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Comment by rayiner | Hacker News Reader

About 43% of people find pornography morally acceptable: https://www.nationalreview.com/news/gallup-poll-majority-of-.... I suspect that the majority of parents don’t. It’s only 53% among Democrats.

It’s probably a better political environment to push for restrictions on access to porn than it’s been in decades. Most people still don’t approve of it. The free speech justification for it has been knee-capped on the left. And there has been a rightward turn in views towards sex among #metoo feminists.

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In the same 2018 Gallup poll that your National Review article referenced, only 10% of people in the U.S. believe that married men and women having an affair is morally acceptable, and only 42% of people in the U.S. believe sex between teenagers is morally acceptable, but it would be ridiculous to ban these things through law because the government should not be intruding into citizens' private lives in this way.

https://news.gallup.com/poll/235250/say-consuming-alcohol-ma...

Also, the proportion of people who find hate speech morally acceptable is likely much lower than 43%, yet that is still protected in the U.S. by the First Amendment.

An activity needs to be more than merely "morally unacceptable" to some people to justify banning it through legislation. You must also consider the infringement of personal liberties that a ban on that activity would cause, the resulting collateral damage, and whether the ban is practically enforceable. Prohibition was unsuccessful in the U.S. even at a time when the temperance movement triggered a wave of anti-alcohol sentiment because there were enough people who rejected the belief that others should be able to restrict their liberties based on different opinions on what is morally acceptable.

Please link the real information:

https://news.gallup.com/poll/235280/americans-say-pornograph...

And note the breakdown by religion--most of the opposition to pornography is religious-based.

> And note the breakdown by religion--most of the opposition to pornography is religious-based.

What does that matter? The objection to pornography among religious people isn’t rooted in the supernatural or doctrinal aspects of religion. It’s not like mixing fabrics or eating shellfish. If you broke down the results by different religions, I suspect you’d find that Hindus and Muslims and Christians are all pretty opposed to pornography.

What you’re really talking about is moral philosophy. Do you believe that society should prioritize individual self expression and satisfaction, or collective duty and family formation? These are correlated with, but separable from, supernatural religious beliefs.

> What does that matter?

It matters because we have a secular government, so we don’t make laws based on people’s religious beliefs, no matter how popular those beliefs may be.

Religious people are welcome to live by whatever set of rules their books dictate, as long as doing so doesn’t infringe on other people’s rights. But they are not welcome to apply their religious restrictions to everyone else.

John Adams: “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious People. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”

It's now the Year of our Lord 2023, we can (and should) move on from the outdated premise that morality requires a belief in God (as nonreligious people are no more or less moral than religious people) and that government presupposes it, just as we moved on from the premise that black people are property.

“Religion” doesn’t “require a belief in God.” Lots of religions don’t have a god or gods per se.

I also think that “nonreligious” people tend to retain much of the non-falsifiable moral philosophy they grew up with, and that for purposes of politics, it doesn’t make a difference whether you call that “religion” or not. As a foreigner, I find the phenomenon of white people who start fights with their family for saying racist things fascinating. In my culture you wouldn’t do that because preserving harmony within families is highly prized. It’s very Christian, though. “Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth; I have not come to bring peace, but a sword. For I have come to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law; and one’s foes will be members of one’s own household.” Similarly, American political debate about LGBT “human rights” is deeply Christian. People can’t come out and say “God created everyone in his image.” But they would flip out if you proposed a utilitarian calculus that couples who can naturally create more taxpayers are more socially valuable than couples who cannot. These people think of themselves as atheists but coming from a non-Christian country it’s easy to see the through-line in their beliefs.

This is a roundabout way of saying that I agree people who don’t believe in God can be moral. But I think that anyone who is moral has a framework of non-falsifiable moral beliefs that, for purposes of politics, isn’t materially distinguishable from religion. Certainly, there is nothing about our Constitution that prioritizes moral systems that arise from university departments over those that arise from organized religion.

Everyone has some sort of moral philosophy that influences their political choices. Do you vote for giving food stamps to poor people? That’s based on a moral judgment. “Secular government” doesn’t mean that policies based on secular philosophies somehow are given preference over those based on religious moral philosophies. If the regulation itself is otherwise within the government’s power, you don’t look behind to people’s motivations and decide that one policy is acceptable because it’s based on socialism and another policy is unacceptable because it’s based on Christian social gospel.

