erosions of our rights being put in bills that would otherwise be in the interests of the people.
Forcing them the discomfort of having to read it out loud all by themselves should help greatly with that.
I’m looking at you former speaker of the house that said we have to pass the bill to know what’s in it.
This will incentive Congress to delegate more than they do now. Instead of line items for each major expense in a budget bill, they'll just assign X billions of dollars to Y agency to parcel out as the agency director wishes.
Yes and that will reduce pork by no longer mandating the Army to buy a specific number of tanks that are built in an important Congressman’s district when they really need money to fix a barracks.
While we're at it, every Git pull request should have to be read out in full. No `git diff` - that's just as bad as what Congress does. Read every source file, even the ones that didn't changed, just to be sure. /s
We tried that a century ago, but it was just racism in disguise. Why would we assume any questionnaire people must take today won't be abused for other agendas?
> Can Congress pass a law outlawing giving bills cute names that are completely irrelevant to the intent of the law? Once they get that accomplished they can work on something else
It's sometimes helpful to look at the name of the bill & assume that the bill will achieve the exact opposite.
> Can we make congressmen actually read the bills they vote on?
Most Congress members vote based on spheres of influence, not spheres of interest. The lobbyists that fund the politician's campaign tells the politician how to vote & the consequences of voting against the lobbyist's wishes.
Odd. I have never enabled Javascript for archive.is, especially since with it enabled they have some resource link to mail.ru and since I block .ru on my DNS it times out. The lack of requiring Javascript is the reason I use that site. I have both uBlock and NoScript blocking javascript.
To be fair, tor is a really crappy network to orchestrate a DDOS attack. On the other hand some sites just can't take much traffic, especially if it is a consistent inflow of requests. It may be that somebody just used tor as a proxy to crawl your website and it crumbled.
I happen to speculate this because I may have used tor for web crawling, which may have caused a specific site to crash before I cut back the crawl rate. Punishing tor for such incident is mostly FUD.
That's the big problem with legislation like this: They can just re-introduce it every year until it passes, and opponents have to keep fighting it every time. A bill's supporters only have to sneak it through once--its opponents have to defeat it every time.
Most people have not read the bill nor thought about what it means. Maybe people react positively to leading questions about protecting childing and ensuring safety but that is a different matter entirely.
Just being pragmatic and not trying to voice a side here; would it be possible to come up with our own bill that addresses CSAM in a way that is compatible with our general values in technology?
This bill isn’t coming out of nowhere. Allegedly, CSAM is up 89% from pre-pandemic levels, which if true is fairly shocking and does deserve a response, perhaps in tech, of some kind. CSAM isn’t going away and every sane person hates it - so is the best strategy we can come up with, be to put our heads in the sand and say “but muh encryption!” whenever asked?
I would argue, no. We need to seriously consider if it is possible to come with our own bill, addressing the CSAM issue, so that we get to set the policy and not a fed-up ignorant Congress. Trying to keep things the way they are, forever, I don’t think is going to be a winning strategy. Both parties are in favor - so either we can write it, or they can write it.
The solution has been explained over and over, time and time again: federal prosecutors need to prioritize investigation of such crimes in a targeted manner. Note the government's record on doing their job on this issue is somewhat problematic:
> "FBI opens settlement talks with gymnasts who survived abuse by Larry Nassar
Updated July 28, 20224:27 PM ET (NPR)"
I don't know why it needs to be said again and again that the existence of criminal behavior isn't an excuse for warrantless domestic mass surveillance, but apparently it does.
I agree and think that HUGE whistle blower awards including up to re-location as part of Witness Protection Program would help a lot. There are people in bad personal situations that feel "trapped" but have the knowledge that these crimes (and others like trafficking are happening).
One issue without E2EE is that even WITHOUT a lawful warrant, USGOV can (and does en masse) access/seize data not (or not yet) pertaining to a criminal or counterintelligence investigation.
The issue with private dwellings is it allows the citizen to destroy his contraband/evidence, so even WITH a lawful warrant, the US gov cannot access/seize it until it’s too late.
That's not an issue - just means you need to seize the end devices... If there's a victim (say, of grooming), they should be able to provide all the content from their side.
Presumably the content isn't encrypted at rest on the device, or if it is, it could be decrypted by the phone owner (parent, child) to help aid an investigation.
E2EE is not the issue when one party discloses the info, excepting mechanisms like plausible deniability built into apps like Signal, but even at that point LE should be able to get a warrant and then do proper police work: stalk the target under cover until they unlock their device, then rush in and grab it before they can put it back to rest (e.g, how it was portrayed in the Silk Road movie).
<< Allegedly, CSAM is up 89% from pre-pandemic levels
Allegedly. That said, the alarming statistic is used by people who have a specific agenda related to CSAM. It is not dissimilar how pro/anti-gun sides ( and many others, it is just an example ) cherry pick their favorite data/ranges and so on.
<< addressing the CSAM issue
<< if it is possible to come with our own bill
Not if it breaks some basic internet foundations.
There is a simple reason for it. There is a way to stop all fraud at bank. Stop all transactions. I think you will agree that while stopping fraud is a valuable proposition, the solution is close to unworkable. It is the same here.
In other words, in order to entertain some level of freedom, one must be willing to accept that some bad people will do some bad things with that freedom. That is the trade-off.
Now, that is not letting 'bad guy' off the hook. Police still has a job to do. What we do not want to do is create an easier world for police, but a more livable place for all the republic's denizens.
Interesting statement. It is not argument. It is an attempt at labeling me as something instead of presenting an argument.
It is not going to work. If you want a decent conversation with me, you want to present a valid counter instead of bunching me with "oh, you are one of those people".
<< "head in the sand"
And after that preface, you are wrong about it too. I am openly stating leave internet alone from your hand-wringing. Long term, it is not even helping anyone; including the children.
By your argument, should we do nothing to try and stop bank fraud?
We do lots, including tracking large transactions. Most people agree this is a reasonable thing to do. Most people are, I suspect, more upset by CSAM than by bank fraud.
Yes, but, and this is the important part, we do not break entire banking ecosystem to find couple of fraudsters. This is the crux of the issue. The proposal to break encryption to prevent CSAM is the equivalent solution. Just from that perspective alone, it is an arguably bad proposal. It is, in short, not a reasonable proposal. You would not break a banking system to achieve a relatively minor goal of catching some fraudsters. That is just a no to most people. Similarly, attempting to break encryption to catch some CSAM is about as bad a proposal.
Just to add to this, you are conflating tracking BSA, CTR and couple other things and trying to fit it into CSAM.
<< should we do nothing to try and stop bank fraud?
To rephrase your argument, are we doing nothing? By your admission we are already doing a lot under BSA ( I would argue we do too much, but that is a separate conversation ).
The proposal for CSAM is nowhere near the level of intrusiveness that BSA operates at and BSA is quite intrusive.
This is just evidence that our absolutist classification of this is unhelpful—treating the nude selfies a 16-year-old texts to her boyfriend as no different from photos of a 6-year-old forced into it, especially when you find those texts on the phone of either the person who took it or the one who it was sent to, without any nonconsensual distribution, is preposterous.
Calling fully intentional, consensual nude selfies or even sex videos created by teenagers of themselves "child sexual abuse material" is so very clearly a misapplication of the term.
That said, if those selfies do, by whatever means, get distributed beyond where the subject originally intended them to go, they need to be treated as...well, at the very least as revenge porn, which is now (fortunately) banned in a number of jurisdictions. So I'm definitely not saying this is a black and white issue; quite the contrary, in fact.
From the report these are mostly 11 to 13 year olds we're talking about, and overwhelmingly female.
I do agree that "children" is too broad a term and that we should segment that population into different groups and focus on the younger groups much more than the older ones.
I mean, it doesn't matter whether the person taking the nude selfies is 16, 11, or 6: despite what the law says, it is painfully obvious that we should not treat that as "production of child sex abuse material" and punish those children the same as we punish adults who force children into such things.
I can see a reasonable argument for "11-year-old girls shouldn't be sexting their boyfriends", but the way to address that problem isn't to treat them as sex offenders. It's to get the parents to be more healthily engaged in their children's lives so that they can productively teach them why that's not a good idea in a way that is likely to stick.
I don’t fully understand what this is supposed to mean. It’s unfortunately (disgustingly) easy to invite a child into taking explicit photos of themselves over encrypted messaging. The process of convincing a child to do this is known as grooming, which seems to be a now fairly well known term in the mainstream.
Edited to add: it also says in the report that the images are predominantly 11 to 13 year old girls. these are not horny 16-17 year olds sexting their partners.
Unsurprising, because while it may bother the oldies in Congress (well the ones that weren't on Epstein's island), post puberty, all human beings engage in sexual behaviors up and to intercourse. In the age of social media, where everyone (presumably) over 13 is online and posting constant photos with their phone it should be completely unsurprising that much of this content is generates by the kiddos themselves.
It's especially absurd in some jurisdictions where it is explicitly legal for two teenagers to engage in intercourse, but if they share a photo of tits with each other other they've committed a federal crime. The fact we consider a photo criminal, when both parties are above the age of consent for one another, is a new level of absurdity, and things like the EARN IT act just make this situation worse.
I have a teenage daughter. I don't particularly relish the idea of her taking and sharing nude photos because I know that the Internet is forever and it will eventually get out and cause her harm. Nonetheless, there is very little I can do to stop it short of blocking her from using technology altogether. What I would like even less is if the company I buy her phone from decides to be a busybody and reports her to the feds for taking a nude photo of herself and then she ends up with a felony record and registered as a sex offender for the rest of her life for getting a bit too spicy in text messages with her boyfriend.
I don't understand how anyone could classify this as CSAM.
I’m the report it says these are primarily photos of 11 to 13 year olds. I don’t find an 11 year old sending nudes to be a healthy exploration of sexuality with one’s peers. I’m pretty sure that’s a dangerous situation that the 11 year old needs protection from.
I'm not comfortable with my 16 year old sending nudes, but it's also something I have no meaningful mechanism to control and is something that creating a federal case out of it doesn't help. This is one of those situations where the cure is worse than the disease. Treating children who take nude photos of themselves as criminals is not the right way to deal with this.
