Pornhub Blocked in Texas
variety.com
variety.com
No one in Texas wants porn bans, abortion bans, IVF bans, restrictive marijuana laws and everything else going on down there, but they will still enthusiastically vote for it to show party allegiance.
You sound ripe for some travel! It's not a bad place to visit!
You may want to believe what you wrote because it helps those of us with contrary preferences to pretend that we're just better aligned to some rational truth or something, but no: there are many people in Texas and elsewhere who sincerely believe that each of those things is good and something that they want for their community.
The number or loudness of those people change when stirred up by politicians, and sometimes ideas that weren't widely considered previously are wholly seeded as part of a political strategy, but that doesn't really change that most people are fully sincere in their beliefs and that their beliefs can sometimes be radically different than your own.
Like one rural vote is worth 10x what one urban vote is worth? Or is that just for federal elections?
The federal Senate is 2 Senators per state, no voting representation for territories (places not in admitted states) or Washington DC. So Vermont and Wyoming, with populations around 600,000 each, have the same vote strength as California (39M) and Texas (31M) -- 1.2 million people equated to 70 million.
Gerrymandering ("from Gerry's salamander-shaped district") is the practice of the ruling party in any state drawing their districts for the federal House of Representatives so that their party wins multiple districts (by, say, 52-48%) and making the other party win a smaller number of districts (by 90-10%). Each district is required to have roughly the same number of people in it. The shaping is bad, but the per-population equality of representation is nearly optimal.
Academics generally conclude that of the 435 districts, no more than 40 or 50 are actually representative of the political demographics of the state as a whole.
I feel like the concept of having more choices to vote for would be appealing to most US voters - but I can't imagine such an initiative would be successful
Some states, including New York, allow a candidate to be run simultaneously by several parties, and for voters to then vote for the candidate with a particular party endorsement. This nominally allows a small party to gain status -- say, if the Green Party (tiny) were to nominate Biden (unlikely, but bear with me) and he wins the presidency, then for the purposes of New York State, the Green Party would move closer to being a recognized major party.
The overriding problem is that the Constitution was written with a deliberate ignorance of the concept of parties -- so much so that in the original 1789 document, the runner-up of the Presidential race becomes Vice-President. That didn't work out well; fixed by the 12th amendment.
The other gigantic issue, that has only become clear in the last two decades, is that an astounding amount of the government runs on convention rather than regulation.
Fixing these things would require a significant restructuring of the Constitution, and that opens up doors to... everyone.
The republicans have been trying to dissuade a lot of voters which to me, as a rather left (European left) leaning European seems very undemocratic.
I'll say that I know quite a number of people who claim to be stout libertarians (a very common stance in the south and especially in Texas) and even be much more supportive of legalizing all drugs because "government bad, personal choice good" and "government shouldn't be a babysitter." YET I've seen those same people vote for those politicians. I've seen those politicians run on those platforms and then push such agendas and then people not really care about it. Not too different from the old "I didn't speak out because I wasn't x, but then there was no one left to speak for me" quote.
Truth is humans are full of hypocrisy, for better or worse. Some of this is so we can handle nuance in an approximate way without having to invest in the computation/effort to resolve those. It is a real thing though and we need to be nuanced to deal with it, including how we discuss it.
BUT there's also a clear and measurable phenomena where politicians are not acting as good representatives. You can find many polls on things like Marijuana laws, government provided health coverage, government pension plans (cough social security cough), paid family leave, corporations not paying their fair share of taxes, wealthy not paying their fair share, complexity of taxes, return free filing, and many other things. You can find Pew and Gallup polls on this stuff running back for years, showing majority approvals. The issue, is we quibble over nuance AND oversimplify the nuance. We often pretend that the optimization functions are the same or identically conditioned. Often the difference is coming down to a focus on positive rights vs negative rights in the conditioning of the linear program. Abortion might be a good example. Liberals try to minimize the harm while conditioning on the liberty of the mother while conservatives tend to have the inverse approach. Essentially liberals will give up liberty of the unborn in favor of the currently living while conservatives are willing to give up liberty of the currently living for the unborn. You cannot maximize both liberties of the living and the unborn at the same time, there has to be a trade-off. Both want surprisingly similar things, but we frame them as extreme opposites because we are not discussing the nuance and we're arguing while we work from a different set of base assumptions assuming that the other persons are operating under the same assumptions. Which makes it quite difficult to actually understand the other person's goals and intentions.