For political purposes, Christianity is just another “ism” that motivates people’s political choices. If the government has the power to restrict access to porn under the first amendment, then it doesn’t matter whether people support such restrictions because they are Christian and think that porn creates social harm or because they read Andrea Dworkin and think that porn creates social harm: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/24/opinion/sex-positivity-fe....

I suspect we agree and are saying different things. Yes, people are fully justified in voting their conscience, based on whatever informs that conscience, religious (even supernatural or doctrinal or otherwise).

What is not ok is for a bill to be drafted that starts out with “Whereas the Christian Bible contains teachings implying pornography is against God, and Whereas we seek to glorify God…”. (This is just an example to illustrate the point. I’m not implying you or anyone who understands our constitution would think laws should be written this way, but this is what a non-secular law might look like.)

Bills must be based on evidence. “Whereas scientific studies by competent and qualified scientists and researchers have recently concluded that exposure to pornography is harmful to children,…”

Again, I think we were arguing related but distinctly different points about the original “most of the opposition to pornography is religious-based” and “What does that matter?” statements.

I disagree that “bills must be based on evidence” and in practice they are not. The Civil Rights Act doesn’t say “whereas scientific studies by competent and qualified scientists and researchers have recently concluded that human races, despite obvious, outward differences, are genetically all similar…” We had a moral belief in the equality of the races, rooted in Christianity, long before we had the scientific evidence to support that belief. Likewise, there is no scientific basis for saying that the rich should take care of the poor, of that young people should support old people. These are all moral judgments. Why don’t we just let old people die when they can’t work anymore? It would be much more efficient after all.

It’s impossible to avoid basing laws on moral beliefs, because fundamentally, moral beliefs are directed to notions of what will make a better society. Your version of “secularism” doesn’t take non-falsifiable moral judgments out of lawmaking. It just gives preference to one set of non-falsifiable beliefs over another. For example, acceptance of pornography or sex work is heavily based on the idea that people should be able to do what they want sexually so long as there is consent. What is the scientific evidence behind that belief? There isn’t. It’s based on a moral belief about sexual satisfaction being an important part of the human experience, it’s based on a moral belief about individual freedom and the limits on it, etc. Ultimately, it’s a moral belief about what kind of society is better.

> We had a moral belief in the equality of the races, rooted in Christianity, long before we had the scientific evidence to support that belief.

Some Christians might have had that belief, but many racist (and, years earlier, slave-owning) Christians believed the opposite to be true, and used the Bible to justify slavery [1]. Jefferson Davis was quite explicit about it [2]:

> [Slavery] was established by decree of Almighty God...it is sanctioned in the Bible, in both Testaments, from Genesis to Revelation...it has existed in all ages, has been found among the people of the highest civilization, and in nations of the highest proficiency in the arts.

When I say "based on evidence" I mean that bills must have some basis that everyone can agree on. People may not agree with the conclusions, but there is a firm basis there nonetheless.

It doesn't take a lot of imagination to consider the consequences of religiously based laws. Imagine you're a Christian in a small town, and for whatever reason, your town becomes a popular place for immigrants/refugees from the Middle East to settle, and all of a sudden your town has a slight Muslim majority. Would it be ok for them to vote to require all women in the town to wear hijabs in public because they believe God demands it? To such a proposal, you might say "that's absurd! God doesn't want us to wear hijabs!" There's no way to settle the argument, because there's no evidence for the claim one way or the other.

That's the problem with laws based on religion, and that's why our constitution protects against them.

[1] https://time.com/5171819/christianity-slavery-book-excerpt/

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_views_on_slavery#Opp...

This is pretty absurd position, it effectively pushes for disenfranchisement of religious people. Under your theory of the government, religious people are unable to use democratic means to to further their policy goals, if these in any way stem from their religious beliefs. This is, of course, not how our legal and political system works. The “secular government” doesnt work this way.

Imagine if Christians had a strong belief in tending the garden given to them by God, and it entailed a strong wish to fight climate change. It would be absurd to say that they cannot do anything in that direction, just because their reasons for this are religious in nature.

If you don’t like majority imposing restrictions on minorities based on their moral theories, your problem is not with religion, but rather with democracy.

