Supreme Court's ruling practically wipes out free speech for sex writing online

I don’t really appreciate this framing. Despite being a very conservative Christian (at least in many ways, if not others) I don’t approve of or agree with the scope of SCOTUS’ current ruling, nor do I approve of all the age- verification laws as written. It seems futile to attempt to make everybody everywhere do this and create a locked-down “second internet” for minors.

But I do understand the impetus. As a zoomer, I’ve heard the problems particularly young men addicted to pornography have caused with some gal friends of mine they’ve dated. I’ve seen the normalization of what I view as degenerate sex acts as the treadmill of endlessly-escalating erotic-novelism spins without ceasing. I’ve watched people become more absorbed in their strange autosexual fixations than their spouses. It doesn’t seem good, or healthy, or sustainable, and I resent the contributions the proliferation of online pornography has made to these issues.

At some level I see this like sixties versus modern marijuana, where a more mild herb (or dad’s playboys beneath the mattress) has been supplanted by THC distilled and bottled into vapes (endlessly-available presence of any outlandish fetishistic stuff.) I wouldn’t like my child exposed to either but I can live with one.

Of course, I see it as primarily the parent’s responsibility to inculcate the virtue to disdain both. The state can’t nanny its way out of this one. But it’s always easier to pick a scapegoat that can’t vote (tax the corporations/rich, make the corporations implement age-filtering, etc.) than to tell people to take a hike and learn to parent.

Especially the government.

The problem with moralistic thinking is that it's stupid and it blows up, and we've known this for hundreds of years. What you view as moral means fuck-all. I don't particularly care if you think something is degenerate, and in fact by using a term like degenerate I respect you less as a person.

So when morals are used as the sole reason to justify law, we have a problem. Morals were used to justify slavery. To justify a lack of suffrage. To justify legal domestic abuse.

What's changed since then? Time. The passage of time. But time does not stop. Where will we be in 10 years, or 20? Progressing forward, ideally, but that's not a guarantee. We're laying the ground work for abuse.

For a large part of the American constituency, anything containing homosexuals is degenerate pornography. Right now. So if "it's pornography" is our justification, we have a problem.

I think we agree that said laws are bad, but why they're bad matters. The wider-scale implication is that moralistic law making is bad. Listening to Christians and having them come up with laws based on their personal beliefs is bad. Appealing to the American purity culture is bad. This is all ripe for abuse.

Morality bears directly on what we consider to be a just society, so I don’t care if you don’t care. You’re broadening the scope beyond this particular issue, where I’m guessing I agree with you.

It’s not virtuous to act right because the state makes you, but the question of what we require and preclude is defined by our moral frameworks at some level.

I’m not sure with whom you’re arguing about the homosexuals point. I view a lot of things of degenerate I wouldn’t ban. Most adults I see are fat, thus gluttons, thus are committing a sin. It’s just not particularly my business to meddle in what’s between them and God and Satan. I didn’t suggest we “retvrn to Comstock” or something.

I don’t see how you can ignore the massively negative effects pornography has on mostly young men, particularly if you think about the marijuana analogy and how it’s increased in strength and availability. Novel hyperstimuli are a big issue. Just like supernormal stimuli tend to increase obesity and cause metabolic dysfunction.

A ton of lawmaking is moralistic. Eg the way I grew up I think it’s fine for two guys to settle something with a fight provided it’s clean and nobody’s kicking someone when he’s down. A bunch of people with different morals (“all violence is wrong”) told the cops to start arresting people for that sort of thing. I think stealing is wrong and vote to tell the cops to arrest people for that, while others (because of their morality) say that “it’s systemic factors” and turn people loose for sub-$1k or so, or sometimes don’t believe in property rights the same way I do. I don’t believe that income tax is just, nor federally-administered welfare, but a ton of people voted to tell the feds to take money and do just that.

I’m not sure how you can suddenly flip to “moralistic legislation is wrong actually” in such a selective sense just because it’s movitated by Christianity or right-wing ideology for once.

Can you provide any source for this?

> I don’t approve of or agree with the scope of SCOTUS’ current ruling, nor do I approve of all the age- verification laws as written. It seems futile to attempt to make everybody everywhere do this and create a locked-down “second internet” for minors.

That's not the intent. The intent from the get-go has been to "Baptise" the internet as "God's creation", and to shove out anyone not worthy of God's salvation - as determined by religious leaders. When the initial argument of "the internet is a creation of Satan" didn't work out, the religious leaders in the USA pivoted towards calling it a gift from God and demonizing anyone who "sullied" that gift in their eyes.

