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

(ellsberg.substack.com)
693 points macawfish | 5 comments | 12 Jul 25 18:14 UTC | HN request time: 1.029s | source
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landl0rd ◴[12 Jul 25 20:32 UTC] No.44544935[source]▶
> conservative Christians are trying to eliminate ALL sexually-related speech 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.

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const_cast ◴[12 Jul 25 20:56 UTC] No.44545094[source]▶
You might not be pushing for it, but certainly your fellow conservative Christians are.

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.

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landl0rd ◴[12 Jul 25 21:07 UTC] No.44545168[source]▶
No, some of them are. More evangelicals than my crowd.

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.

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boroboro4 ◴[12 Jul 25 21:39 UTC] No.44545414[source]▶
> massively negative effects pornography has on mostly young men

Can you provide any source for this?

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1. McAlpine5892 ◴[13 Jul 25 04:02 UTC] No.44547383[source]▶
> I don’t need a source…

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.

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2. landl0rd ◴[14 Jul 25 01:38 UTC] No.44555607[source]▶
Don, we've discussed this on an old account of mine so at this point I'm pretty convinced you are set in your beliefs and more interested in publicly lambasting mine. But, for the sake of this thread, fine.

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.

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3. landl0rd ◴[14 Jul 25 01:43 UTC] No.44555650[source]▶
Do you really think it's fair to compare a questionable UFO sighting to what I've learned from talking with and knowing people, seeing how this affects them? I don't think it is. Or talking with their girlfriends and hearing about this issue.

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.

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4. ◴[14 Jul 25 06:41 UTC] No.44557113{3}[source]▶
5. McAlpine5892 ◴[14 Jul 25 08:19 UTC] No.44557618{3}[source]▶
> Do you really think it's fair to compare a questionable UFO sighting

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.