I would strongly suspect 11 year olds behaving in a sexual manner likely did not receive good parental instruction. On the other hand, we have an epidemic of broken homes in this country, so it's unsurprising that this is also the case. I do not think that it necessarily indicates a situation anymore dangerous than the norm, which is that many kids are neglected because they don't have active engaged parents, and they may be exposed to things which are inappropriate for their age due to the circumstances of poverty.
I didn't grow up well-to-do, and I got to be exposed to some pretty gnarly things at 10-11 that thankfully my daughter has never been exposed to, because I was able to provide a better life for her. Unfortunately there are many 11 year olds that will be exposed to horrible things, and that will have an impact on their life. I don't want these things to happen, and I have taken every step I can to make sure my own daughter is not exposed to the same things I was exposed to seeing, much of which was a simple consequence of growing up in poverty in a bad part of town (such as seeing someone OD and die at a bus stop on my way home from school).
That's all we really can do in this situation, is be better parents, there's no meaningful way that society can step in for children with disengaged parents unless we want to criminalize it and institutionalize the children. As someone who also got to experience "the system" for children in this country, it's actually far worse than having an overworked single parent who lets you use the internet unsupervised and wander around on your own while they're at work.
Is it? Their peers are equally new to the world and just as naive so that doesn't seem like that big a deal. It would be worse to raise sexually repressed, unhappy adults.
What we're dancing around though, is that there are actual pedophiles on the Internet that would like nothing more than to have the 11-year send them underwear, or even fully-nude pics. That's what the 11-13 year old needs protection from.
And keep in mind, pediatricians now recommend starting to talk to your kids about sex and consent starting at age five.
This is some serious bullshit. There are also pediatricians that refer to transgender clinic as early as 3. It is pure insanity, medical field fell victim to political ideologies. The article you posted conflates different things in one, explaining consent for physical contact is not the same as talking about sex to a 5 year old. And is there study that shows what the appropriate age for conversations on sexual health is? The main motivation mentioned is that kids are being exposed to it earlier by incident. But because it happens this way, does not make it right or proves that it is optimal.
> A child should be aware of their consent to being touched or handled — or their space being invaded — from age 5.
This seems too late. By the age of 3 kids can clearly know and communicate if they want to be hugged, kissed, tickled, etc. no reason to wait until 5 to respect their boundaries.
> sexual health education has traditionally been timed to coincide with puberty
I don’t have kids of that age yet, but from personal experience growing up, these talks to be had before changes happen. And it seems to be a common understanding.
It seems like an attempt to inject a pediatrician with a book on sex ed in aspect of kids health, where common sense would suffice.
Protection by way of the cops searching his parents house and him being charged for a felony or three. That’ll teach him to keep it (the phone, I guess) in his pants!
Is this age range the ones most commonly sending photos, or the one most commonly caught (as a photo sent by a 16 year old is more likely to pass as 18 and not be caught by any detection software or manual detection)?
At face value, the idea that this specific age group is sending more such photos than the older cohort is surprising enough I would reject it as bad data without further research into why it is happening. Selection bias seems a much more likely explanation.
What does your suggestion of "starting there" actually mean? What sort of action could anyone but the children themselves take to reduce or eliminate this behavior[0]?
I do happen to think this kind of privacy is important, but I also recognize that non-actionable alternatives won't get much traction.
[0]- OK, there are some the parents can take, but asking hundreds of millions or billions of people to act individually is not an effective way to solve a systemic issue.
CSAM is some pretty bad stuff but case numbers are often wildly misleading. A big share (in my country some 40+ %) are minors and teens sharing images of themselves or receiving images from their bf/gf.[1] Another chunk is parents or teachers trying to report it and invariably finding themselves in possession of CSAM (e.g. teacher sees pupil has image of a naked 13yo on their phone, takes phone from them => teacher intentionally gained possession of CSAM => will be a felon shortly). Traditionally such cases would be dropped, but around here it was recently updooted to felony status, which means cases cannot be dropped.
[1] Jurisdictions vary wildly in how they prosecute this but many seem to have funny age combinations where e.g. a 13yo sending an explicit image to a 14yo means the 13yo can't be charged for producing CSAM but the 14yo committed a felony by possessing it. Some jurisdictions have charged people for sex trafficking themselves in these situations. It's all pretty insane if you ask me.
Edit: Worth pointing out that the organizations that push hardest for legislation like this (mostly christian fundamentalists) also care the least about these side-effects, because sex before marriage is a sin and ought to be illegal anyway. A conspiracy theorist would hypothesize that these side-effects are actually the intended main effect for those groups.
A teenage couple in high school (just barely underage) were both charged with possession and production of CSAM because they sent images between each other. As I understand it from the local papers they ended up getting off fairly easy with something like 100 hours of community service. But only because our local prosecutor understood that they were kids, a couple, and sharing between each other, and almost of age to begin with. If we had a prosecutor less understanding they would have been facing at least 5 years in prison each.
Another factor is that the numbers are almost always "reports" - because there are so many reports generated. People doing this content moderation are very much operating on a "better safe than sorry" approach (for obvious reasons). The result of that is that statistics I've seen put it at somewhere between 70-90% of these reports don't actually correctly identify CSAM and are discarded at the first stage. But it's always the much larger, initial number that is used to illustrate the apparent size of the problem.
Technology will not solve CSAM. It is a social problem, you don't see policy makers going after the Catholic Church and other organizations that have systematic pedophilia as heavily as they are pursuing banning people's freedoms. This is an attempt by the state security establishment to restrict civil liberties using scare tactics around CSAM. This issue just highlights to the need to remove the power to restrict civil liberties from the State and the need for issues like CSAM to be addressed in a manner led by Psychologists as opposed to government officials without specialized knowledge and conflicts of interest intent.
Agreed, we need to figure out ways to address the systematic pedophilia in schools, youth athletics and other institutions. Banning cryptography won't solve the problem, only push us closer to fascism.
The claim that EARN IT would make "prosecution of child sexual abuse crimes more difficult" is inaccurate.
The bill only creates a voluntary set of guidelines for companies, not a mandatory set of guidelines.
Companies would be motivated to adopt the voluntary guidelines in order to avoid a heap of legal liability, but this would only be a heap of liability by tech company standards and not by the standards of any other industry not protected by Section 230.
In other words, the fourth amendment argument doesn't really hold water. The data collection practices would still only be private actions, not state actions.
I'm not advocating for EARN IT. I still think the bill is terrible because it disincentivizes end-to-end encryption (or more specifically, it incentivizes bypassing it with client-side scanning). But the specific argument that it would make prosecuting child abuse more difficult doesn't hold water.
>Companies would be motivated to adopt the voluntary guidelines in order to avoid a heap of legal liability, but this would only be a heap of liability by tech company standards and not by the standards of any other industry not protected by Section 230.
I think this really is the crux of the issue.
Whatever our various opinions, we can all seemingly agree that Section 230 gives internet publishers far too much cake that they also eat. And because the cake keeps being given out and eaten with no damns given to more finer attempts at reconciliation, we're moving on to responding with sledgehammers like this one.
I'm done with politics using children as pawns for their agendas, the way they (and private corporations) use pornography and other vices to push censorship and ban content that the moral minority disapprove of. From now on if you claim "it's to protect the children" I'm just going to vote against it on principle. Children deserve real protection, but they're but gonna get it as long as they are a valuable political tool.
You live in a place that doesn't have initiative or referendum? And this poster can always just vote against legislators who have "protecting the children" as part of their platform.
> How often do you see "Christians" hatefully use the F word referring to men who have sex with men?
Plenty of times, unfortunately. You might not see it often— are you openly, publicly gay? Do you hold your boyfriend or husbands hand in public? Are you seen going to and leaving a queer bar on the regular? Have you tried to adopt a child with your same-sex significant other, or are seen in public or going to a public school with your adopted child? If you’re not the target of homophobia it makes sense to not experience very much of it.
You mean how often do Hicks and Rednecks use the F word? Oh wait... Maybe you need to think it through and either model the behavior you want or accept that some people are just not going to like each other? You just used "Christians" in quotes, should they use "Men" and "Women" in quotes when referring to trans individuals?
I’m merely quoting someone else there. Idk what you mean. Im pretty sure neither me nor the person im replying to and quoting from are talking about trans people. What are you going on about?
> Tolerance works both ways. I shouldn't have to see graphic pornographic content when I walk down the street
I feel for you, having the world disagree with your values and opinions can be exhausting. Wouldn't it be nice if we could force people to live the way we want, even if they don't agree? It'd be nice to have that sort of authority, wouldn't it?
For example, it really bothers me when I hear hateful religious doctrine spouted in public. I shouldn't have to listen to that when I walk down the street.
> For example, it really bothers me when I hear hateful religious doctrine spouted in public. I shouldn't have to listen to that when I walk down the street.
We should have to, though, because of freedom of speech. Graphic pornographic content is a different animal legally. Though I would suggest the parent poster avoid walking down the dead-end street clearly marked "pornhub".
> We should have to, though, because of freedom of speech. Graphic pornographic content is a different animal legally
"Legally" isn't really the question, as that's about what is rather than what ought to be.
That said, nobody has to listen, that's definitely not part of freedom of speech. They have to be allowed to listen, which is related but different.
And for what ought to be… well, christian religious commandments have included calls to burn people at the stake if they follow a different faith, and such calls have been listened to and acted on. Heck, I'm in at least four distinct groups people have used religious justifications to demonise.
If you think it won't happen to you, I'd add that sacred cows can be literal, so what happens when Hindu fundamentalism reaches your doorstep and some people call for you to be lynched for eating beef (which is a thing that has happened)? And unlike sexuality, you have a degree of control over the food you consume.
"We should have to, though, because of freedom of speech. Graphic pornographic content is a different animal legally. Though I would suggest the parent poster avoid walking down the dead-end street clearly marked "pornhub"."
Why should it be. You are claiming one thing falls under the general "freedom of speech", I assume you mean the 1st admendment, but then you call pornography different but cite the law.
Why is pornography wrong? Why is it worse than hate speech? How does it harm you directly? Hate speech can make people feel unsafe, uncomfortable, and can cause stress but it's allowed.
Imagine you walked down the street and two people were just openly having sex, how does that harm you, how does that harm your family? Maybe I should ask, is that harm worse than hate speech?