> I’ve heard the problems particularly young men addicted to pornography have caused with some gal friends of mine they’ve dated. I’ve seen the normalization of what I view as degenerate sex acts as the treadmill of endlessly-escalating erotic-novelism spins without ceasing. I’ve watched people become more absorbed in their strange autosexual fixations than their spouses. It doesn’t seem good, or healthy, or sustainable, and I resent the contributions the proliferation of online pornography has made to these issues.

Your observations are completely valid. As someone who creates smut (let's just call it what it is), there's a very real problem with people in general getting caught up in fantasies and ignoring reality. However, my observations suggest that pornography is just the convenient scapegoat for a society that constantly markets escapism as entertainment and penalizes anything that doesn't involve spending money. All forms of entertainment have been perverted to maximize chemical responses in humans, in order to sell more stuff. Your beef isn't with pornography so much as it is with the present consumerist hellscape, and a society that demands both spouses work full-time to have a chance at survival rather than balance the needs of the family by allowing every couple to have a spouse stay at home and make the house, if they so choose. Which brings me to your next point...

> At some level I see this like sixties versus modern marijuana, where a more mild herb (or dad’s playboys beneath the mattress) has been supplanted by THC distilled and bottled into vapes (endlessly-available presence of any outlandish fetishistic stuff.) I wouldn’t like my child exposed to either but I can live with one.

That's...man, I want to argue this, but I got nothing. You're basically describing what I did up above, with the proper analogy. As a cannabis user myself, you're entirely correct about the potency and convenient availability being an issue, and I'd absolutely like to see more penalties for physical distribution of these things to minors while also de-glamorizing some of this stuff. Sell the product, not the experience, basically.

> Of course, I see it as primarily the parent’s responsibility to inculcate the virtue to disdain both.

That's where we align - the avowed democratic socialist and the conservative Christian agreeing that, at the end of the day, it's the parent's responsibility to parent, and it's the individual's responsibility to make better choices - including seeking help for problems they're having. Where we may disagree on approach, however (I dunno, this is kinda speculating here based on other CC's I know/lived with/attended Church with), is that I believe the steps towards minimizing or eliminating harms is destigmatizing these things in the first place. It means getting over our societal aversion to SEX, a natural biological thing we've been doing as a species for millennia. It means getting over our disdain for addicts, and offering help.

If these ghouls (passing the laws) actually cared about children, families, or humans in general, they'd be supporting rehabilitation instead of penalizing consenting adults. They'd be penalizing exploitative employers and creating a tax structure that rewards stay-at-home partners while enabling every couple to have one such partner.

That's not what's happening, though, and I resent being denigrated as some sort of sick degenerate by a government that won't even feed its fucking kids.

I ignore it because I've only ever gotten responses of morality. Which, as I've said, I think are stupid.

My point about morality is that it's the same morality that oppresses homosexuals, or previously black people and women. It's not a different morality - it's the same reasoning.

Some thing is immoral because of our beliefs, so we censor it or restrict actions. Throughout history, this has only gone poorly - no exceptions. I have no reason to believe it will work out this time.

You might say, "well it hasn't always gone poorly, what about murder?" Yes, murder has morality argument, but it doesn't only have morality arguments. It has real-world effects. It denies someone of their unalienable rights, mainly by ending their lives.

Pornography only has moral arguments, which is why I reject them.

The framing is objectively accurate. Perhaps you should reconsider the group you identify with.

Those "degenerate sex acts" were normal enough when the Bible was written that they were included in the Bible.

Most of our ancestors would regard modern Americans as hideously prudish.

It is irrational to hate the entire religion because of select elements, past or present. You are in effect committing the same act of hatred you are accusing Christians of.

Why do the opinions of my ancestors bear on that, and which ones are you talking about? Most of the ones I can think of, unless you run back to the days of tribal europe, would see the culture today as hideously liberalized. Regardless a lot of my ancestors probably did a lot of things I don’t think are right. Heck, I’ve done plenty of things I don’t think are right. None of that effects what actually is and isn’t morally good.

If I’m not running around telling off couples who leave the bar together, what do you care?

Yikes dude.

> …to back up what I’ve consistently observed with my own eyes

People have observed everything UFOs and demons to ivermectin curing their COVID. None of it is real but yet people continue to swear up and down on these things gs.

> ...given the speed at which research sometimes move

Filling in knowledge gaps with imagination is not a substitute for actual data. Ever.

> and particularly since any concern over perceived “sexual liberation” attacks one of the sacred cows of progressivism

Hard disagree. You yourself can go study human psychology and sexuality then perform studies. If you can assemble real data the scientific community would be forever grateful for your contributions. The real barrier is not “liberals”, it’s that it takes years upon years of hard work to get there. Unlike your comment, which is backed up by “my own eyes”.

