[Antoninus]

I'm old enough to remember that it was still available and still easy to get before the "enlightened" Supreme Court, so please don't try and pretend like it was hard to get when it was "outlawed" because it wasn't hard to get at all.

So you are telling me that any 12 year old could access images of two men eating each others feces when you were a kid? Spare me. I was a kid in the 1970s and things have changed completely since then in terms of access to porn. That same 12 year old kid can have thousands of images of the most sickening depravity known to man burned into his brain within 10 minutes.

The problem with your argument is that there has never been anything like the internet, and regardless of the laws on the books, once you go down the road of having the government censor any part of the internet, we're on the road to becoming China or Saudi Arabia.

The internet is no different than any other form of mass media. Obscenity laws that were applied to mass media in the 1940s could easily be applied to the internet.

And I'm sure you know that the slippery slope argument is a fallacy. That's why I'm not using it to demonstrate how the loosening of porn laws will result in even greater cultural devastation for our children and grandchildren.

[Utmost Certainty]

Preventing 12-year olds from seeing obscene material, is the parents’ job. The Federal Govt has no business in this.

[af_vet_rr]

So you are telling me that any 12 year old could access images of two men eating each others feces when you were a kid? Spare me. I was a kid in the 1970s and things have changed completely since then in terms of access to porn. That same 12 year old kid can have thousands of images of the most sickening depravity known to man burned into his brain within 10 minutes.

How about parents not letting their kids on the internet without supervision? That's a lot easier than having the federal government install filtering software and creating new bureaucracy. And don't think that this wouldn't lead to more bureaucracy - thousands of fed jobs would be created to police the internet, determining what is and isn't obscene, which internet providers are in compliance, etc.

The internet is no different than any other form of mass media. Obscenity laws that were applied to mass media in the 1940s could easily be applied to the internet.

Actually it's very different because you and I interact on it every single day. I don't have a TV station broadcasting from my office, I don't have a radio station broadcasting whatever I choose to my neighbors, I don't have a printing press cranking out newspapers and magazines.

But I do have the internet, and what is obscene to a Muslim may not be obscene to me or you, but once that camel gets his nose in the tent, all kinds of things will start being labeled as obscene.

As I said, parents need to take responsibility for their children. This idea that the federal government needs to police the internet because parents won't monitor their own kids is ridiculous.

[Melas]

The internet is no different than any other form of mass media. Obscenity laws that were applied to mass media in the 1940s could easily be applied to the internet.

Oh the irony. The very fact that I just read the above statement which you transmitted via the internet to be read by an untold number of readers, and I am in return broadcasting my own thoughts in reply over the same medium demonstrates why the internet is COMPLETELY DIFFERENT from any other form of mass media.