Freedom of speech is just one part of the 1st amendment, there's also freedom of expression.
I have no idea what a "Reddit tier atheist" is supposed to be.
But I can say I grew up in a country where senior Bishops get a direct opportunity to review legislation, the coins have (Latin initial for) "defender of the faith" embossed on them, there is (or was, I don't keep up) a legal requirement for "broadly christian" themed school assemblies, and the national broadcaster has regular Christian shows on both radio and TV.
And despite all that, 52% of the population identifies as "no religion".
Are you in the country that has "in god we trust" printed on the currency, and in use as an official motto?
Christianity is the majority religion, in the US (63%) and world (31%).
I'm sorry you hear things in public that offend you, but others in your group are literally telling others they are evil for existing, so maybe you can handle a 'Jesus Christ' here an there.
Could you please stop posting unsubstantive comments and flamebait? You've unfortunately been doing it repeatedly. It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for.
Christ-based exclamations are a thing precisely because Christians used them so much during the centuries where Christianity dominated western European culture. The people doing it usually are Christians or have been heavily influenced by Christianity. They aren't doing it to piss off Christians.
> I shouldn't have to see graphic pornographic content when I walk down the street.
I can't read the original article (503 - "Service Unavailable" from a capacity issue), but where are you exposed to "graphic pornographic content" walking down a street today?
If that's happening on a public street today, I tend to agree with you, but I struggle to understand where that's happening today.
You do not have the right to force your personal religious views onto other people though. Tolerance does not mean everyone else has to allow you to dictate how they live their lives.
Poor Christians, such a persecuted minority in the US, definitely worse off than LGBT, PoC and women. Yeah I'm doing whataboutism, but seriously, check your privilege.
"this stuff really bothers us" Have you tried minding your own business? Christianity is forced on people through money ("in god we trust"), politics, the legal system (christianity-based laws and morality) schools (pledge of allegiance, book bans), etc.
But sure, you shouldn't have to see graphic porn when walking down the street; is this an actual issue? Does people's privacy and online services have to be amended to make this illegal? Because last time I checked, nothing changed about public decency, and it's not a religious issue.
The reality is, that Hindus put up with a lot already. Most of us are pretty tolerant, despite what you may believe. Or how many times have you eaten a hamburger and had someone rebuke you for it in public? This stuff really bothers us and we bite down and take it. How often do you see "Hindus" hatefully ordering McDonalds when having their lunch meal? I don't see it much, and when I do I forcefully tell them to stop.
Tolerance works both ways. I shouldn't have to see cows getting eaten when I walk down the street.
TLDR don't cry me a river your Protestant work ethic already increased water levels
It’s probably a better political environment to push for restrictions on access to porn than it’s been in decades. Most people still don’t approve of it. The free speech justification for it has been knee-capped on the left. And there has been a rightward turn in views towards sex among #metoo feminists.
I'm curious what defines morally acceptable. I disapprove of it on the grounds personal convictions, but more importantly because I've done a lot of volunteer work in the anti-sex trafficking world. Knowing many of these victims were abused for the purpose of producing pornographic content is enough to sour my stomach on the issue. I just wonder if that's being made a part of the moral argument.
The opposition to pornography is multifaceted. In particular, most women are opposed, and there’s a significant philosophical basis to that opposition both among conservative feminism but also a significant category of liberal feminism. Even secular people have objections to how porn represents women, and how it socialized young men to think about sex and what normal sexual activity looks like. In the Gallup poll (linked above), the only group where a majority find pornography morally acceptable is men 18-49. Only 1/3 of adult women find it morally acceptable. Among married people it’s only 1/3. Half of women also think sex work should be illegal, compared to only 36% of men: https://www.vox.com/2016/3/11/11203740/prostitution-legal-me....
That's changing imo. There are a lot of women that identify as liberal who are morally conservative, but it can be reasoned that this is just the effects of patriarchy that they haven't chosen to prioritize addressing because it doesn't directly benefit them. Freedom from modesty will not be won overnight.
When your partner can't get it up because they've been abusing porn, you're incentivized to not like it just for personal reasons. And that's without even touching the fact that your partner is getting off to images of someone else.
There's nothing "liberal" about porn. Porn is neither conservative nor liberal, it is libertine.
Anything enjoyable (and many things that are not even that) can be addicting and in some cases enought to be a problem. That however is not an argument for banning it altogether or that it is morally unacceptable.
And most additictions really are just a symptom for other problems.
I guess this is also a good time for vulnerability since we're talking patriarchy. I've had periods of erectile dysfunction and they almost always overlapped with periods of intense stress or depression. Other times it had to do with my diet. That didn't stop some people at the time bringing up my porn use, which feels really nasty and humiliating when it happens to you.
That isn't to say there aren't men who desensitize themselves, but I suspect that's more prevalent in young men and more of a minority in general. It is a provocative thing to bring up in conversation.
Not all of dismantling the patriarchy is about achieving things for women. It's about achieving equality among the sexes. If you want modesty, that's a choice you get to make, if you don't then that's a choice too. The point is not making it a default that people feel obligated to.
All of it. It's not accurate to the history of patriarchal deconstruction, who founded it, or the stragies used. If you want an accurate history give this a read: https://www.pacificu.edu/magazine/four-waves-feminism
Fourth wave feminism is where we're at now for context.
Similar to legalized prostitution, this is where I often find myself at odds with my otherwise libertarian and personal freedom leaning beliefs. Should one be allowed to do with their body as they wish? In theory, yes, if it doesn't hurt others, but the reality is legalizing these things has a far greater capacity for harm at the hands of others who would exploit them.
It's already criminalized, so the only thing that could change is legalizing it or decriminalizing it.
By legalizing it, you effectively add cost, or tax, and the illegal component continues to remain (unlesss you simply make it stop being illegal, and unregulated, which most people agree is a bad idea) and the market segregates the workers into legal and illegal workers. The illegal workers lives get even worse, and the legal workers end up losing a lot of their money.
Look at legal marijuana, or hell, even legal prostitution in places that allow it and you'll see that's been the real effect.
"Sexual acts in the context of a prostitution contract are now valid to establish claims for compensation since the law came into force. This has not only significance for civil law, but also criminal law (property offences). In addition, prostitutes can now regularly insure in the statutory health, unemployment and pension insurance."
"effective protection for prostitutes is only possible if this work is legalised"
in addition to that, the issue i see is, how much control is necessary to enforce a ban on prostitution. i would argue that it is not possible without a serious reduction of personal freedom.
legalizing it enables to focus the control on those engaged in such activities whereas the rest of us won't be bothered.
> Results for this Gallup poll are based on telephone interviews conducted May 1-10, 2018, with a random sample of 1,024 adults, aged 18 and older, living in all 50 U.S. states and the District of Columbia. For results based on the total sample of national adults, the margin of sampling error is ±4 percentage points at the 95% confidence level.
> Each sample of national adults includes a minimum quota of 70% cellphone respondents and 30% landline respondents, with additional minimum quotas by time zone within region. Landline and cellular telephone numbers are selected using random-digit-dial methods.
Dunno about you but I never answer unknown numbers, and neither does any of my friends, or anyone in my age bracket that I know, or anyone younger (gen z), so ... "Older Americans say they dislike pornography" is hardly surprising to me.
If you look at the demographic break downs its only getting more acceptable.
You can’t be serious. We need porn to stop ugly men from raping women?
I’m pro ethical pornography. But still this is a weird argument for it.
The only argument that matters is whether the person making pornography is consenting to it and isn’t being taken advantage of. That second part is very tricky with a very wide spectrum of opinions.
You still has not explained your alternative plan and how it is going to scale in current society. Rape is an extreme case, there are also drunk (but not drugged/passed out) one night stands and men lying about their intentions/finances/etc. Isn't it better that the woman at least gets paid in an honest transaction? Speaking of drunk, few would argue that booze is an overall benefit to society, but we tried prohibition and saw how that turned out. So yes, adulting can include accepting unpleasant truths and choosing the lesser evil.
Prostitutes get physically assaulted an average of once a month. That's without factoring in pressure to engage in sex acts they aren't comfortable with. And the death rate is about 1 in 500 per year. https://www.hg.org/legal-articles/prostitution-in-the-united...
Are these crimes against prostitutes factored in to the total incidence of sex crimes? I just briefly looked at your link and can't tell.
We're potentially dealing with a "The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas" situation here.
Should we ban delivery drivers who have the highest murder rates of all professions including cops or just work on making cities more safe so that people are protected from violence regardless of profession?
Prostitutes have a higher murder rate. The BLS, which tracks danger of jobs, states on their website that they do not track illegal jobs.
For delivery drivers you just need to make "the streets" safer. For prostitutes you have to manage their workplace, which could be the john's house, or a random motel.
Mmm, make jobs illegal so that workers can't reach out to police / be protected with workspace regulation and then say they should be illegal because they are dangerous...
Even in countries where prostitution is legal, prostitutes still get abused, and are pressured to not report crimes (just like employees of regular jobs are pressured to not report on the job accidents).
I find the premise of this argument to be quite odd. I live in an area with a lot of Hispanic immigrants. You see all these men who are average looking, don’t have time to hit the gym (statistically more likely to be overweight than white Americans), short as far as Americans go, and doing low status jobs, and they all have wives or girlfriends. Perhaps it’s the particular social dynamics in that community. But I suspect there’s a big component that’s things that are entirely under men’s control—working, dating to marry, etc. I mean, the fact that you frame this as a choice between porn and having a relationship with a woman kinda proves that point.
I’d go a step further and suggest that porn is a cause of these men’s problems. The availability of porn eliminates their incentive to go out and do things to become a desirable mate.
I want white American men to get jobs doing stuff and building stuff, join a church, and date with the purpose of getting married and having kids. I find it bizarre when guys complain about the implications of social libertarianism while buying into its fundamental premises.
So same thing, but men have all the responsibility and women none? No matter, how do you imagine any of this will happen anytime soon in America? Where are the "building stuff" jobs just as a starter?
> where a dozen women have one night stands with hot/rich guys
Those dozen women are presumably have a dozen one night stands with a dozen hot/rich guys. The numbers are averaging out. They pretty much have to.