Thing is, people are happy to prey upon this complexity and difficulties in communicating. Knowingly or unknowingly. We are often unwitting players in this as it is so easy to get trapped into the mindset that others operate under the same premise that we do. Until we understand this, we are going to have extreme difficulties in communicating. Even if we want the same things and even if we want extremely similar outcomes. I'm sure many people here have had a "stupid argument" where you realize that you and the person you're passionately arguing with are on the exact same side, just expressing your views in different ways. It's often embarrassing and we laugh about it because we __are__ fucking idiots. Yes, this includes (especially) me. Don't listen to me, I'm a fucking idiot.
I grew up extremely religious in Texas... I can assure you that there are plenty of people who want these things.
The good news is things are changing. Some members of my family who effectively spent their entire lives trying to overturn Roe, are now totally overwhelmed and distraught by the after effects, and what an awful person Donald Trump is. Truly a dog-that-caught-the-car situation.
13 states (Texas included) had trigger laws already on the books to ban abortion if Roe v. Wade was ever overturned, and are now in effect. This was a big thing all over the place when it happened.
But these tragedies are not something any given person in the US is likely to ever encounter first-hand. It's a real big country and your frequency measure is more "geez, don't you thinn we should do something?!" more than "whelp, let's hope I don't get shot today"
As far as geographic difference and the prior commenter's statement, the biggest relevant difference for you would be that you will probably never see someone bearing a gun in San Fransisco and will almost certainly see many people doing over the course of any stay in Texas.
That's an internal cultural thing, and involves a combination of regional regulations and regional aesthetics. Both states are safe, though.
Frankly -- if this is an otherwise exciting opportunity for you, you really shouldn't let the gun thing get in your way.
Now consider that the United States is a roughly similar size, both in land mass and population.
You'll find a lot of diversity, even if the language is the same.
>Pornhub Disables Website in Texas Over Age-Verification Law
So, mission accomplished?
Set up controls, if anyone bypasses them, you have expensive litigation and potentially existential financial penalties.
Or don't and lose the revenue of Texas folks.
Interested parties will go out of their way to bypass any rules PornHub does set up, and PornHub bears the brunt of any successful such attempts.
If you did your honest reasonable best, a suit shouldn't go anywhere. Systems aren't perfect. They aren't really expected to be either.
Given the way the porn industry historically operates by addicting the young and the huge levels of abuse towards women. I'm not holding my breath for good faith efforts.
1) IP address from "Restricted Region" connects to website.
2) Server attempts a reverse IP lookup and waits for reply from ISP's DNS.
3) If DNS reply contains "restricted" (on behalf of the subscriber), server has to restrict access, etc.
All they have to do is use AnyCast and geoip to block most users from a specific region.
If you really need Pornhub in Texas, a VPN cloud VM is your courier.
What exactly are those requirements, and how is there "no way" for Pornhub to satisfy what "the legislation demands"?
I ask because I'm tired of seeing (in general, not just PornHub) deceptive rephrasing of "we don't want to" as "it's impossible for us to." Companies too often take the attitude that they're entitled to their business model or being able to push externalities onto others, but that's obnoxious BS propaganda.
Edit: So according to the OP, the law "requires [PornHub] to verify the age of all visitors using a government-issued ID or 'public or private transactional data.'" I'm pretty sure they've already implemented that to verify the identify of performers (https://help.pornhub.com/hc/en-us/articles/19159382668435-Tr...), after much kicking and screaming, in the wake of that Nicholas Kristof article a few years ago. So a pretty straightforward implementation would be to require user accounts to view (at least for Texas), push users through PornHub's existing age verification flow, then give them access.
It's perfectly valid for PH to say "we don't believe the requirements of the law are reasonable so we're choosing to not do business in Texas rather than comply" - but that's a very different conversation than "the requirements the law imposes on us/other adult websites are impossible to satisfy from a technical perspective".
Somebody posted their message to users from Texas.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39708615
I know you are just talking in general, but in this specific case, it doesn’t appear that they actually say they can’t do it. The idea that they can’t do it just seems to be a misunderstanding from somebody posting on this site.
I agree in general that it is annoying that companies say they “can’t” do something, mixing up “incompatible with my business mode” and “incompatible with reality.” But I don’t see anything like that in their comment.
WRT reusing their implementation for the actors, I’m not sure, is that possible? The actors upload videos of themselves so it ought to be easy to verify the fact that the face on the ID matches the face in the video, right?
In the case of a user, somebody could easily steal their parent’s ID or use a computer that someone else had left logged in, right? I mean, I don’t know how any of that works, but I could see why the site would rather not risk it.
I mean, this is a site full of webdevs, would anyone here want to take a chance at implementing something like this in-house, before best methods have been discovered? I suspect most people would rather wait for a lawsuit-tested turnkey solution. So, “can’t” in this context could mean something like: we aren’t aware of an existing solution that fits inside our legal risk tolerance. That’s still a business objection rather than a laws-of-physics one, but it seems a lot more reasonable.
After that they manually compare the ID and photo.
