Slashdot Mirror
Utah Governor: 'Porn Is a Public Health Crisis' (cnet.com)
An anonymous reader writes: Utah Governor Gary Herbert said on his Facebook page: "Pornography is a public health crisis. The problem is rampant, yet it thrives in secrecy and silence." He emitted this thought on signing a resolution which says porn is "a public health hazard leading to a broad spectrum of individual and public health impacts and societal harms." In addition, it "perpetuates a sexually toxic environment." The resolution doesn't just stop there. It goes on to say "due to advances in technology and the universal availability of the Internet, young children are exposed to what used to be referred to as hard core, but is now considered mainstream, pornography at an alarming rate." The resolution says pornography "equates violence toward women and children with sex and pain with pleasure, which increases the demand for sex trafficking, prostitution, child sexual abuse images, and child pornography." It requests "the need for education, prevention, research, and policy change at the community and societal level in order to address the pornography epidemic that is harming the people of our state and nation." In the words of Gov. Gary Herbert, "Today's bills will start an open discussion." I couldn't agree more...
Especially in Utah!
"Be particularly skeptical when presented with evidence confirming what you already believe." -
Time.
When porn was legalized in Denmark in the 1970'es, rape went down significantly. Later studies have shown that the places with the most and best internet connections[1] have the lowest number of rape cases.
[1] The internet is for porn[2], obviously.
[2] Insert AvenueQ video here.
They've all been restricted to some extent, with attempts made to expand the restrictions.
The way you can tell if something is actually a public health issue is to figure out if it is a cause or problems or a symptom.
The problem is that sugar is needleslly subsidized so their economic cost isn't realized in their market price. Some consumption of sugar is fine but as a society we've gone WAY beyond what is demonstrably healthy. So over consumption of sugary drinks is a public health crisis because it is a significant factor in obesity, diabetes and other conditions common in the population. Eat too much sugar and you get fat and/or diabetes and/or other illnesses. Cause and effect.
Smoking IS a genuine public health crisis. There are innumerable diseases with clear causal relationships to smoking. It's not even a debate that it is a public health issue. Smoking clearly causes illnesses
Porn is NOT a genuine health crisis. Arguments to that effect are people looking for an excuse to interject their own morality in most cases. At most it is a symptom of people who have genuine mental health issues but the porn isn't the cause. Porn doesn't cause mental health issues but mental health issue might result in porn. You won't make the mental health issue go away by suppressing or removing access to porn. Even nasty stuff like kiddie-porn does not cause mental health problems - it merely shows us where they already exist.
most nudity that is porn portrays abusive behavior
Citation needed. If I pull up Xvideos or Redtube or some other site mega-site, most of the videos on the first few pages, which is a reasonably diverse selection of heterosexual-oriented porn, doesn't look like it features chicks getting fishhooked, donkey punched, facialed, or otherwise degraded.....well, beyond the stereotypically rapey Japanese stuff, anyway. There is some for sure, but definitely not >50%, which I would consider a minimum cutoff for "most". And given the rise of camwhore shows and amateur couples uploading their sexcapades, I'd say abuse in porn products is overall in a decline. The sort of stuff produced by the crew at Facial Abuse is not an industry standard.