Posted on 02/14/2013 6:08:31 AM PST by Mrs. Don-o
The unprecedented censorship is justified by fears about damaging effects of the internet on children and women.
Ogmundur Jonasson, Iceland's interior minister, is drafting legislation to stop the access of online pornographic images and videos by young people through computers, games consoles and smartphones.
"We have to be able to discuss a ban on violent pornography, which we all agree has a very harmful effects on young people and can have a clear link to incidences of violent crime," he said.
Methods under consideration include blocking access to pornographic website addresses and making it illegal to use Icelandic credit cards to access pay-per-view pornography.
A law forbidding the printing and distribution of pornography is already in force in Iceland but it has yet to be updated to cover the internet.
The proposals are expected to become law this year despite a general election in April.
"There is a strong consensus building in Iceland. We have so many experts from educationalists to the police and those who work with children behind this, that this has become much broader than party politics," Halla Gunnarsdottir, a political adviser to Mr Jonasson told the Daily Mail.
The proposed control over online access...is justified as a defence of vulnerable women and children.
"Iceland is taking a very progressive approach that no other democratic country has tried," said Professor Gail Dines, an expert on pornography and at a recent conference at Reykjavik University. "It is looking a pornography from a new position - from the perspective of the harm it does to the women who appear in it and as a violation of their civil rights."
(Excerpt) Read more at telegraph.co.uk ...
The problem is, as always, what is porn and what is art? Opinions vary. Nudes (female) are fine with me, sex is not.
....that's sitting in your driveway?........
There are people who lack porn. Let us work together to help them!
They've already got that in place --- the exceptionless legal protection of porn on Public Library internet --- in California and, I presume, elsewhere as well.
So if I'm a home-schooling parent, it's my job to keep my children out of the Public Library? And all other children as well, because sick memes run through groups of kids like a virus?
What right has the ACLU to make Public Libraries unusable by the very part of the public to whom they are indispensible: parents with kids? Am I a threat to democracy because I don't want my kids to "open any door" and stumble upon an inches-away zoom shot of a well-hung male f*cking a well-hung male?
Are you saying, as well, that during all those decades when porn WAS suppressed by interstate commerce laws, everybody had the law wrong, but now that the mind-adhesive filth is everywhere, we've finally got what the Founding Fathers wanted?
And are you not familiar with Communist aims for breaking down society, or do you think that's some sort of Conservative canard?
18. Eliminate all laws governing obscenity by calling them "censorship" and a violation of free speech and free press.I would be a tad more satisfied with the Free Republic if it would make a clean break with the ACLU.19. Break down culture standards of morality by promoting pornography and obscenity in books, magazines, motion pictures, radio, and T.V.
20. Present homosexuality, degeneracy, and promiscuity, as "normal, natural, healthy."
Second, note well this simile:
16th century nudes: internet pornography :: 16th century beer: IV heroin.
What we have today is corrosive beyond compare; there's not been anything like it ever in the history of the world for technical production values, universal instant accessibility, and rank perversion.
Although whatever was going on on the threshing-floor of Baal-peor (Hosea Chapter 9) might be comparable in terms of an abomination that stinks to Heaven and pollutes the earth, and a spectacle that pleases the Slayer.
You have made a reasonable point that in child pornography, there is the additional problem of child (what do they call them? actors? stars? models? rapees?) being utilized in the production. The Japanese have solved that particular problem with child rapee CGI's.
But there is the additional problem that, as I said in #35, the First Amendment was arguably intended to protect all controversial speech and publishing, i.e. the conveyance of ideas. Cognitive content. That did not include, even then, sedition, which is a form of treason; and I would argue it did not include porn, which is arousal-based (which is to say, comparable to the purveying of a harmful drug) --- and not communication-based.
I think it could be objectively defined, too. And on a more objective basis than, "I don't know how to define it, but I know it when I see it."
I don't think the "prurient interest" criterion is utterly useless, but going a step further, surely some University can monitor the sexual arousal patterns of experimental subject-viewers, program that basic info into a computer, and thereafter use the computer make a reasonable assessment of whether the material in question is physiological-arousal oriented rather than intellectual-cognitive oriented.
That's interesting, and of course I agree with you.
But why is sex special? Why does it require a greater degree of maturity to legally consent to sex, than to consent to a foot-massage or a shoulder-rub or even a ride in a tilt-a-whirl?
With children pre-puberty, the unwanted-pregnancy risk does not exist, nor does it exist for an older child if the sex is confined to the usual sterile copulatory perversions; and if the adult perp is either infection-free or condom-equipped or otherwise shrink-wrapped for freshness and quality assurance, the STI risk does not exist either.
(But excuse my use of the disrespectful "perp". Now they call themselves adepts at intergenerational love, sexuality mentors, or even activists for children's sexual rights.)
So, prescinding from pregnancy and infection, what reasons are there for protecting children from sexual access? And if those reasons are not really compelling, will they not necessarily be dropped in favor of equal rights, the liberty interest, and (no doubt somebody will call this a means of free expression) The First Amendment?
Conversely, if sexual exposure really IS harmful to children -- as these scrupulously agnostic Icelandic "experts" say it is --- wouldn't that justify curbing the universal (including childrens') access to adult porn, which is the Internet status quo?
What’s interesting here is that Iceland want to be the first country to allow for totally anonymous leaks.
It is already against the law for a journalist to reveal a source.