I have no desire to disenfranchise religious people, and I have no problem with democracy. People should be able to vote how they want and seek government policies they want, based on their convictions, religious or otherwise. My point is that the government (in the U.S. at least) cannot make laws based on religion.

If Christians want to fight climate change because they believe that's what God wants, great! They should seek policies to do just that. But what the lawmakers cannot do is write laws that say "the EPA must impose greenhouse gas limits because God commands it."

The lawmakers can have their reasons for the bills they write (they can believe it's what God wants, or they can know it's what their voters believe it's what God wants), but the laws themselves cannot be based on religion.

Ok, if your point is that laws can very much be religiously motivated, as long as they simply don’t mention God in the text of the bill, then yeah, I’m fine with that. This is not a very consequential point.

There must be sufficient secular reason to have a given law. There are people in this country who believe that this is a "Christian" nation, and even some deep in the bible belt who believe that it should be illegal to be "not Christian". You run the risk of handing the country to people like that, when you allow too much religion in your government.

If you can't make secular decisions in your job representing all people in your constituency, if you can't separate your religious belief and personal morals from what is legislatively appropriate, then just maybe, you shouldn't be a politician. On the other hand, if you can act appropriately as a legislator, then I have no problem with a person who is personally deeply religious from holding elected office.

If you are a Senator or Representative in the US, you also represent the atheists in your constituency, as well of those of all other religious beliefs than your own. You don't just represent the ones who align with your religious belief.

> There must be sufficient secular reason to have a given law. There are people in this country who believe that this is a "Christian" nation, and even some deep in the bible belt who believe that it should be illegal to be "not Christian". You run the risk of handing the country to people like that, when you allow too much religion in your government.

So yeah, this is exactly what I was talking about: this is disenfranchising people based on their religion.

> If you can't make secular decisions in your job representing all people in your constituency, if you can't separate your religious belief and personal morals from what is legislatively appropriate, then just maybe, you shouldn't be a politician. (...) If you are a Senator or Representative in the US, you also represent the atheists in your constituency, as well of those of all other religious beliefs than your own. You don't just represent the ones who align with your religious belief.

This is just an isolated demand of rigor, it's a standard that you would not apply in other circumstance. Try making the same argument, but replacing religion with political party. "Sure, you are personally deeply aligned with Democratic policy, but you also represent Republicans in your constituency, so you should separate your personal beliefs and morals from your politics, and don't push for policy that your Republican constituents would not agree with". This is of course ridiculous.

You need to understand that what you proposing here is plainly disadvantaging (some) religious beliefs compared to other philosophies, and holding them to a different, higher standards. Why do majority of voters have to give "sufficient secular reason" for a given law? Constitution doesn't demand this sort of "parallel construction".

The vast majority of Christians that I've spoken to don't seem to understand one basic fact:

If you allow religious belief to be the sole factor behind legislative action, then you also open the door to a different religion coming in and democratically taking the reins of that action.

They also will heavily vocalize their opinion that no other religion should be able to come in and do exactly that. In the years after 9/11, they would harp about "Sharia law" and how it was allegedly "taking over parts of the US".

It is very clear in the Constitution that the government may not favor one religion over another. Ergo, to open legislative action to religious motivation allows any religion to do the same, no matter what. The US is pretty open about what it considers to be a "religion" as well, we're one of the few countries that allow Scientology to be considered a religion.

In the interest of identifying bias, I live in Tennessee, right in the middle of the bible belt. Thus, my opinion is indeed biased by experience in this area. I've seen how nasty and bigoted this neck of the woods can be, and these are the people that the region's politicians tend to pander to.

Even if you dislike porn, how would pushing for restrictions on it work? If you ban the production/distribution of it, it will move to places where those are tolerated.

If you place restrictions on possession of material, it would have free speech implications that I don't think are trivial. Sure, we don't have absolute free speech but then there would be a debate about what porn is and the worst part of this is there is enough porn out there already that a lot of people would become felons once banned. It could even be weaponized to destroy websites where users can host content. Porn detectors would probably have to scan everything and there would be a non-zero false positive rate.

If you use the internet to restrict it, you're creating this powerful device the government has to censor the internet. I think this last one is something the government is very very interested in having. It's just hard to see how any of this would improve people's lives even if you are totally opposed to porn.