> bunch of poor/fat/socially awkward ones can't hope for a partner
They need to lower their physical beauty standards of potential partners. Which presumably would be easier if porn (and photoshopping) was less available to distort those standards in the first place.
> but since this is not the reality, what is your next plan?
Erotic comics or literature that doesn't involve images and movies of real people.
Historically, multiple women have been willing to share a single man with resources to provide for them and their children. Harems are common on other species (gorillas, lions and so on) and we can speculate that humans are flexible to this arrangement. That is not to say that it appeals to us the most intellectually/emotionally, but from survival of the species point of view, better a guy who can protect/feed/provide for all his children with multiple partners rather a physically meek / mentally unstable / low social status one who will have trouble providing for even his children with one woman.
Except that as humans we invented police, welfare and birth control, so now the hot/rich guy has less responsibilities and it can be just one night stands rather than having at least some concerns about upkeep of the harem/mistresses. And marginal guys no longer have an option of a discarded mistresses who has a child that needs at least some kind of support.
For some women, sure. But there have also been rare societies where the women had their pick of men, and the men were responsible for taking care of their sister's offspring, not their own.
Historically, also, some of those harem women were having fun with men who weren't their husband. This is also common in other species, with at least one species of old-world primate that I can't recall the name of having a sexual structure where the females, who are technically part of a harem of an alpha male, will have sex with other males with the alpha male's tacit knowledge, as long as it isn't in his face.
I am not super motivated to promote cheating with boss'es mistress as a replacement for porn and sex work. Even then, people are only motivated to cheat with someone fairly hot in the first place, so it doesn't solve the problem. "Find someone of your own caliber and stick with him/her" does for everyone except outliers, but not going to happen.
Marriage. Sex should be taboo and looked down on outside of marriage. No fault divorce should also be more heavily scrutinized.
None of this is rocket science. Society figured this out a couple thousand years ago when monogamy became normal even for royalty before/under Christianity. Of course some would try to make exceptions for themselves (eg Henry VIII), but they typically aren't held up as exemplary people today (or those particular actions against monogamy is viewed negatively, like with King David), and rightfuly so.
Even if you dislike porn, how would pushing for restrictions on it work? If you ban the production/distribution of it, it will move to places where those are tolerated.
If you place restrictions on possession of material, it would have free speech implications that I don't think are trivial. Sure, we don't have absolute free speech but then there would be a debate about what porn is and the worst part of this is there is enough porn out there already that a lot of people would become felons once banned. It could even be weaponized to destroy websites where users can host content. Porn detectors would probably have to scan everything and there would be a non-zero false positive rate.
If you use the internet to restrict it, you're creating this powerful device the government has to censor the internet. I think this last one is something the government is very very interested in having. It's just hard to see how any of this would improve people's lives even if you are totally opposed to porn.
> If you ban the production/distribution of it, it will move to places where those are tolerated.
This is a fully general argument against banning anything at all. Nevertheless, we ban things, and moreover, we do not seem to act as if act of banning is meant to be pointless charade.
We ban smoking in many public places, we ban possession of weapons by felons, or carrying them without a license in many places. We ban selling alcohol to minors, and we ban kids from driving a car.
These measures are highly successful, they resulted in great reduction of the banned activity, and most people would oppose lifting this bans.
In other words, the answer to the question “how banning porn would work?” is “very effectively, like most other things that government bans and actively enforces”.
My point was that a ban on content distribution/production via the internet will require heavy handed measures to be effective. The cost of regulating the internet is relatively high. The ban on minors drinking alcohol is illustrative. You must now produce a state issued ID. You must show your ID containing personal information to a stranger. Your data may be recorded as many stores require scanning the ID and for you to input your birthday. Now a profile has been created about what your private purchases are.
Likewise, on the internet, for a ban to be effective, heavy handed measures will have to be implemented. For example, a legal apparatus for effective policing and enforcement will grow in power against citizens, edge nodes of a country's internet border will be monitored, personal information and identity will be stored and tracked, etc. The internet has many uses so even if you do not like porn, I think a porn ban specifically will adversely effect people's free speech rights. That is not necessarily true for other types of bans.
> And note the breakdown by religion--most of the opposition to pornography is religious-based.
What does that matter? The objection to pornography among religious people isn’t rooted in the supernatural or doctrinal aspects of religion. It’s not like mixing fabrics or eating shellfish. If you broke down the results by different religions, I suspect you’d find that Hindus and Muslims and Christians are all pretty opposed to pornography.
What you’re really talking about is moral philosophy. Do you believe that society should prioritize individual self expression and satisfaction, or collective duty and family formation? These are correlated with, but separable from, supernatural religious beliefs.
It matters because we have a secular government, so we don’t make laws based on people’s religious beliefs, no matter how popular those beliefs may be.
Religious people are welcome to live by whatever set of rules their books dictate, as long as doing so doesn’t infringe on other people’s rights. But they are not welcome to apply their religious restrictions to everyone else.
It's now the Year of our Lord 2023, we can (and should) move on from the outdated premise that morality requires a belief in God (as nonreligious people are no more or less moral than religious people) and that government presupposes it, just as we moved on from the premise that black people are property.
“Religion” doesn’t “require a belief in God.” Lots of religions don’t have a god or gods per se.
I also think that “nonreligious” people tend to retain much of the non-falsifiable moral philosophy they grew up with, and that for purposes of politics, it doesn’t make a difference whether you call that “religion” or not. As a foreigner, I find the phenomenon of white people who start fights with their family for saying racist things fascinating. In my culture you wouldn’t do that because preserving harmony within families is highly prized. It’s very Christian, though. “Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth; I have not come to bring peace, but a sword. For I have come to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law; and one’s foes will be members of one’s own household.” Similarly, American political debate about LGBT “human rights” is deeply Christian. People can’t come out and say “God created everyone in his image.” But they would flip out if you proposed a utilitarian calculus that couples who can naturally create more taxpayers are more socially valuable than couples who cannot. These people think of themselves as atheists but coming from a non-Christian country it’s easy to see the through-line in their beliefs.
This is a roundabout way of saying that I agree people who don’t believe in God can be moral. But I think that anyone who is moral has a framework of non-falsifiable moral beliefs that, for purposes of politics, isn’t materially distinguishable from religion. Certainly, there is nothing about our Constitution that prioritizes moral systems that arise from university departments over those that arise from organized religion.
Everyone has some sort of moral philosophy that influences their political choices. Do you vote for giving food stamps to poor people? That’s based on a moral judgment. “Secular government” doesn’t mean that policies based on secular philosophies somehow are given preference over those based on religious moral philosophies. If the regulation itself is otherwise within the government’s power, you don’t look behind to people’s motivations and decide that one policy is acceptable because it’s based on socialism and another policy is unacceptable because it’s based on Christian social gospel.
For political purposes, Christianity is just another “ism” that motivates people’s political choices. If the government has the power to restrict access to porn under the first amendment, then it doesn’t matter whether people support such restrictions because they are Christian and think that porn creates social harm or because they read Andrea Dworkin and think that porn creates social harm: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/24/opinion/sex-positivity-fe....
I suspect we agree and are saying different things. Yes, people are fully justified in voting their conscience, based on whatever informs that conscience, religious (even supernatural or doctrinal or otherwise).
What is not ok is for a bill to be drafted that starts out with “Whereas the Christian Bible contains teachings implying pornography is against God, and Whereas we seek to glorify God…”. (This is just an example to illustrate the point. I’m not implying you or anyone who understands our constitution would think laws should be written this way, but this is what a non-secular law might look like.)
Bills must be based on evidence. “Whereas scientific studies by competent and qualified scientists and researchers have recently concluded that exposure to pornography is harmful to children,…”
Again, I think we were arguing related but distinctly different points about the original “most of the opposition to pornography is religious-based” and “What does that matter?” statements.
I disagree that “bills must be based on evidence” and in practice they are not. The Civil Rights Act doesn’t say “whereas scientific studies by competent and qualified scientists and researchers have recently concluded that human races, despite obvious, outward differences, are genetically all similar…” We had a moral belief in the equality of the races, rooted in Christianity, long before we had the scientific evidence to support that belief. Likewise, there is no scientific basis for saying that the rich should take care of the poor, of that young people should support old people. These are all moral judgments. Why don’t we just let old people die when they can’t work anymore? It would be much more efficient after all.
It’s impossible to avoid basing laws on moral beliefs, because fundamentally, moral beliefs are directed to notions of what will make a better society. Your version of “secularism” doesn’t take non-falsifiable moral judgments out of lawmaking. It just gives preference to one set of non-falsifiable beliefs over another. For example, acceptance of pornography or sex work is heavily based on the idea that people should be able to do what they want sexually so long as there is consent. What is the scientific evidence behind that belief? There isn’t. It’s based on a moral belief about sexual satisfaction being an important part of the human experience, it’s based on a moral belief about individual freedom and the limits on it, etc. Ultimately, it’s a moral belief about what kind of society is better.
> We had a moral belief in the equality of the races, rooted in Christianity, long before we had the scientific evidence to support that belief.
Some Christians might have had that belief, but many racist (and, years earlier, slave-owning) Christians believed the opposite to be true, and used the Bible to justify slavery [1]. Jefferson Davis was quite explicit about it [2]:
> [Slavery] was established by decree of Almighty God...it is sanctioned in the Bible, in both Testaments, from Genesis to Revelation...it has existed in all ages, has been found among the people of the highest civilization, and in nations of the highest proficiency in the arts.
When I say "based on evidence" I mean that bills must have some basis that everyone can agree on. People may not agree with the conclusions, but there is a firm basis there nonetheless.
It doesn't take a lot of imagination to consider the consequences of religiously based laws. Imagine you're a Christian in a small town, and for whatever reason, your town becomes a popular place for immigrants/refugees from the Middle East to settle, and all of a sudden your town has a slight Muslim majority. Would it be ok for them to vote to require all women in the town to wear hijabs in public because they believe God demands it? To such a proposal, you might say "that's absurd! God doesn't want us to wear hijabs!" There's no way to settle the argument, because there's no evidence for the claim one way or the other.
That's the problem with laws based on religion, and that's why our constitution protects against them.
This is pretty absurd position, it effectively pushes for disenfranchisement of religious people. Under your theory of the government, religious people are unable to use democratic means to to further their policy goals, if these in any way stem from their religious beliefs. This is, of course, not how our legal and political system works. The “secular government” doesnt work this way.