So in Iceland, you can get arrested for looking at a nekkid set of boobs, but you may very well be able to expose national security secrets with no repercussions.
(Maybe they’ve inhaled too much volcanic ash)
I think this is a very interesting discussion, because it involves both liberty and morality. The First Amendment is not absolute, and I don’t think the founders would have permitted what’s freely available today. They would have said we’re crazy to think the First Amendment protects any kind of speech or expression, including perverse sex.
I prefer community standards, letting groups decide what is best for themselves. However, I also see the liberty point of view, that adults should be able to choose to see what they want to see, and I worry about a government strong enough to ban whatever it thinks is obscene (Are guns obscene? Some libs would probably say so!).
I can only imagine what’s available online these days. I don’t see myself as a prude. I’m not offended by nudity or natural sexual relations between a man and woman, although I prefer it be kept private (seeing a nude woman doesn’t mean I must lust after her, but it could lead to that. Therefore, it’s better to avoid even mild stuff). However, I think we’re way, way past that.
So where do we draw the line? Who gets to decide?
You can theorize that the first amendment doesn't protect speech that is intended to arouse, you can even invent a "cognitive test" but neither are supported by a textual or historical analysis of the 1st amendment. Further even if you could demonstrably prove without a shadow of a doubt that it is not protected speech, that does not give government the legitimate power to ban it.
Please note that your argument is directly analogous to that of the liberals anti 2nd amendment arguments of "The founders never intended the 2nd amendment to protect assault weapons". Further it forwards the premise that government has any power except for those specifically curtailed, which while wildly popular amongst democrats, turns constitution principle on it's head.
The only legal way to ban pornography is via constitutional amendment and even that would be dubious considering the 1st amendment which does not grant a right but recognizes a natural right.
Porn will torture your appetite, defraud your instincts, disorder your reactions, frustrate your spouse, and make marital contentment impossible. It will make you nominate RINO's, vote for Democrats, and canonize Kennedies.
Porn will harden your heart, scar your spirit, and encourage you to stay on the couch diddling yourself when you should be making a marinade for a standing rib roast.
Porn tells lies about girls.
Porn makes hearts hard and unresponsive, and minds soft as fresh excreta. Porn is the culmination of a once-decent, large, nearly hairless mammal's imbecility. Porn will take up permanent residence in a boy's mind and turn it into a place he wouldn't want to share with Jesus.
Porn makes other self-respecting vertebrates back off from you, looking for a way to make a final, definitive break with your trashcans, your celluloid, and your civilization.
Porn conjures the spirit of the Marquis de Sade and exposes middle-schoolers to painful confusion and frightening dreams.
Porn makes a summer day smell strange. Porn sours your spirit and makes filthy remarks to your soul. It makes a good, wise, loving lady distrust you.
Porn angers the angels: it makes Michael the Archangel reach for the sword of wrath.
Porn is Amsterdam in dogppop without the cleansing rain, San Francisco fog with an underlay of diesel and urine. It's Bishop Gene Robinson. It's Hugh Hefner, Charlie Sheen, Lindsay Lohan, and the ugly Anti-America they constructed on top of the America we loved.
It is Out and Proud Anal-Americans.
It makes you feel like you got something foul in your mouth that you can't get out with Listerine.
Porn is your brother's bright and pretty daughter addicted to Quilts or whatever sedative-hynotic drug they give these girls to keep them (temporarily) non-suicidal.
It’s like a parade with free purple Koolaid and cheerleaders with gonorrhea.
Porn shames the people you love the most, and the people most worthy of your love.
It's a girl named Annie who had her need to trust and be trusted, delight and be delighted, love and be loved, buried under a avalanche of callousness, cruelty and stink. Porn reeks of Money, Mammon, and Moloch.
Porn is incredibly bad people getting incredibly rich and giving the money to Barack Obama.
Porn is Madonna and Lady Gaga making an absurdity of their bodies and telling people to vote for Ms Candidate (D-Sodom) who is enlightened, progressive, and a cretin.
Porn makes you stupid.
Porn enables divorce lawyers to buy mansions built on the three continents of Lies, Spiritual Nullity, and Liberalism. Porn pushes old people so far into loneliness they can't find their own soul.
Porn is telling God He was wrong: the good embrace He invented for life and love, has been twisted and turned into an insignificant itch, a loveless twitch and a dead end.
Porn mainstreams the deviant: it's a consciousness-cheat and a social deformer. It is created by bad cultures and it creates bad cultures. It changes people's reaction to the question, "What is sex for?" and even "What are people for?"
It dehumanizes what was once the most precious, intimate and creative activity on earth. And video stuff that used to be "corrupting the morals of a minor" is now state-subsidized University course material --- or dorm activity.
But it's a start.
Wow, this is crazy talk.
Men look at porn occasionally, it rarely ruins their lives but you make it sound like the worst thing on earth!
OTOH, porn was restricted in the USA for many decades, without, I think, deleterious results.
The Icelanders will be facing identical questions. It will be interesting to see how they deal with it.
And yet...
It does do all those things. It's not just a matter of men looking at porn occasionally. It's a matter of the ubiquity of this perverse, penetrating and persuasive junk-sex propaganda, which, like drugs, loses its effectiveness unless the dosage is ramped up.
It's getting hugely more perverse, and, for the kids, almost unavoidable.
Not talking about nekkid ladies and people getting all jiggy and conjugal. I'm talking about foul stuff I can't even describe here.
Other than that, Laz, this is all true, as you know.
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