But I can imagine there is going to be a market for verified accounts if access is given this way, and they can't do this process on every login. Plus it will require logins to access content in general, while I think most PH visitors never log in.
That's not true.
It's onerous, inconvenient, whatever.
FWIW I've no idea how expensive commercial age verification is. I'm just wondering why none of the commenters seem to consider the aspect of cost, and picked a random commenter to ask.
In this case, gambling sites, which perform age (and residency) verification.
Now I read it as some people treating Pornhub as obviously similar to the gambling sites and others obviously different, basing their different viewpoints on the different foundations, and not stating those foundations because they're obvious.
FWIW I can see how login-required porn sites are similar to gambling sites. I'm open on whether mostly-without-login sites are.
DPI? DNS? etc
[0]: https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-ietf-tls-esni/
[1]: https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc9001.html#name-security-of...
Even so, I don't think many ISPs have the capability to do the DPI for observing SNI on a moments notice.
Edit: No they do not.
It requires a system where the user:
(1) provide digital identification; or (2) comply with a commercial age verification system that verifies age using: (A) government-issued identification; or (B) a commercially reasonable method that relies on public or private transactional data to verify the age of an individual.
Unclear to me what the transactional data means, and if a charging a credit card would suffice, but it does not require 2 forms of photo ID.
The only major form of photo ID is a state/driver's license and passports and I think only 30% of the US has Passorts. It's such a big country that you can reasonably never require it and still travel more than the average EU citizen.
You can also fill out a form with your employer to get a photo form of employee authorization, but you're Sol of you're freelance/gig economy.
Not saying you’re wrong (I certainly don’t have any data to the contrary), but this isn’t intuitive to me. Don’t tons of people send their credit card (which is linked to their SSN) to PornHub? From there seems like a small step to also send ID?
Most Pornhub users aren’t paying ones, or even logged in at all. It’s all there publicly, unless you want to leave a comment or whatnot.
Few things are truly impossible or 100% correct. There's not much value in arguing such extremes.
Especially in this era of data breaches.
If you want to buy a copy of Playboy from a newsstand, in general, you’re going to get asked for ID at the counter. It’s been like that for a very long time and nobody seems to have a real problem with it. It’s unclear why people think this kind of requirement just goes away if it’s on the Internet.
The difference between the Internet and the guy at the newsstand is that you know the guy at the newsstand doesn't have a photographic memory, a replicated database in multiple availability zones, SLAs with IDV providers which are vague about retention policies, or marketing partners who have special offers just for you.
Pornhub: "Uh... we promise? The database says we did."
Now what?
https://legiscan.com/TX/text/HB1181/id/2819916
> 129B.002(b) A commercial entity that performs the age verification required by Subsection (a) or a third party that performs the age verification required by Subsection (a) may not retain any identifying information of the individual.
So I suppose the court would take them at their word unless there were some evidence presented that they did not check ID or accepted an obvious fake (e.g. a sting operation), just like in person.
I don't understand why everyone gets so up in arms about this topic without ever reading the laws being written. Absent any information, you might guess that the system ought to work exactly the way it does in person too, which seems to be the case. This was true of the (Utah?) parental controls law discussed on HN a couple weeks ago too. People start asking all these what-ifs about things the law explicitly thought about, and handled in a reasonable way.
I even agree with you, violations of this won't be anyone's primary charge, but I might disagree that we should conclude that its existence won't affect people.
Besides, like a lot of these laws, the primary consequence is a chilling effect where porn sites aren't accessible and in that light it's an effective law.
> Suspecting the Washington-based hospital of providing gender-affirming care to Texas children, which is now banned in Texas, AG Ken Paxton issued investigative subpoenas demanding medical information.
Why wouldn’t they do the same sort of harrassing digging in this case?
If they were going to, why not do that kind of harassment digging with records they are required to keep about the performers?
I've been away from this line of work for over a year, though. Does anybody here who has current experience in effective messaging, legal communication or marketing want to read the message Mindgeek put up and give their two cents on it for our entertainment?
IDIN is set up by all the Dutch banks. You check in via your own bank using an IDIN link. IDIN will do an age-check to verify that you're 18 or older. IDIN can verify age, name, address and contact info. You need a bank account, and the bank has checked your identity and age, so this is guaranteed to work.
Maybe you don't want that the bank knows that you visit a porn website, but that's another question.
From a logistics one, devices can be shared and it is very easy to share to a minor (which is what theses laws supposedly target). Or have multiple accounts on one device.it seems like a lot of work for less results..
"Freedom for the Thought That We Hate: A Biography of the First Amendment"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_for_the_Thought_That_W...