Imagine if Christians had a strong belief in tending the garden given to them by God, and it entailed a strong wish to fight climate change. It would be absurd to say that they cannot do anything in that direction, just because their reasons for this are religious in nature.
If you don’t like majority imposing restrictions on minorities based on their moral theories, your problem is not with religion, but rather with democracy.
I have no desire to disenfranchise religious people, and I have no problem with democracy. People should be able to vote how they want and seek government policies they want, based on their convictions, religious or otherwise. My point is that the government (in the U.S. at least) cannot make laws based on religion.
If Christians want to fight climate change because they believe that's what God wants, great! They should seek policies to do just that. But what the lawmakers cannot do is write laws that say "the EPA must impose greenhouse gas limits because God commands it."
The lawmakers can have their reasons for the bills they write (they can believe it's what God wants, or they can know it's what their voters believe it's what God wants), but the laws themselves cannot be based on religion.
Ok, if your point is that laws can very much be religiously motivated, as long as they simply don’t mention God in the text of the bill, then yeah, I’m fine with that. This is not a very consequential point.
There must be sufficient secular reason to have a given law. There are people in this country who believe that this is a "Christian" nation, and even some deep in the bible belt who believe that it should be illegal to be "not Christian". You run the risk of handing the country to people like that, when you allow too much religion in your government.
If you can't make secular decisions in your job representing all people in your constituency, if you can't separate your religious belief and personal morals from what is legislatively appropriate, then just maybe, you shouldn't be a politician. On the other hand, if you can act appropriately as a legislator, then I have no problem with a person who is personally deeply religious from holding elected office.
If you are a Senator or Representative in the US, you also represent the atheists in your constituency, as well of those of all other religious beliefs than your own. You don't just represent the ones who align with your religious belief.
> There must be sufficient secular reason to have a given law. There are people in this country who believe that this is a "Christian" nation, and even some deep in the bible belt who believe that it should be illegal to be "not Christian". You run the risk of handing the country to people like that, when you allow too much religion in your government.
So yeah, this is exactly what I was talking about: this is disenfranchising people based on their religion.
> If you can't make secular decisions in your job representing all people in your constituency, if you can't separate your religious belief and personal morals from what is legislatively appropriate, then just maybe, you shouldn't be a politician. (...) If you are a Senator or Representative in the US, you also represent the atheists in your constituency, as well of those of all other religious beliefs than your own. You don't just represent the ones who align with your religious belief.
This is just an isolated demand of rigor, it's a standard that you would not apply in other circumstance. Try making the same argument, but replacing religion with political party. "Sure, you are personally deeply aligned with Democratic policy, but you also represent Republicans in your constituency, so you should separate your personal beliefs and morals from your politics, and don't push for policy that your Republican constituents would not agree with". This is of course ridiculous.
You need to understand that what you proposing here is plainly disadvantaging (some) religious beliefs compared to other philosophies, and holding them to a different, higher standards. Why do majority of voters have to give "sufficient secular reason" for a given law? Constitution doesn't demand this sort of "parallel construction".
The vast majority of Christians that I've spoken to don't seem to understand one basic fact:
If you allow religious belief to be the sole factor behind legislative action, then you also open the door to a different religion coming in and democratically taking the reins of that action.
They also will heavily vocalize their opinion that no other religion should be able to come in and do exactly that. In the years after 9/11, they would harp about "Sharia law" and how it was allegedly "taking over parts of the US".
It is very clear in the Constitution that the government may not favor one religion over another. Ergo, to open legislative action to religious motivation allows any religion to do the same, no matter what. The US is pretty open about what it considers to be a "religion" as well, we're one of the few countries that allow Scientology to be considered a religion.
In the interest of identifying bias, I live in Tennessee, right in the middle of the bible belt. Thus, my opinion is indeed biased by experience in this area. I've seen how nasty and bigoted this neck of the woods can be, and these are the people that the region's politicians tend to pander to.
Nobody ever addresses the middle ground...the group of parents who have no objection to adults' use of it but believe it's not something that the developing minds of children should have unfettered access to.
And that's a fine position as long as those parents take responsibility for ensuring their children don't have access to things they don't want them to have access to. It's not fine if it means they want the state to restrict access for everyone.
That's why technological arguments of "you and which army?" or "porn is illegal? so is piracy. Hasn't stopped that either." are more important than appeals to the democratic process for these types of issues.
I think your parent was expressing frustration that so many laws are dressed in the sheepskin of “WON’T SOMEBODY THINK OF THE CHILDREN?!?!”
I don’t think the commenter necessary would disagree that many parents _do_ want to protect children, but that so much of the electorate turns off their critical thinking skills when that sheepskin is used. They don’t seem to remain skeptical that the law could actually be a wolf in sheep’s clothing.
In the same 2018 Gallup poll that your National Review article referenced, only 10% of people in the U.S. believe that married men and women having an affair is morally acceptable, and only 42% of people in the U.S. believe sex between teenagers is morally acceptable, but it would be ridiculous to ban these things through law because the government should not be intruding into citizens' private lives in this way.
Also, the proportion of people who find hate speech morally acceptable is likely much lower than 43%, yet that is still protected in the U.S. by the First Amendment.
An activity needs to be more than merely "morally unacceptable" to some people to justify banning it through legislation. You must also consider the infringement of personal liberties that a ban on that activity would cause, the resulting collateral damage, and whether the ban is practically enforceable. Prohibition was unsuccessful in the U.S. even at a time when the temperance movement triggered a wave of anti-alcohol sentiment because there were enough people who rejected the belief that others should be able to restrict their liberties based on different opinions on what is morally acceptable.
You might as well be done with politics altogether... Politics pulling unsubtly on people's emotional heartstrings to gain leverage ("won't anyone think of the children?") is the kind of systemic hacking technique that sometimes gets revered over here, applied to a different domain. Politics is all about gaining legitimacy, the feeling of legitimacy is an emotion, and thus emotional manipulation tends to be present in every political process, at various levels of egregiousness. It's just about as core to the process as factoring common bits of logic into functions is to programming.
...I think it's reasonable to point out that end-to-end encryption is particularly important for children, and that to the degree that its adoption is negatively impacted or hamstrung by the statutory and regulatory environments (even in situations that are partly well-meaning, as is perhaps the case here), children are likely to suffer disproportionately.
The social and political impact of mass surveillance and secret targeted profiling of human behaviors is unlikely to dramatically change the trajectories of the lives of people who are today adults, even if it may impact the way our state functions. But for children, having a massive corpus of data on their ever preference, with which to manipulative them as consumers and voters, forever? This is an existential threat to their ability to mature into free-thinking adults.
I don't mind 'think of the children' arguments; but they need to actually rationally consider the impact on children in the first place.
I think if we want to protect children, one of the biggest things we can do is to ban child marriage. Girls as young as 13 should not be getting married, especially since they are minors they can’t get divorced(!!!) it’s an ugly and disgusting practice and should be wiped off this country.
Statistically, it destroys lives and makes people miserable.
After it ends in divorce (which statistically is most of the time), there's all sorts of follow-up issues with splitting goods and the insanity that is alimony.
I would argue against demonizing divorce. Living with a couple who hates each other or where one is domestically abusing the other is a horrible state for children. Marriages aren’t stable inherently.
My point was more that "protecting children", as a goal, is a very complex issue and abuse has it's starting points very early in the abused's life and also likely the abusers life.
I think it would be much better, and more of a longer term solution, to spend money on resources to tackle root cause abuse issues than poorly thought out privacy invading legislation that affects literally everyone.
My divorce example was to point out the potential for equally silly, poorly thought out legislation because divorce has a negative effect on children.
I think more money spent on boots-on-the-ground child protection services and education campaigns for children themselves, to provide them the knowledge and awareness to protect themselves from online predators, would be a longer term, better targeted legislation.
But of course the above is only a better option if you're actually wanting to give children a better chance at avoiding abuse.
Edited to add:
I just had the thought that approaching any problem from a law enforcement angle is treating the symptoms and not the cause. It almost ensures an on-going stream of work because it just doesn't address the fundamental problem.
A law enforcement approach doesn't protect children, it punishes offenders. It doesn't make vulnerable children any less vulnerable.
A law enforcement approach is harvesting pus instead of attempting to treat the infection.
> Statistically, it destroys lives and makes people miserable.
Er, what statistics are you basing that on? That sounds like an old stereotype, because every study I've seen on it says that marriage is great for mental and physical health.
> it ends in divorce (which statistically is most of the time),
More defensible, but depends how you read the data; if you ignore serial divorcees the rate drops a lot (i.e. if I'm reading this right, half of people who get married never divorce, but the other half get divorced and then keep remarrying and divorcing, which rather skews the numbers if you just count by marriage).
Governments should have to earn the right to invade everyone’s privacy and act in authoritarian ways. Give me a 30 year track record of outstanding governance with real, working checks and balances that have resulted in zero abuse or misuse.
Let's think of the children for a moment! The children in the EU, GB and the USA will grow up under constant surveillance. So much growing up today happens in connection with digital communication. To invade children's privacy like this is just sick.
Internet Pornography and access to communicating with adults online and sending pictures and meeting up has had a profoundly negative effect on some children and teens. I think that this space will eventually get regulated much better as people realize the negative externalities of an unregulated internet accessed by young minds.
This isn’t even getting into social media, and also spread of attention problems and screens. But in a way, I sense most parents were not yet adjusted to the new reality of the internet in the last 2 decades, and we’re all playing catch up for regulation.
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[ 4.6 ms ] story [ 201 ms ] thread-- Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
For instance, if the law was "No driving over 70mph on I-75", shortening the law to "No driving" isn't an improvement. And even if we maintain the detail and shorten to "No 70+mph driving @ I-75" it doesn't improve things.
Concise is good. shortness for shortness sake is not. We don't need to be playing code golf with laws.
Budget bills in particular can get really tedious. And any bill that, say, strikes or adds a word to already extant law, would require reading the entirety of the law so changed.
Forcing them the discomfort of having to read it out loud all by themselves should help greatly with that.
I’m looking at you former speaker of the house that said we have to pass the bill to know what’s in it.
