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

> 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.

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.

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.

> I don’t see how you can ignore the massively negative effects pornography has on mostly young men

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.

This is actually a pretty sound framework and I mostly agree. Usually it's justifiable to intervene when somebody is harming someone else and not before. I think it's a bit oversimplified, though. Do you think it might contribute to the incel epidemic and the associated violence? In that sense one could make a similar line of argument to that of the temperance movement's talk of alcohol contributing to wife-beating (which it did). I don't believe that indirection leaves a clear enough link to justify state violence to ban something, but there do exist less explicitly moralistic arguments for it. Not really my position but it's not constructive to reduce every criticism to "moralizing".

> Do you think it might contribute to the incel epidemic and the associated violence?

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.