"Dear user,
As you may know, your elected officials in Texas are requiring us to verify your age before allowing you access to our website. Not only does this impinge on the rights of adults to access protected speech, it fails strict scrutiny by employing the least effective and yet also most restrictive means of accomplishing Texas’s stated purpose of allegedly protecting minors.
While safety and compliance are at the forefront of our mission, providing identification every time you want to visit an adult platform is not an effective solution for protecting users online, and in fact, will put minors and your privacy at risk.
Attempting to mandate age verification without any means to enforce at scale gives platforms the choice to comply or not, leaving thousands of platforms open and accessible. As we've seen in other states, such bills have failed to protect minors, by driving users from those few websites which comply, to the thousands of websites, with far fewer safety measures in place, which do not comply. Very few sites are able to compare to the robust Trust and Safety measures we currently have in place. To protect minors and user privacy, any legislation must be enforced against all platforms offering adult content.
Unfortunately, the Texas law for age verification is ineffective, haphazard, and dangerous. Not only will it not actually protect children, but it will also inevitably reduce content creators’ ability to post and distribute legal adult content and directly impact their ability to share the artistic messages they want to convey with it.
The safety of our users is one of our biggest concerns. We believe that the only effective solution for protecting minors and adults alike is to verify users’ age on their device and to either deny or allow access to age-restricted materials and websites based on that verification.
We call on all adult sites to comply with the law. Until the real solution is offered, we have made the difficult decision to completely disable access to our website in Texas. In doing so, we are complying with the law, as we always do, but hope that governments around the world will implement laws that actually protect the safety and security of users.
We encourage you to:
Learn more about device-based age verification* solutions that make the internet safer while also respecting your privacy. Contact your representatives and demand device-based verification solutions that make the internet safer while also respecting your privacy. *Device-Based Age Verification refers to any approach to age verification where the personal information that is used to verify the user’s age is either shared in-person at an authorized retailer, inputted locally into the user’s device, or stored on a network controlled by the device manufacturer or the supplier of the device’s operating system. Whether through pre-installed content blocking and filtering software, the disabling of web-browsing permissions, or other means, the user will then be prevented from accessing age-restricted content over the internet unless they are age-verified. To come to fruition, such an approach requires the cooperation of manufacturers and operating-system providers."
The power of "think of the children" arguments for "normies" is already strong when it comes to encryption and privacy. I can't imagine standing up for software freedom if it runs counter to "think of the children" will fare well.
All the well known adult sites are already using it, it's just up to the browser makers to support it again... and besides, with on-device AI they don't even need to only rely on the RTA header if they want to make their implementation more advanced.
More info: https://davidwalsh.name/rta-label
It doesn't even fix the "problem". Multiple accounts can use the same device so hardware level checks either have to block all or nothing. These kinds of tech forget people share devices, at home and to each other
Modern consoles don't really have publicly accessible web browsers so that's another way to solve the problem. 17+ rated games would simply check the age on your profile instead of needing a device centric verification.
It's all client-side decision making based on server provided metadata. There's nothing to track. Every TV in the US has been required to work this way for over 20 years.
It's a tangential discussion that doesn't have to do with blocking content.
As it is these days, TV's are a device that with no control of my own chooses to send telemetry data back home in order to sell my data to 3rd parties for ads. This subsidizes "smart" TV's, but given that there are no more mid-high end "dumb" TV's, this feels less like a choice than a mandate of the industry.
On top of all this, there has been murmur of dark patterns related to making sure your TV is internet-connected, which includes trying to connect to an open network after you opt out of a network connection, and having unlisted 4/5G modems built into the tv that are unusable by the consumer but otherwise made to send data out, even if the consumer does not connect to a network. I'm honestly sort of surprised GDPR hasn't come down on this yet.
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So the header check you describe with computer devices aren't necessarily a concern by itself. But it's a slippery slope one that has been exploited by so many companies so consistently when it comes to matters like this. The world over still hasn't properly litigated to make sure that companies can't simply grab whatever data they want and sell it, so we're in a game of cat and mouse until then. And as a mouse I simply see this piece of cheese with a looming shadow above it.
Pornhub is low-quality crap, haven't visited it in years.
FYI: delta-9 THC is legal in Texas when derived from hemp, so actual weed is sold alongside the legal stuff in many cities.
I didn't think one state could compel a business in another state to do anything whatsoever.
Similarly, even if Pornhub doesn't operate physically in Texas, if they make money off of users residing in Texas, you are "conducting business" in Texas and therefore the laws are applicable to you as any other business.
The concept is known as "minimum contacts".
Not if your business isn't registered in that state. Just because you acquired personal information from CA residents doesn't mean they gave it to you directly.
https://www.thsh.com/publications/what-businesses-outside-ca....
As far as enforceability:
* There is extradition for criminal offenses. (In practice, usually only for felonies.)