Same with voter ID. It’s touted as “racist” although other poorer countries easily handle the issue of voter ID.
It’s almost as if one political party amasses power by continually brow beating their constituents into a victim mentality.
It's sometimes helpful to look at the name of the bill & assume that the bill will achieve the exact opposite.
> Can we make congressmen actually read the bills they vote on?
Most Congress members vote based on spheres of influence, not spheres of interest. The lobbyists that fund the politician's campaign tells the politician how to vote & the consequences of voting against the lobbyist's wishes.
Cattle, not pets.
[1] - https://archive.is/20230504130057/https://techfreedom.org/ea...
[2] https://web.archive.org/web/20230504121420if_/https://techfr...
I happen to speculate this because I may have used tor for web crawling, which may have caused a specific site to crash before I cut back the crawl rate. Punishing tor for such incident is mostly FUD.
Earn it has bipartisan support. Its passing is inevitable sadly.
https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/senate-bill/353...
That's a defeatist view.
It is quite certainly not inevitable. It can be stopped through public outrage.
This bill isn’t coming out of nowhere. Allegedly, CSAM is up 89% from pre-pandemic levels, which if true is fairly shocking and does deserve a response, perhaps in tech, of some kind. CSAM isn’t going away and every sane person hates it - so is the best strategy we can come up with, be to put our heads in the sand and say “but muh encryption!” whenever asked?
I would argue, no. We need to seriously consider if it is possible to come with our own bill, addressing the CSAM issue, so that we get to set the policy and not a fed-up ignorant Congress. Trying to keep things the way they are, forever, I don’t think is going to be a winning strategy. Both parties are in favor - so either we can write it, or they can write it.
Who is the in that 'our'? That's exactly what this bill is for specific values of our.
> "FBI opens settlement talks with gymnasts who survived abuse by Larry Nassar Updated July 28, 20224:27 PM ET (NPR)"
I don't know why it needs to be said again and again that the existence of criminal behavior isn't an excuse for warrantless domestic mass surveillance, but apparently it does.
#endprivatedwellings #camerasineverybathroom #thefourthamendmentispropedophile
E2EE is not the issue when one party discloses the info, excepting mechanisms like plausible deniability built into apps like Signal, but even at that point LE should be able to get a warrant and then do proper police work: stalk the target under cover until they unlock their device, then rush in and grab it before they can put it back to rest (e.g, how it was portrayed in the Silk Road movie).
/s
Allegedly. That said, the alarming statistic is used by people who have a specific agenda related to CSAM. It is not dissimilar how pro/anti-gun sides ( and many others, it is just an example ) cherry pick their favorite data/ranges and so on.
<< addressing the CSAM issue << if it is possible to come with our own bill
Not if it breaks some basic internet foundations.
There is a simple reason for it. There is a way to stop all fraud at bank. Stop all transactions. I think you will agree that while stopping fraud is a valuable proposition, the solution is close to unworkable. It is the same here.
In other words, in order to entertain some level of freedom, one must be willing to accept that some bad people will do some bad things with that freedom. That is the trade-off.
Now, that is not letting 'bad guy' off the hook. Police still has a job to do. What we do not want to do is create an easier world for police, but a more livable place for all the republic's denizens.
It is not going to work. If you want a decent conversation with me, you want to present a valid counter instead of bunching me with "oh, you are one of those people".
<< "head in the sand"
And after that preface, you are wrong about it too. I am openly stating leave internet alone from your hand-wringing. Long term, it is not even helping anyone; including the children.
We do lots, including tracking large transactions. Most people agree this is a reasonable thing to do. Most people are, I suspect, more upset by CSAM than by bank fraud.
Just to add to this, you are conflating tracking BSA, CTR and couple other things and trying to fit it into CSAM.
<< should we do nothing to try and stop bank fraud?
To rephrase your argument, are we doing nothing? By your admission we are already doing a lot under BSA ( I would argue we do too much, but that is a separate conversation ).
The proposal for CSAM is nowhere near the level of intrusiveness that BSA operates at and BSA is quite intrusive.
> Of the 153,369 webpages actioned during 2020, almost half (68,000 or 44%) were assessed as containing self-generated imagery.[1]
I suggest starting there rather than my encrypted communications with friends and family.
[1]: https://annualreport2020.iwf.org.uk/trends/international/sel...
Calling fully intentional, consensual nude selfies or even sex videos created by teenagers of themselves "child sexual abuse material" is so very clearly a misapplication of the term.
That said, if those selfies do, by whatever means, get distributed beyond where the subject originally intended them to go, they need to be treated as...well, at the very least as revenge porn, which is now (fortunately) banned in a number of jurisdictions. So I'm definitely not saying this is a black and white issue; quite the contrary, in fact.
I do agree that "children" is too broad a term and that we should segment that population into different groups and focus on the younger groups much more than the older ones.
I can see a reasonable argument for "11-year-old girls shouldn't be sexting their boyfriends", but the way to address that problem isn't to treat them as sex offenders. It's to get the parents to be more healthily engaged in their children's lives so that they can productively teach them why that's not a good idea in a way that is likely to stick.
Edited to add: it also says in the report that the images are predominantly 11 to 13 year old girls. these are not horny 16-17 year olds sexting their partners.
It's especially absurd in some jurisdictions where it is explicitly legal for two teenagers to engage in intercourse, but if they share a photo of tits with each other other they've committed a federal crime. The fact we consider a photo criminal, when both parties are above the age of consent for one another, is a new level of absurdity, and things like the EARN IT act just make this situation worse.
I have a teenage daughter. I don't particularly relish the idea of her taking and sharing nude photos because I know that the Internet is forever and it will eventually get out and cause her harm. Nonetheless, there is very little I can do to stop it short of blocking her from using technology altogether. What I would like even less is if the company I buy her phone from decides to be a busybody and reports her to the feds for taking a nude photo of herself and then she ends up with a felony record and registered as a sex offender for the rest of her life for getting a bit too spicy in text messages with her boyfriend.
I don't understand how anyone could classify this as CSAM.
I would strongly suspect 11 year olds behaving in a sexual manner likely did not receive good parental instruction. On the other hand, we have an epidemic of broken homes in this country, so it's unsurprising that this is also the case. I do not think that it necessarily indicates a situation anymore dangerous than the norm, which is that many kids are neglected because they don't have active engaged parents, and they may be exposed to things which are inappropriate for their age due to the circumstances of poverty.
I didn't grow up well-to-do, and I got to be exposed to some pretty gnarly things at 10-11 that thankfully my daughter has never been exposed to, because I was able to provide a better life for her. Unfortunately there are many 11 year olds that will be exposed to horrible things, and that will have an impact on their life. I don't want these things to happen, and I have taken every step I can to make sure my own daughter is not exposed to the same things I was exposed to seeing, much of which was a simple consequence of growing up in poverty in a bad part of town (such as seeing someone OD and die at a bus stop on my way home from school).
That's all we really can do in this situation, is be better parents, there's no meaningful way that society can step in for children with disengaged parents unless we want to criminalize it and institutionalize the children. As someone who also got to experience "the system" for children in this country, it's actually far worse than having an overworked single parent who lets you use the internet unsupervised and wander around on your own while they're at work.
What we're dancing around though, is that there are actual pedophiles on the Internet that would like nothing more than to have the 11-year send them underwear, or even fully-nude pics. That's what the 11-13 year old needs protection from.
And keep in mind, pediatricians now recommend starting to talk to your kids about sex and consent starting at age five.
https://mcpress.mayoclinic.org/parenting/when-to-start-talki...
Punishing that 11-year old, charging them as a sex-offender, when they were the one that took the picture, makes zero sense though.
It seems like an attempt to inject a pediatrician with a book on sex ed in aspect of kids health, where common sense would suffice.
[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6855897/
At face value, the idea that this specific age group is sending more such photos than the older cohort is surprising enough I would reject it as bad data without further research into why it is happening. Selection bias seems a much more likely explanation.
I do happen to think this kind of privacy is important, but I also recognize that non-actionable alternatives won't get much traction.
[0]- OK, there are some the parents can take, but asking hundreds of millions or billions of people to act individually is not an effective way to solve a systemic issue.
[1] Jurisdictions vary wildly in how they prosecute this but many seem to have funny age combinations where e.g. a 13yo sending an explicit image to a 14yo means the 13yo can't be charged for producing CSAM but the 14yo committed a felony by possessing it. Some jurisdictions have charged people for sex trafficking themselves in these situations. It's all pretty insane if you ask me.
Edit: Worth pointing out that the organizations that push hardest for legislation like this (mostly christian fundamentalists) also care the least about these side-effects, because sex before marriage is a sin and ought to be illegal anyway. A conspiracy theorist would hypothesize that these side-effects are actually the intended main effect for those groups.
Worth noting that the rates of pedophilia among public schoolteachers is actually higher. Actually, many, many times more likely.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/has-media-ignored-sex-abuse-in-...
The bill only creates a voluntary set of guidelines for companies, not a mandatory set of guidelines.
Companies would be motivated to adopt the voluntary guidelines in order to avoid a heap of legal liability, but this would only be a heap of liability by tech company standards and not by the standards of any other industry not protected by Section 230.
In other words, the fourth amendment argument doesn't really hold water. The data collection practices would still only be private actions, not state actions.
I'm not advocating for EARN IT. I still think the bill is terrible because it disincentivizes end-to-end encryption (or more specifically, it incentivizes bypassing it with client-side scanning). But the specific argument that it would make prosecuting child abuse more difficult doesn't hold water.
I think this really is the crux of the issue.
Whatever our various opinions, we can all seemingly agree that Section 230 gives internet publishers far too much cake that they also eat. And because the cake keeps being given out and eaten with no damns given to more finer attempts at reconciliation, we're moving on to responding with sledgehammers like this one.
Plenty of times, unfortunately. You might not see it often— are you openly, publicly gay? Do you hold your boyfriend or husbands hand in public? Are you seen going to and leaving a queer bar on the regular? Have you tried to adopt a child with your same-sex significant other, or are seen in public or going to a public school with your adopted child? If you’re not the target of homophobia it makes sense to not experience very much of it.
I feel for you, having the world disagree with your values and opinions can be exhausting. Wouldn't it be nice if we could force people to live the way we want, even if they don't agree? It'd be nice to have that sort of authority, wouldn't it?