> If you ban the production/distribution of it, it will move to places where those are tolerated.

This is a fully general argument against banning anything at all. Nevertheless, we ban things, and moreover, we do not seem to act as if act of banning is meant to be pointless charade.

We ban smoking in many public places, we ban possession of weapons by felons, or carrying them without a license in many places. We ban selling alcohol to minors, and we ban kids from driving a car.

These measures are highly successful, they resulted in great reduction of the banned activity, and most people would oppose lifting this bans.

In other words, the answer to the question “how banning porn would work?” is “very effectively, like most other things that government bans and actively enforces”.

My point was that a ban on content distribution/production via the internet will require heavy handed measures to be effective. The cost of regulating the internet is relatively high. The ban on minors drinking alcohol is illustrative. You must now produce a state issued ID. You must show your ID containing personal information to a stranger. Your data may be recorded as many stores require scanning the ID and for you to input your birthday. Now a profile has been created about what your private purchases are.

Likewise, on the internet, for a ban to be effective, heavy handed measures will have to be implemented. For example, a legal apparatus for effective policing and enforcement will grow in power against citizens, edge nodes of a country's internet border will be monitored, personal information and identity will be stored and tracked, etc. The internet has many uses so even if you do not like porn, I think a porn ban specifically will adversely effect people's free speech rights. That is not necessarily true for other types of bans.

I think your parent was expressing frustration that so many laws are dressed in the sheepskin of “WON’T SOMEBODY THINK OF THE CHILDREN?!?!”

I don’t think the commenter necessary would disagree that many parents _do_ want to protect children, but that so much of the electorate turns off their critical thinking skills when that sheepskin is used. They don’t seem to remain skeptical that the law could actually be a wolf in sheep’s clothing.

Or maybe I’m just projecting…

I'm curious what defines morally acceptable. I disapprove of it on the grounds personal convictions, but more importantly because I've done a lot of volunteer work in the anti-sex trafficking world. Knowing many of these victims were abused for the purpose of producing pornographic content is enough to sour my stomach on the issue. I just wonder if that's being made a part of the moral argument.

I wonder why there isn’t more support for replacing possibly the entire industry with generative AI. Pornography is such low entropy content.

The opposition to pornography is multifaceted. In particular, most women are opposed, and there’s a significant philosophical basis to that opposition both among conservative feminism but also a significant category of liberal feminism. Even secular people have objections to how porn represents women, and how it socialized young men to think about sex and what normal sexual activity looks like. In the Gallup poll (linked above), the only group where a majority find pornography morally acceptable is men 18-49. Only 1/3 of adult women find it morally acceptable. Among married people it’s only 1/3. Half of women also think sex work should be illegal, compared to only 36% of men: https://www.vox.com/2016/3/11/11203740/prostitution-legal-me....

That's changing imo. There are a lot of women that identify as liberal who are morally conservative, but it can be reasoned that this is just the effects of patriarchy that they haven't chosen to prioritize addressing because it doesn't directly benefit them. Freedom from modesty will not be won overnight.

When your partner can't get it up because they've been abusing porn, you're incentivized to not like it just for personal reasons. And that's without even touching the fact that your partner is getting off to images of someone else.

There's nothing "liberal" about porn. Porn is neither conservative nor liberal, it is libertine.

> When your partner can’t get it up because they’ve been abusing porn, you’re incentivized to not like it just for personal reasons.

If your partner prefers interacting with porn to doing so with you, the porn use is a symptom, not the source of the problem.

Maybe at first, but just like alcohol or any other addiction it becomes its own problem over time.

Anything enjoyable (and many things that are not even that) can be addicting and in some cases enought to be a problem. That however is not an argument for banning it altogether or that it is morally unacceptable.

And most additictions really are just a symptom for other problems.

I think a lot of people blame porn for erectile dysfunction, but that's far from a leading cause: https://www.samhealth.org/about-samaritan/news-search/2022/0... and https://www.goodrx.com/conditions/erectile-dysfunction/top-1...

I guess this is also a good time for vulnerability since we're talking patriarchy. I've had periods of erectile dysfunction and they almost always overlapped with periods of intense stress or depression. Other times it had to do with my diet. That didn't stop some people at the time bringing up my porn use, which feels really nasty and humiliating when it happens to you.