* Texas can prohibit its residents/businesses from doing business with companies with judgments render against them.
* Texas can issue warrants and then arrest violators if they step into the state.
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States very often restrict goods/services sold in their state. Like, you can't sell a gun to a buyer in California, without going through a 10-day waiting period, even if you do not live in California and comply with federal regulations.
California cannot prevent someone in Arizona (even if they are a permanent resident of California) from buying a firearm from someone in Arizona.
California can prevent someone in California from possessing a firearm (insomuch as federal/constitutional law allows).
Maybe they could still just be sued in Texas regardless of whether or not they are there.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gambling_in_the_United_States#...
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unlawful_Internet_Gambling_Enf...
Even if there wasn't a sure enforcement method, they're not the company that would risk court drama to find out.
Enforce what? Texas took no step to block them.
> Pornhub Disables Website in Texas Over Age-Verification Law
Pornhub blocked themselves in Texas. It's like all these US sites preventing EU users from visiting them, just because they don't want to be GDPR compliant.
Age verification for site visitors...
The government takes no steps to prevent lots of law infractions, that doesn't mean they won't punish you for not adhering. As is the nature of laws.
> Pornhub blocked themselves in Texas. It's like all these US sites preventing EU users from visiting them, just because they don't want to be GDPR compliant.
Yes, preventing yourself from breaking a law is generally wise. What point do you believe you're making in these comments?
I don’t know if MG changed their approach to the issue or if Texas is under less regulatory capture than the UK but the difference in approach is interesting.
Very few sites are able to compare to the robust Trust and Safety measures we currently have in place.
Will somebody think of the children?
And never mind porn what if Adults aged 18+ read misinformation on the news? Or post hateful memes?
You need Trust and Safety! And only we can provide it properly.
These salami tactics have been tried repeatedly and increasingly successfully around the world. And now apparently the US is next.
Free Speech, Free to Do What I want, etc...
Free to pick and choose what freedoms other people get.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Handmaid%27s_Tale#Settin...
I haven't read the book so had to look it up, this seems the most plausible reference
We have no HSAs, no three or four layer tax systems, no governments trying to legislate really bizarre religious issues, no paranoid militarised police, no busy-body suburban sprawl of interfering no-bodies.
Here, the prices in our stores are what we pay; our taxex are handled for us; the "invasion" of the government, eg., in healthcare, is to unburden us from concern.
it seems "society and government" in the US is preoccupied with burdening people, and "micro-oppressions" of bureaucracy and interference
The New Testament is a surprisingly liberal document. It effectively says "as long as you TRY to be a good human being, all will be forgiven".
This cohort, however, prides itself on being awful humans.
We have no sep' in the UK and our most sophisticated atheists are the appointed bishops of the church of Englandm (selected by, iirc, our prime minister)
Though I don't think this entirely explains the difference. The same could be said for some EU countries:
- "Irish issues are deeply rooted in Christianity"
- "Italian issues are deeply rooted in Christianity"
- "Polish issues are deeply rooted in Christianity"
- "Hungarian issues are deeply rooted in Christianity"
It simply doesn't explain why the USA is so different from Ireland in terms of public policy.
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I think a bigger issue is which countries people (even europeans!) mean to include when they say "Europe". Usually they mean either "Northern Europe" and/or "Western Europe", or sometimes even a small subset of those (just the richest ones -- even Spain/Italy/Portugal are preferentially excluded sometimes depending on the topic). Some people probably started to get uncomfortable seeing "Poland" and "Hungary" up above, and have already steeled themselves for any further analysis involving "those" European countries. Many certainly wouldn't generally want to have to include Moldova, North Macedonia, Albania, and Belarus in their most casual definitions of "Europe", at least when comparing how good they have things things compared to the USA.
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Breaking down "We have no HSAs, no three or four layer tax systems, no governments trying to legislate really bizarre religious issues, no paranoid militarised police, no busy-body suburban sprawl of interfering no-bodies.", I could look at two of these:
- no governments trying to legislate really bizarre religious issues
And counter with Poland and Hungary having some serious recent issues with abortion legislation/enforcement and LGBT freedoms. These are both "EU" nations, so it's hard to claim "Oh they're not part of Europe" but what is often implied is "Oh I wasn't talking about that Europe". But that's not a fair comparison because when we say "USA" we don't just mean California.
- no paranoid militarised police
I get what the commenter is saying. Yes, the overzealous policing situation is generally worse across the USA than the EU. But we can find regular abuse by police officers against Roma communities across Bulgaria, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Romania, and Slovakia (once again, people will often say "Oh when I say Europe I'm not talking about Bulgaria or Romania or Slovakia", as if the USA could ever just exclude the ten worst states when talking about "USA" things as well).