For example, it really bothers me when I hear hateful religious doctrine spouted in public. I shouldn't have to listen to that when I walk down the street.
We should have to, though, because of freedom of speech. Graphic pornographic content is a different animal legally. Though I would suggest the parent poster avoid walking down the dead-end street clearly marked "pornhub".
"Legally" isn't really the question, as that's about what is rather than what ought to be.
That said, nobody has to listen, that's definitely not part of freedom of speech. They have to be allowed to listen, which is related but different.
And for what ought to be… well, christian religious commandments have included calls to burn people at the stake if they follow a different faith, and such calls have been listened to and acted on. Heck, I'm in at least four distinct groups people have used religious justifications to demonise.
If you think it won't happen to you, I'd add that sacred cows can be literal, so what happens when Hindu fundamentalism reaches your doorstep and some people call for you to be lynched for eating beef (which is a thing that has happened)? And unlike sexuality, you have a degree of control over the food you consume.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-34409354
Why should it be. You are claiming one thing falls under the general "freedom of speech", I assume you mean the 1st admendment, but then you call pornography different but cite the law.
Why is pornography wrong? Why is it worse than hate speech? How does it harm you directly? Hate speech can make people feel unsafe, uncomfortable, and can cause stress but it's allowed.
Imagine you walked down the street and two people were just openly having sex, how does that harm you, how does that harm your family? Maybe I should ask, is that harm worse than hate speech?
Freedom of speech is just one part of the 1st amendment, there's also freedom of expression.
But I can say I grew up in a country where senior Bishops get a direct opportunity to review legislation, the coins have (Latin initial for) "defender of the faith" embossed on them, there is (or was, I don't keep up) a legal requirement for "broadly christian" themed school assemblies, and the national broadcaster has regular Christian shows on both radio and TV.
And despite all that, 52% of the population identifies as "no religion".
Are you in the country that has "in god we trust" printed on the currency, and in use as an official motto?
I'm sorry you hear things in public that offend you, but others in your group are literally telling others they are evil for existing, so maybe you can handle a 'Jesus Christ' here an there.
If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.
I can't read the original article (503 - "Service Unavailable" from a capacity issue), but where are you exposed to "graphic pornographic content" walking down a street today?
If that's happening on a public street today, I tend to agree with you, but I struggle to understand where that's happening today.
"this stuff really bothers us" Have you tried minding your own business? Christianity is forced on people through money ("in god we trust"), politics, the legal system (christianity-based laws and morality) schools (pledge of allegiance, book bans), etc.
But sure, you shouldn't have to see graphic porn when walking down the street; is this an actual issue? Does people's privacy and online services have to be amended to make this illegal? Because last time I checked, nothing changed about public decency, and it's not a religious issue.
Tolerance works both ways. I shouldn't have to see cows getting eaten when I walk down the street.
TLDR don't cry me a river your Protestant work ethic already increased water levels
It’s probably a better political environment to push for restrictions on access to porn than it’s been in decades. Most people still don’t approve of it. The free speech justification for it has been knee-capped on the left. And there has been a rightward turn in views towards sex among #metoo feminists.
There's nothing "liberal" about porn. Porn is neither conservative nor liberal, it is libertine.
If your partner prefers interacting with porn to doing so with you, the porn use is a symptom, not the source of the problem.
And most additictions really are just a symptom for other problems.
I guess this is also a good time for vulnerability since we're talking patriarchy. I've had periods of erectile dysfunction and they almost always overlapped with periods of intense stress or depression. Other times it had to do with my diet. That didn't stop some people at the time bringing up my porn use, which feels really nasty and humiliating when it happens to you.
That isn't to say there aren't men who desensitize themselves, but I suspect that's more prevalent in young men and more of a minority in general. It is a provocative thing to bring up in conversation.
Fourth wave feminism is where we're at now for context.
By legalizing it, you effectively add cost, or tax, and the illegal component continues to remain (unlesss you simply make it stop being illegal, and unregulated, which most people agree is a bad idea) and the market segregates the workers into legal and illegal workers. The illegal workers lives get even worse, and the legal workers end up losing a lot of their money.
Look at legal marijuana, or hell, even legal prostitution in places that allow it and you'll see that's been the real effect.
but that's the point, legalizing or decriminalizing the actual act enables the people involved to seek protection from the illegal components.
Look at legal marijuana, or hell, even legal prostitution in places that allow it and you'll see that's been the real effect
at least in germany the opposite effect seems to be the case:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prostitution_Act
"Sexual acts in the context of a prostitution contract are now valid to establish claims for compensation since the law came into force. This has not only significance for civil law, but also criminal law (property offences). In addition, prostitutes can now regularly insure in the statutory health, unemployment and pension insurance."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prostitutes_Protection_Act
"effective protection for prostitutes is only possible if this work is legalised"
in addition to that, the issue i see is, how much control is necessary to enforce a ban on prostitution. i would argue that it is not possible without a serious reduction of personal freedom. legalizing it enables to focus the control on those engaged in such activities whereas the rest of us won't be bothered.
> Each sample of national adults includes a minimum quota of 70% cellphone respondents and 30% landline respondents, with additional minimum quotas by time zone within region. Landline and cellular telephone numbers are selected using random-digit-dial methods.
https://news.gallup.com/poll/235280/americans-say-pornograph...
Dunno about you but I never answer unknown numbers, and neither does any of my friends, or anyone in my age bracket that I know, or anyone younger (gen z), so ... "Older Americans say they dislike pornography" is hardly surprising to me.
If you look at the demographic break downs its only getting more acceptable.
If you look at the demographic breakdowns, almost all the movement is among younger men. Among women 18-49, it’s only 41% approval.
E.g. I won't do drugs, I do not like people who do drugs, yet I'm all for regulation.
Did you state the end of it backwards?
I don't do drugs, I don't like drugs, but I think the drug war is worse than the drugs.
I’m pro ethical pornography. But still this is a weird argument for it.
The only argument that matters is whether the person making pornography is consenting to it and isn’t being taken advantage of. That second part is very tricky with a very wide spectrum of opinions.
Are these crimes against prostitutes factored in to the total incidence of sex crimes? I just briefly looked at your link and can't tell.
We're potentially dealing with a "The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas" situation here.
For delivery drivers you just need to make "the streets" safer. For prostitutes you have to manage their workplace, which could be the john's house, or a random motel.
Then maybe change it so they can have a safe and legal place of business.
I’d go a step further and suggest that porn is a cause of these men’s problems. The availability of porn eliminates their incentive to go out and do things to become a desirable mate.
Those dozen women are presumably have a dozen one night stands with a dozen hot/rich guys. The numbers are averaging out. They pretty much have to.
> bunch of poor/fat/socially awkward ones can't hope for a partner
They need to lower their physical beauty standards of potential partners. Which presumably would be easier if porn (and photoshopping) was less available to distort those standards in the first place.
> but since this is not the reality, what is your next plan?
Erotic comics or literature that doesn't involve images and movies of real people.
Except that as humans we invented police, welfare and birth control, so now the hot/rich guy has less responsibilities and it can be just one night stands rather than having at least some concerns about upkeep of the harem/mistresses. And marginal guys no longer have an option of a discarded mistresses who has a child that needs at least some kind of support.
Historically, also, some of those harem women were having fun with men who weren't their husband. This is also common in other species, with at least one species of old-world primate that I can't recall the name of having a sexual structure where the females, who are technically part of a harem of an alpha male, will have sex with other males with the alpha male's tacit knowledge, as long as it isn't in his face.
For some the thrill of the cheating is enough to make the partner seem more attractive than they physically are.
None of this is rocket science. Society figured this out a couple thousand years ago when monogamy became normal even for royalty before/under Christianity. Of course some would try to make exceptions for themselves (eg Henry VIII), but they typically aren't held up as exemplary people today (or those particular actions against monogamy is viewed negatively, like with King David), and rightfuly so.
If you place restrictions on possession of material, it would have free speech implications that I don't think are trivial. Sure, we don't have absolute free speech but then there would be a debate about what porn is and the worst part of this is there is enough porn out there already that a lot of people would become felons once banned. It could even be weaponized to destroy websites where users can host content. Porn detectors would probably have to scan everything and there would be a non-zero false positive rate.
If you use the internet to restrict it, you're creating this powerful device the government has to censor the internet. I think this last one is something the government is very very interested in having. It's just hard to see how any of this would improve people's lives even if you are totally opposed to porn.
This is a fully general argument against banning anything at all. Nevertheless, we ban things, and moreover, we do not seem to act as if act of banning is meant to be pointless charade.
We ban smoking in many public places, we ban possession of weapons by felons, or carrying them without a license in many places. We ban selling alcohol to minors, and we ban kids from driving a car.
These measures are highly successful, they resulted in great reduction of the banned activity, and most people would oppose lifting this bans.
In other words, the answer to the question “how banning porn would work?” is “very effectively, like most other things that government bans and actively enforces”.
Likewise, on the internet, for a ban to be effective, heavy handed measures will have to be implemented. For example, a legal apparatus for effective policing and enforcement will grow in power against citizens, edge nodes of a country's internet border will be monitored, personal information and identity will be stored and tracked, etc. The internet has many uses so even if you do not like porn, I think a porn ban specifically will adversely effect people's free speech rights. That is not necessarily true for other types of bans.
https://news.gallup.com/poll/235280/americans-say-pornograph...
And note the breakdown by religion--most of the opposition to pornography is religious-based.
What does that matter? The objection to pornography among religious people isn’t rooted in the supernatural or doctrinal aspects of religion. It’s not like mixing fabrics or eating shellfish. If you broke down the results by different religions, I suspect you’d find that Hindus and Muslims and Christians are all pretty opposed to pornography.
What you’re really talking about is moral philosophy. Do you believe that society should prioritize individual self expression and satisfaction, or collective duty and family formation? These are correlated with, but separable from, supernatural religious beliefs.
It matters because we have a secular government, so we don’t make laws based on people’s religious beliefs, no matter how popular those beliefs may be.
Religious people are welcome to live by whatever set of rules their books dictate, as long as doing so doesn’t infringe on other people’s rights. But they are not welcome to apply their religious restrictions to everyone else.