> I know the research is there and has been if you’re actually interested

Leading with “I don’t need citations”, then promising that they’re “totally there” at the bottom doesn’t really sit right with me.

Anyways, it’s not the role of the state to legislate morality. That always ends poorly. If porn is bad for kids, then parents need to step up. Maybe the state could offer resources for parents - I’m not opposed to that. If it’s bad for adults, they those with chronic habits should seek help.

After the previous election, I felt wildly out of touch, and I’ve been trying to find people who I can talk to who might be able to help me improve understanding of my (metaphorical) neighbors. I suspect that our beliefs will be quite different, but I appreciate your willingness to provide long-form, respectful responses to so many comments here.

If you’re up for it, my email is in my profile

This is not how fatness works.

Some people are genetically predisposed to gaining weight easily. Some people are literally just hungrier and have a higher satiety threshold. This is why "just eat less" is horribly ineffective.

Diet and exercise help but are more Band-Aids than a true long-term fix. Many people gain MORE weight after a period of intense dieting and exercise than before. There's a saying that summarizes this conundrum well: "Nobody knows more about diets than fat people."

I am sure that you mean well, but please understand that this is a very complex topic.

That's because a period of intense dieting is unsustainable non-sense.

Diets as a temporary thing can only give temporary results. Permanent results require permanent changes.

I just don't see that as "my religion". That's not what I believe. In a certain sense an Eastern Orthodox Christian and a Missouri Synod Lutheran both have the "same religion", but for practical purposes they do not.

In the source you linked most of the references in scripture were from the Old Testament. I am a Christian, which means I am part of a new covenant with God. Just like I can wear mixed fabrics, I believe that owning slavery is a flagrant violation of the Second Great Commandment: "Love your neighbor as yourself."

All but one of the New Testament sources were from sources besides Christ. Fallible men, whose words hold some value but are certainly imperfect. I realize this belief separates me from a majority of Christians, but it's far from the only objection I have to particularly Paul's Letters.

As for the quotation from Luke, I read this in the same way I read, "Render therefore unto Caesar the things which are Caesar's," as a rebuke of petty earthly concerns. In that verse, he certainly wasn't endorsing taxation, as he later spoke of tax collectors in Matthew 9:12 as among "they that are sick".

I'm not sure why you infodumped a landing page at me or why you think I'm a fan of slavery, but you left multiple (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44548475, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44548632) so I'm going to consolidate responses. The Ten Commandments were obviated by the New Covenant, so I don't understand why you think God would need to add a new commandment. The Roman Catholic Pope is also not "my pope"; I don't believe in that concept at all and am not a Roman Catholic.

To your question, "are you for not either changing it or renouncing that religion?" I have thought about renouncing Christianity in the past, yes. I had a very long questioning phase, and continue to question. Much of that questioning has led to fruitful conversations with friends from a number of different religious backgrounds and shaped by beliefs. It has also led me to break with the structure of most denominations.

Lastly, why I'm not "doing something?" I already allocate my time, talent, and treasure to a local charity I co-founded some years back. I deeply believe in its mission and know all those resources go to good use, unlike with many large, international NGOs. It helps people from my town, if mostly from the other side of it. I believe in rightly-ordered love, and in working to take care of a problem I can see and understand and work to remedy, thanks to the advantage I have being present in this town, before looking elsewhere.

If you want good evidence that this is hard to study well, even if you maintain that political concerns are a non-issue, around 11% of men report some agreement with the statement, "I am addicted to pornography." https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7044607 Of course, another analysis found that just 51.7% of men used pornography, which seems optimistically low: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11234758/ See the concerns I mentioned around getting truthful data, which are also well-known within nutrition. 17.4% of those men were "problematic" pornography users.

I'm back on a laptop now so can pull this up a little easier, but I don't think you're defending this from the right angle. It's the same as when the marijuana legalization advocates say "it's basically medicine lol" or deny that addiction is possible and that it's known to somewhat increase risk of schizophrenia, because they are scared that admitting that something is bad means they are somehow supporting a ban on it. There are a lot of bad things people consume and I support banning very few of those. Pornography is not one. Please don't mistake my position.

I'll also point out that my original comment explicitly stated that I didn't see it as the role of the state but of parents. I'm not sure with whom you're arguing here about that.

It's not an issue of metabolism. I've walked in on people sneaking a junk food binge at 1:30AM too many times to believe this. I've seen all the sneak-eating, all the extra oily sauce when they think "well it's a salad", to believe that.

Diet and exercise are actually great long-term fixes, they're just not easy. We can see this pretty well by how reducing appetite via a GLP-1 agonist helps to decrease body fat, even with older-generation drugs that act almost entirely by just reducing appetite and increasing satiety rather than by additional mechanisms. There are also benefits like increased muscle mass increasing one's BMR so the same-size meal might no longer cause one to gain fat.