We also see increased militarization of police in Germany with the BFE+ anti-terror police units. And many protestors of the Gilets Jaune in France certainly saw the results of clashing with increasingly militarized police as well[0][1], including armored transport vehicles. To which some people will say "oh that's not the police, that's the Gendarmerie", which is a bit of an odd argument as that's specifically a domestic police force, and one that is explicitly militarized. What they mean by this is that the "average" police officer a citizen is likely to encounter will be less militarized, and that's true. But saying "we have no militarized police" is pretty off-the-mark.
0: https://www.gq-magazine.co.uk/politics/article/les-gilets-ja...
1: https://7enews.net/en/news-en/world-news-en/france-says-poli...
An “establishment of religion” refers to established churches, of which there were several in existence when the first amendment was ratified: https://firstamendment.mtsu.edu/article/established-churches.... What it’s saying is that Congress cannot establish a national church, or regulate the state established churches. The Constitution clearly doesn’t prohibit even state official churches. Massachusetts—one of the most important states at the time of the founding—had an established church until the 1820s!
What isn’t in the Constitution is French-style “separation of church and state,” where religion cannot be a motivation for laws Congress is otherwise entitled to pass. Congressmen/women can vote for laws based on Christian beliefs just as they could vote for laws based on neoliberal or socialist beliefs.
And there is no other amendment that created a “separation of church and state.” You won’t find anything like that phrase in the Constitution or its amendments.
> It didn’t create a “separation of church and state.”
That said, even if we were still under only the original Constitution plus the first 10 amendments, this statement would still be incorrect because State in this case refers to the Federal government which is a state in political philosophy terms which is what this phrase is using, but counterintuitively it’s not a State under US law. The Federal state is the operating one here, because the Constitution plus the first 10 amendments are laws for running the Federal government. On the subject of the States themselves, it says very very little, not nothing, just almost nothing. At least until you get to the doctrine of incorporation I mentioned above.
Most States also have their own form of separation of church and State under their own constitutions. They don’t tend to put it in terms of “separation of church and State” but that is what they do.
The concept of “separation of church and state” is much broader, and comes from the writings of Thomas Jefferson—who admired revolutionary France and its secularism. But it has nothing to do with either the Constitution or the First Amendment. If we are picking random quotes from founding fathers, you could reach the exact opposite conclusion by quoting Adams instead: “Our constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”
It so happens that, because the Establishment Clause is a specific limit on the federal government’s ability to interfere with the state established churches that it makes no sense to incorporate the establishment clause into the states via the 14th amendment. (Just as it makes no sense to incorporate the tenth amendment against the states.)
But my point remains even if you’re just talking about the federal government. The Establishment Clause is just not getting at the “separation of church and state” concept.
Quoting the relevant part here:
> Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof
So reinterpreting that in modern words: Congress shall not establish a Church of the United States and Congress shall not govern religion. The phrasing comes from Jefferson, and you are right that it is ex post facto the Constitution, but the idea is very Puritan and Jefferson himself was referencing Roger Williams (who established the first Baptist Church in America over 150 years prior) and his idealistic "Wall of Separation"[1]. Even restating the establishment clause with terminology, I can't read it any other way but as a conceptual separation of Church and State. The language does not need to be literal to have this effect.
Your quote from Adams doesn't contradict this either because it reads like an assumption that the Constitution does not need to do more than this to address religion because the American people are already moral and religious, therefore to the extent that it does so, it is adequate, but it would not necessarily work well for a different people.
[1] https://myemail.constantcontact.com/Roger-Williams---ORIGIN-...
But that was a long time ago. Uncharitably, US southern states got up in arms (quite literally) about the federal government forcing them to end slavery and then later forcing them to integrate schools and serve blacks and whites at the same businesses. Charitably, there is a fair amount of legitimately bad stuff the federal government has done, i.e. Ruby Ridge, Waco, assassinating Fred Hampton, the red scare, interning of the Japanese, everything that was ever done to natives, trampling all over Hawaii.
I don't think you can just say universally one way or the other works better. The US system is designed for it to be damn near impossible to ever have true tyranny, at the cost of an ineffective government. European governments tend to take the opposite approach. Right now, that is arguably working largely in Europe's favor. In the past, well, Europe had fascism and started multiple world wars and colonized over half the world. The US has certainly done some bad stuff, but not really anything quite like that, so the "avoid descent into outright autocracy" has largely worked out so far.
There is, of course, no guarantee this will continue to work out in the future, either. Up until now, the basic idea has been the only organizations out there with the power to do things like fascism and world wars are states. As multinational private corporations become increasingly large and powerful, that may not remain the case, and the US does very little to tame them compared to what it does to tame the government.
