Total porn ban proposed by Michigan lawmakers

[Ninurta]

Pornography is promoting degenerate behavior in an effort to destroy our culture, our American way of life. It's part of the 45 communist goals entered into congressional records. 

Does it really "promote" degenerate behavior? Would it, for example, induce someone who was not already disposed to view it to seek it out? How, exactly, would it accomplish that? How would one select the censors who determine what is and is not porn if the act of viewing it would then corrupt them?

As far as porn being a communist plot goes, porn was around long before communism was even a totalitarian's wet dream. It extends back into prehistoric times, and can be found in prehistoric sculptures and cave paintings. It is just part of the makeup of some humans - which fact, by itself, does not preclude it being a "sexual aberration" - those run a gamut, a range of behaviors that, viewed by one human may be considered  "degenerate" or "weird", but would seem perfectly normal to another.

What I'm getting at here is that just because you or I may think this or that is "degenerate", and would not view it or engage in it ourselves, does that give us the right to determine what someone else can or cannot do of view in the absence of it causing harm to some third party? If the answer to that is in the affirmative, where do we draw the line in our authoritarian quest to tell other folks what they can and cannot do, see, and think? For example, I believe eating veal promotes killing off baby animals, not much different than abortion - how much prison time should I give veal eaters? Or should I just execute them so that they aren't promoting degeneration in MY society?

Because you see, once we start telling others how they can and cannot live (in the absence of an action causing harm to third parties, of course), society is no longer a common property - it suddenly belongs only to the Masters, who believe themselves to have a birthright to tell the Slaves what they can and cannot do.

I find that to be objectionable and vulgar. I object to it whether the authoritarianism is coming from the Left OR the Right. A mere political leaning does not make it proper to seize unwarranted power over someone else. When we delegate the authority to a person or group that allows them to tell other, third parties how to live, how long will it be before those people turn that awesome power against those who delegated it to them to begin with?

To my way of thinking, there is far more danger to Society here in the "cure" than there is in the supposed disease.

However, this bothers me because how will you judge what is pornographic? Better yet, the question should be "who will judge what is pornographic?" Can someone's subjective reaction (being aroused) to a video, a song, a book, or an artwork be enough to label it porn? Is it porn or is it "erotic" or "mature"? Where do you draw the line?

Exactly. If a concrete, objective definition of what constitutes "porn" is not codified into the law, and it is instead left to a subjective opinion, it seems that Society then becomes hostage to the whims and vagaries of someone I might  find to have "weird" tastes, who then has the authority to impose those weird tastes upon ME.

For example, there is a certain class of people who are aroused by shoes and feet. I find that weird, but I prefer to live and let live. I don't care if they are engaging in viewing shoe ads or bare feet, so long as they are not forcing me to do the same. For them, shoe ads and bare feet are "porn", because that is what arouses them - are these censors going to take that into account, and ban both shoe ads AND going barefoot in summer time as "pornographic" or "indecent behaviors"?

"Hey Mac - get a load of the toes on THAT one! Hubba -hubba!"

It's ultimately unworkable, because there is nothing on this Earth that is not "porn" to someone. People are people, and there are uncountable paraphilias out there to keep the censors busy. The only ones that are objectively regulateable are the ones that cause harm to third parties - pedophilia, for example, which causes harm to random innocent children, and rape for another example, which causes harm to random innocent women.

That, by itself however, will not keep the power hungry from trying to be the Overlords of all the rest of us, thinking they have the right to regulate mere thought... which they do not, and can not.

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