I also think that “nonreligious” people tend to retain much of the non-falsifiable moral philosophy they grew up with, and that for purposes of politics, it doesn’t make a difference whether you call that “religion” or not. As a foreigner, I find the phenomenon of white people who start fights with their family for saying racist things fascinating. In my culture you wouldn’t do that because preserving harmony within families is highly prized. It’s very Christian, though. “Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth; I have not come to bring peace, but a sword. For I have come to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law; and one’s foes will be members of one’s own household.” Similarly, American political debate about LGBT “human rights” is deeply Christian. People can’t come out and say “God created everyone in his image.” But they would flip out if you proposed a utilitarian calculus that couples who can naturally create more taxpayers are more socially valuable than couples who cannot. These people think of themselves as atheists but coming from a non-Christian country it’s easy to see the through-line in their beliefs.
This is a roundabout way of saying that I agree people who don’t believe in God can be moral. But I think that anyone who is moral has a framework of non-falsifiable moral beliefs that, for purposes of politics, isn’t materially distinguishable from religion. Certainly, there is nothing about our Constitution that prioritizes moral systems that arise from university departments over those that arise from organized religion.
For political purposes, Christianity is just another “ism” that motivates people’s political choices. If the government has the power to restrict access to porn under the first amendment, then it doesn’t matter whether people support such restrictions because they are Christian and think that porn creates social harm or because they read Andrea Dworkin and think that porn creates social harm: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/24/opinion/sex-positivity-fe....
What is not ok is for a bill to be drafted that starts out with “Whereas the Christian Bible contains teachings implying pornography is against God, and Whereas we seek to glorify God…”. (This is just an example to illustrate the point. I’m not implying you or anyone who understands our constitution would think laws should be written this way, but this is what a non-secular law might look like.)
Bills must be based on evidence. “Whereas scientific studies by competent and qualified scientists and researchers have recently concluded that exposure to pornography is harmful to children,…”
Again, I think we were arguing related but distinctly different points about the original “most of the opposition to pornography is religious-based” and “What does that matter?” statements.
It’s impossible to avoid basing laws on moral beliefs, because fundamentally, moral beliefs are directed to notions of what will make a better society. Your version of “secularism” doesn’t take non-falsifiable moral judgments out of lawmaking. It just gives preference to one set of non-falsifiable beliefs over another. For example, acceptance of pornography or sex work is heavily based on the idea that people should be able to do what they want sexually so long as there is consent. What is the scientific evidence behind that belief? There isn’t. It’s based on a moral belief about sexual satisfaction being an important part of the human experience, it’s based on a moral belief about individual freedom and the limits on it, etc. Ultimately, it’s a moral belief about what kind of society is better.
Some Christians might have had that belief, but many racist (and, years earlier, slave-owning) Christians believed the opposite to be true, and used the Bible to justify slavery [1]. Jefferson Davis was quite explicit about it [2]:
> [Slavery] was established by decree of Almighty God...it is sanctioned in the Bible, in both Testaments, from Genesis to Revelation...it has existed in all ages, has been found among the people of the highest civilization, and in nations of the highest proficiency in the arts.
When I say "based on evidence" I mean that bills must have some basis that everyone can agree on. People may not agree with the conclusions, but there is a firm basis there nonetheless.
It doesn't take a lot of imagination to consider the consequences of religiously based laws. Imagine you're a Christian in a small town, and for whatever reason, your town becomes a popular place for immigrants/refugees from the Middle East to settle, and all of a sudden your town has a slight Muslim majority. Would it be ok for them to vote to require all women in the town to wear hijabs in public because they believe God demands it? To such a proposal, you might say "that's absurd! God doesn't want us to wear hijabs!" There's no way to settle the argument, because there's no evidence for the claim one way or the other.
That's the problem with laws based on religion, and that's why our constitution protects against them.
[1] https://time.com/5171819/christianity-slavery-book-excerpt/
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_views_on_slavery#Opp...
Imagine if Christians had a strong belief in tending the garden given to them by God, and it entailed a strong wish to fight climate change. It would be absurd to say that they cannot do anything in that direction, just because their reasons for this are religious in nature.
If you don’t like majority imposing restrictions on minorities based on their moral theories, your problem is not with religion, but rather with democracy.
If Christians want to fight climate change because they believe that's what God wants, great! They should seek policies to do just that. But what the lawmakers cannot do is write laws that say "the EPA must impose greenhouse gas limits because God commands it."
The lawmakers can have their reasons for the bills they write (they can believe it's what God wants, or they can know it's what their voters believe it's what God wants), but the laws themselves cannot be based on religion.
If you can't make secular decisions in your job representing all people in your constituency, if you can't separate your religious belief and personal morals from what is legislatively appropriate, then just maybe, you shouldn't be a politician. On the other hand, if you can act appropriately as a legislator, then I have no problem with a person who is personally deeply religious from holding elected office.
If you are a Senator or Representative in the US, you also represent the atheists in your constituency, as well of those of all other religious beliefs than your own. You don't just represent the ones who align with your religious belief.
So yeah, this is exactly what I was talking about: this is disenfranchising people based on their religion.
> If you can't make secular decisions in your job representing all people in your constituency, if you can't separate your religious belief and personal morals from what is legislatively appropriate, then just maybe, you shouldn't be a politician. (...) If you are a Senator or Representative in the US, you also represent the atheists in your constituency, as well of those of all other religious beliefs than your own. You don't just represent the ones who align with your religious belief.
This is just an isolated demand of rigor, it's a standard that you would not apply in other circumstance. Try making the same argument, but replacing religion with political party. "Sure, you are personally deeply aligned with Democratic policy, but you also represent Republicans in your constituency, so you should separate your personal beliefs and morals from your politics, and don't push for policy that your Republican constituents would not agree with". This is of course ridiculous.
You need to understand that what you proposing here is plainly disadvantaging (some) religious beliefs compared to other philosophies, and holding them to a different, higher standards. Why do majority of voters have to give "sufficient secular reason" for a given law? Constitution doesn't demand this sort of "parallel construction".
If you allow religious belief to be the sole factor behind legislative action, then you also open the door to a different religion coming in and democratically taking the reins of that action.
They also will heavily vocalize their opinion that no other religion should be able to come in and do exactly that. In the years after 9/11, they would harp about "Sharia law" and how it was allegedly "taking over parts of the US".
It is very clear in the Constitution that the government may not favor one religion over another. Ergo, to open legislative action to religious motivation allows any religion to do the same, no matter what. The US is pretty open about what it considers to be a "religion" as well, we're one of the few countries that allow Scientology to be considered a religion.
In the interest of identifying bias, I live in Tennessee, right in the middle of the bible belt. Thus, my opinion is indeed biased by experience in this area. I've seen how nasty and bigoted this neck of the woods can be, and these are the people that the region's politicians tend to pander to.
Nobody ever addresses the middle ground...the group of parents who have no objection to adults' use of it but believe it's not something that the developing minds of children should have unfettered access to.
I don’t think the commenter necessary would disagree that many parents _do_ want to protect children, but that so much of the electorate turns off their critical thinking skills when that sheepskin is used. They don’t seem to remain skeptical that the law could actually be a wolf in sheep’s clothing.
Or maybe I’m just projecting…
https://news.gallup.com/poll/235250/say-consuming-alcohol-ma...
Also, the proportion of people who find hate speech morally acceptable is likely much lower than 43%, yet that is still protected in the U.S. by the First Amendment.
An activity needs to be more than merely "morally unacceptable" to some people to justify banning it through legislation. You must also consider the infringement of personal liberties that a ban on that activity would cause, the resulting collateral damage, and whether the ban is practically enforceable. Prohibition was unsuccessful in the U.S. even at a time when the temperance movement triggered a wave of anti-alcohol sentiment because there were enough people who rejected the belief that others should be able to restrict their liberties based on different opinions on what is morally acceptable.
The social and political impact of mass surveillance and secret targeted profiling of human behaviors is unlikely to dramatically change the trajectories of the lives of people who are today adults, even if it may impact the way our state functions. But for children, having a massive corpus of data on their ever preference, with which to manipulative them as consumers and voters, forever? This is an existential threat to their ability to mature into free-thinking adults.
I don't mind 'think of the children' arguments; but they need to actually rationally consider the impact on children in the first place.
Statistically, it destroys lives and makes people miserable.
After it ends in divorce (which statistically is most of the time), there's all sorts of follow-up issues with splitting goods and the insanity that is alimony.
Non-fact-based opinion: Stable relationships create stable children, and stable children are less prone to predators.
Too many abusers have stable marriages. E.g.: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turpin_case
I think it would be much better, and more of a longer term solution, to spend money on resources to tackle root cause abuse issues than poorly thought out privacy invading legislation that affects literally everyone.
My divorce example was to point out the potential for equally silly, poorly thought out legislation because divorce has a negative effect on children.
I think more money spent on boots-on-the-ground child protection services and education campaigns for children themselves, to provide them the knowledge and awareness to protect themselves from online predators, would be a longer term, better targeted legislation.
But of course the above is only a better option if you're actually wanting to give children a better chance at avoiding abuse.
Edited to add: I just had the thought that approaching any problem from a law enforcement angle is treating the symptoms and not the cause. It almost ensures an on-going stream of work because it just doesn't address the fundamental problem.
A law enforcement approach doesn't protect children, it punishes offenders. It doesn't make vulnerable children any less vulnerable.
A law enforcement approach is harvesting pus instead of attempting to treat the infection.
Er, what statistics are you basing that on? That sounds like an old stereotype, because every study I've seen on it says that marriage is great for mental and physical health.
> it ends in divorce (which statistically is most of the time),
More defensible, but depends how you read the data; if you ignore serial divorcees the rate drops a lot (i.e. if I'm reading this right, half of people who get married never divorce, but the other half get divorced and then keep remarrying and divorcing, which rather skews the numbers if you just count by marriage).
Let's think of the children for a moment! The children in the EU, GB and the USA will grow up under constant surveillance. So much growing up today happens in connection with digital communication. To invade children's privacy like this is just sick.
This isn’t even getting into social media, and also spread of attention problems and screens. But in a way, I sense most parents were not yet adjusted to the new reality of the internet in the last 2 decades, and we’re all playing catch up for regulation.