I understand that it's complex. It doesn't mean I want to blame or castigate people. I can empathize strongly with struggling against impulses to sin.

Both sides of my family also have extensive history of alcoholism. This has caused me to be very, very careful around alcohol, because despite a predisposition, drunkenness is still a sin. Somebody may have anger issues, but clocking somebody is still a sin. Many of us will have all these impulses or commit these sins. Most of the time, my reaction is to sit and empathize, particularly for "victimless crimes" (rather, sins where the only victim is one's own soul.)

I don't see any moral benefit to forcing people not to sin. There's no virtue when there's no choice.

I strongly agree with you on escapism and consumerism. I see pornography as a nasty end-stage manifestation of this, but not as the root issue. I've also seen peers spend way too much time rotting in front of netflix or tiktok or videogames, or addicted to shopping, or spending their money traveling to highly-instagrammable destinations and posting it. I have a huge beef with what you're describing, very true, and consumerist hellscape is a great characterization. Sticking with the drug analogy, I think it's like cocaine vs. fentanyl. It seems like many fewer people can consume is "recreationally" without some level of harm if they do it repeatedly over time. I also tend to key on it more because it so explicitly pertains to what I see as some of the most beautiful and sacred elements of creation (love, sex, marriage). But it's absolutely one manifestation of a greater issue.

I tend to agree with you that "purity culture" is bad and that America has a weirdly-victorian air about it that almost seems to tempt people more. I see alcohol as another example of this; I'd prefer my kids didn't drink until they were older and in the right place/at the right time, but our current set-up just makes most kids get blackout the first half-dozen times they drink.

To be honest, it's still not something I'd be comfortable sitting and discussing personally, but I think there's a difference between "not polite dinner-table conversation" and "God forbid anyone mentions it ever."

I agree with you that lawmakers don't care one whit about children, families, or people. I wish some of my fellow Christians weren't so quick to assume that "their guy" is actually going to fix anything, and see it as a way to disclaim responsibility for working on their own families and communities in particular. I think I've noticed more of this amongst my peer group, a basic distrust of particularly the federal and state governments across the political and ideological spectra. I hope this drives us to focus on fixing what we can. Work on our families rather than calling state assemblymen, work more to feed our homeless rather than expecting the feds to implement a perfect nationwide solution. And I hope rather than politicization, Christianity in America focuses more on the Second Great Commandment, "Love your neighbor as yourself."

Fair enough. I chose my example poorly. My point still stands: personal anecdotes are a terrible way of understanding most anything.

> It's the same as when the marijuana legalization advocates say "it's basically medicine lol" or deny that addiction is possible

100% feel you here. Even as a user.

> There are a lot of bad things people consume and I support banning very few of those. Pornography is not one. Please don't mistake my position.

I appreciate your clarity here and I apologize for being a bit of jerk. So often it feels like people choose views purely on their own internal personal morality. Not a larger live-and-let-live attitude. Which kinda ties into the cannabis legalization thing above imo. The truth was fudged to make the moral argument easier - because that convinces people.

So, again, apologies for jumping down your throat and I appreciate the links.

No actually I don't, not at all. I blame the patriachy and feminism for the creation of incels. Not in the sense that feminism is bad, but the contrary.

What I mean is, incels have always existed. However, our tolerance for widespread misbehavior of men has grown thinner over the last 70 years.

When I was in college, it was typical to hear "oh man, don't go to that frat house, they roofie!" Looking back, it's almost comical. What? They... roofie? Is... anybody going to do anything about this? Should I tell someone? No, evidently - just don't go there.

Of course, it used to be worse. Men used to be able to just beat women, and nobody cared. Financial abuse was not only common, it was mandated by law.

We've come a long, long way. And, we've left a lot of men behind. Before, you could be a piece of shit and still be almost guaranteed a marriage, or at least sex. Our standards for behavior are much higher.

Men have been, understandably, slow to evolve. It's a much less sweet deal. This is compounded by the fact we've really never had a progressive movement for men. To this day, there are infinite ways to be a heterosexual woman - but there's only one way to be a heterosexual man. Men are closed in, trapped, by social expectations. We carry all the baggage of the patriarchy and misogyny of days gone, but we reap few benefits. We are not so liberated, not so open-minded.

It's a fine line. You must evolve, but not too much so that you may reject the performance of masculinity. You must be progressive, but not so much so. You must be traditional, but only in the right ways. Some men, even a lot of men, cannot keep up or fit into what is expected of them. And, there's no moving back.