That is a slogan, to justify doing more bad things. The ends justify the means, and making up a reason. "Of course the government is corrupt, hence I'm justified in also being corrupt."
If there is actual corruption and proof, it should be brought forward.
Strangely enough, this is done, and Republican/Right have a much higher percentage of being the corrupt party. Even though this is their rally cry.
I thought you were talking about actual corruption, like giving your cousin the local contract to build a bridge and getting a kick back.
It is hard to discuss these things when one side is just chanting a simple slogan.
Democrats do try to invest in society more, and sometimes that takes on more debt to do that, but that isn't the definition of the word 'corruption'.
Republicans do tend to give loans to 'friends' and get kickbacks. That is real 'corruption' and is documented in criminal cases.
Well, what is it? Do Enlighten. This seems like just angry ranting.
Half of your complaints are just free-market. Republican's love free-markets until prices go up, boo-hoo.
Republican's and Defense industry love wars.
High Speed rail, without looking, I'd say geography and real-estate prices.
1M for traffic lights? Maybe high, is 500K ok? It might be high, but it isn't 100X high.
CEO's get golden parachutes way bigger than the lowly civil servant driving a used car making 50K.
Sorry. I tend to agree with this sentiment. But it is so hard to tell what people really believe these days.
Maybe you'd be surprised, maybe not, but a large number of people expressing this exact view, will also say that the only one that can save us is Trump, he is the only one that can break this cycle. Then they will still just vote for Republicans and consent to be lead along and fall in line with the same things you are pointing out. Lambs to the slaughter in their loyalty.
What to do? Third parties never take off.
My claim is that these are related: the more that people make petty their government, the more that they hate them
Health savings accounts?
> no three or four layer tax systems
Many European countries, like Spain, have multi-level tax systems, but have a single tax return. In the US, you have two tax returns.
> no governments trying to legislate really bizarre religious issues
Many European countries still have official churches! The UK is constantly trying to ban porn. Italy enacted a law similar to Texas’s last year: https://cne.news/article/3884-italy-blocks-porn-access-for-m...
> no paranoid militarised police
Let’s see if that remains true after a century of immigration from the Middle East.
* an average american, in some states, can expect a tax rate at >50%
* the UK's official church only appoints atheist; it would be impolite to appoint someone who actually believed in god
* the UK hasnt banned porn; and despite some attempts, such extreme levels of intrusion would provoke a massive political backlash
They have these in France and I'm sure lots of other european countries: https://www.droit-immo.com/french-property-owners-associatio....
> * an average american, in some states, can expect a tax rate at >50%
The average american is taxed nowhere near 50%. The average U.S. tax wedge--the effective tax rate--is about 30%, very similar to the U.K. https://www.oecd.org/tax/tax-policy/taxing-wages-brochure.pd....
> the UK's official church only appoints atheist; it would be impolite to appoint someone who actually believed in god
The Anglican Church doesn't believe in God? That's quite an argument. The U.K. still has legally required prayer in schools! https://www.tes.com/magazine/news/general/schools-could-be-i.... Many schools follow that law, even if it's not usually enforced.
> the UK hasnt banned porn; and despite some attempts, such extreme levels of intrusion would provoke a massive political backlash
Texas hasn't banned porn either. What Texas did is require age verification for access to pornography. The U.K.'s OfCom is doing the exact same thing: https://www.ofcom.org.uk/news-centre/2023/implementing-the-o.... Italy did the same thing last year: https://cne.news/article/3884-italy-blocks-porn-access-for-m.... Many EU countries are planning on doing the same thing: https://www.veriff.com/fraud/learn/age-verification-legaliza....
As far as I can tell, Europe just has better marketing.
Median US household income is ~$75k. For married households with that income and a ~$30k standard deduction, they will pay an overall federal tax rate of around 7%. For single households with that income and a standard deduction of ~$15k, they'll pay federal tax of around 12%.
10-12% is a high state tax rate, so add that on. (Most high tax states graduate tax by income and wouldn't apply these top rates to $75k income households, but nevermind that.)
1% is a high city tax rate.
10% sales tax isn't unheard of, but sales tax also does not apply to all income -- only spending, and only non-exempt spending. (And usually you also don't see 10% sales tax rates in high income tax states; it's one or the other.)
The end result is south of 30% for the median household, even in high tax states. Nowhere near 50%.
The UK was in the process of requiring age verification for online pornography in 2018. One of the reasons the law fell through is because MindGeek’s age verification system (which news reports claimed to already be in use in Germany) was going to end up becoming a de facto monopoly, with all the privacy concerns that implies.
What is it that "Europeans" love that Americans "hate"?
Well it seems, just like Americans, Europeans love age verification laws:
https://apnews.com/article/porn-websites-age-verification-di...