That isn't to say there aren't men who desensitize themselves, but I suspect that's more prevalent in young men and more of a minority in general. It is a provocative thing to bring up in conversation.

Fine, then "can't last as long", or "isn't as in to it".

I just find all of this really problematic, but maybe that's just me. I'd never make these assumptions or say these things to a woman.

I strongly suspect the actual relationship is the other way around--it's a problem with their relationship that drove them to porn.

Maybe for some, but for people who start with porn before they ever have a relationship, this cannot be the case. At least not entirely.

Similar to legalized prostitution, this is where I often find myself at odds with my otherwise libertarian and personal freedom leaning beliefs. Should one be allowed to do with their body as they wish? In theory, yes, if it doesn't hurt others, but the reality is legalizing these things has a far greater capacity for harm at the hands of others who would exploit them.

isn't it the other way around? criminalizing prostitution taskes away options to seek help by those who are exploited or abused.

It's already criminalized, so the only thing that could change is legalizing it or decriminalizing it.

By legalizing it, you effectively add cost, or tax, and the illegal component continues to remain (unlesss you simply make it stop being illegal, and unregulated, which most people agree is a bad idea) and the market segregates the workers into legal and illegal workers. The illegal workers lives get even worse, and the legal workers end up losing a lot of their money.

Look at legal marijuana, or hell, even legal prostitution in places that allow it and you'll see that's been the real effect.

By legalizing it, you effectively add cost, or tax, and the illegal component continues to remain

but that's the point, legalizing or decriminalizing the actual act enables the people involved to seek protection from the illegal components.

Look at legal marijuana, or hell, even legal prostitution in places that allow it and you'll see that's been the real effect

at least in germany the opposite effect seems to be the case:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prostitution_Act

"Sexual acts in the context of a prostitution contract are now valid to establish claims for compensation since the law came into force. This has not only significance for civil law, but also criminal law (property offences). In addition, prostitutes can now regularly insure in the statutory health, unemployment and pension insurance."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prostitutes_Protection_Act

"effective protection for prostitutes is only possible if this work is legalised"

in addition to that, the issue i see is, how much control is necessary to enforce a ban on prostitution. i would argue that it is not possible without a serious reduction of personal freedom. legalizing it enables to focus the control on those engaged in such activities whereas the rest of us won't be bothered.

Should be legal? would be a far more relevant question.

E.g. I won't do drugs, I do not like people who do drugs, yet I'm all for regulation.

Did you state the end of it backwards?

I don't do drugs, I don't like drugs, but I think the drug war is worse than the drugs.

Regulation as opposed to prohibition.

> About 43% of people find pornography morally acceptable: https://www.nationalreview.com/news/gallup-poll-majority-of-.... I suspect that the majority of parents don’t. It’s only 53% among Democrats.

Nobody ever addresses the middle ground...the group of parents who have no objection to adults' use of it but believe it's not something that the developing minds of children should have unfettered access to.

And that's a fine position as long as those parents take responsibility for ensuring their children don't have access to things they don't want them to have access to. It's not fine if it means they want the state to restrict access for everyone.

> Results for this Gallup poll are based on telephone interviews conducted May 1-10, 2018, with a random sample of 1,024 adults, aged 18 and older, living in all 50 U.S. states and the District of Columbia. For results based on the total sample of national adults, the margin of sampling error is ±4 percentage points at the 95% confidence level.

> Each sample of national adults includes a minimum quota of 70% cellphone respondents and 30% landline respondents, with additional minimum quotas by time zone within region. Landline and cellular telephone numbers are selected using random-digit-dial methods.

https://news.gallup.com/poll/235280/americans-say-pornograph...

Dunno about you but I never answer unknown numbers, and neither does any of my friends, or anyone in my age bracket that I know, or anyone younger (gen z), so ... "Older Americans say they dislike pornography" is hardly surprising to me.

If you look at the demographic break downs its only getting more acceptable.

Look—if you’re going to use the phrase “moral minority” you should be prepared to address polling on the issue from a reputable polling agency.

If you look at the demographic breakdowns, almost all the movement is among younger men. Among women 18-49, it’s only 41% approval.

That's why technological arguments of "you and which army?" or "porn is illegal? so is piracy. Hasn't stopped that either." are more important than appeals to the democratic process for these types of issues.

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