It's nice to see these comprehensive categorizations, where I can prompt myself to ask "How much do I care about this particular freedom vs. that one?"
"Libertarian think tank says Texas sucks for personal freedom" has very different vibe than "Conservative think tank says Texas sucks for personal freedom"
but also, never trust Cato - https://www.currentaffairs.org/2018/10/never-trust-the-cato-...
Also, the majority of American disagree with you: https://news.gallup.com/poll/235280/americans-say-pornograph.... Not just the majority of republicans, but also for example the strong majority of women, both younger women and older women.
A big chunk of my fellow countrymen also think trump is worth re-electing so I really don’t value their opinions at all. Huge swath of this nation is insane.
As an outsider, I only have incomplete impressions:
* Personal liberty is highly valued.
* Pro individual ownership of guns, as well as self-defense.
* Oil is a big part of the economy.
* Socially conservative overall, with exception of some enclaves of more liberal or progressive values.
* Large percentage of people identifying as Christian.
* Centralized editorial influence over school textbooks, for not just Texas but the nation.
* Aggressive anti-abortion push.
Apropos of this post, I'm interested in whether there are conventions over how conflicting values are reconciled (e.g., if anti-porn is driven by social conservative values, how does that override personal liberty values).
This is likely a large driving factor of this ban. Despite the mantra of "separation of church and state", US as a whole has so much religion built into government and its people (our pledge has the line "one nation, under God". Our currency has "in God we trust) that it very much influences policy.
>if anti-porn is driven by social conservative values, how does that override personal liberty values
If we wanna be frank: sexism. If the adult industry were mostly male escorts and the abortion laws involved vasectomies, these laws would never even be put to the floor.
Women in US congress are at an all time high, but is still only 28%. So issues involving women's right still don't have representation proportional to its population. Doublethink isnt the biggest issue here, sadly.
The convention is if it helps my (perceived) tribe, good, and if it hurts the other tribe, good.
In fact, a little bit of inconsistency to benefit your tribe is a good signal to others in the tribe that you are willing to break rules to benefit yourself and/or whichever tribe you might find yourself in.
You have to understand that Texas is a big place. Like any big place, there is significant diversity. The stuff you've said is what the government likes to project, but isn't really representative of the population as a whole.
(Furthermore, this is confounded by certain issues playing out very differently in Texas than elsewhere: the left is more likely to like guns, for example.)
For example:
> * Personal liberty is highly valued.
This is what they say, but not what they do. The state is constantly passing laws that restrict the freedoms of individuals.
> Pro individual ownership of guns, as well as self-defense.
This one is complicated. Certainly more people are pro-ownership of guns, but that doesn't actually mean they have them. Texas has the most guns in the county, but adjusted for population, it's 37th in the nation.
> * Oil is a big part of the economy.
It surely is, especially historically, but Texas has also generated more green energy than other states for a long time. Solar is huge, wind as well.
> * Socially conservative overall, with exception of some enclaves of more liberal or progressive values.
You're right in a certain sense: if you look at a map, it's mostly red. But a lot of that land has basically nobody living there, and the "enclaves" are large cities.
It's tough to track political affiliation, but most reports show it to be very evenly split. "When will Texas turn blue?" is a question people have been asking for a long time, and the details of why it has not are complicated. But winning elections is different than sentiment, and the sentiment is at least very closely tied.
> * Large percentage of people identifying as Christian.
This is true; it's about 75%.
> * Centralized editorial influence over school textbooks, for not just Texas but the nation.
Not just textbooks, but see also the fights over vouchers and trying to privatize the school system.
> * Aggressive anti-abortion push.
This is true from the state, but that doesn't mean it's popular: a 2022 survey said that 78% of Texas voters think abortion should be allowed in some form, and only 15% think it should be completely outlawed.
> I'm interested in whether there are conventions over how conflicting values are reconciled
To be blunt about it, the current conservative movement in America isn't really interested in ideological consistency. They just don't see it as a problem.
1. Unmarried men will consume it in lieu of putting their sexual frustration to good use by looking for a wife -- or if necessary, working on self-improvement until they're worthy of the kind of wife they want.
2. Married men will consume it while depriving their wives of sexual contact. If necessary, those men should be confronting whatever marital problems are preventing sex from happening often enough to satisfy them.
3. A huge amount of porn production is downstream of major personal and societal tragedies; the actors being threatened in some way is eerily common (just ask Andrew Tate), and even the "consenting" ones often have histories of sexual abuse and unresolved trauma that are tainting their "consent." A hypothetical society where every daughter grows up in a two-parent household, is known and loved by her father, and is never raped, is going to have a major shortage of porn stars.
Jordan Peterson has talked a lot about the downsides of porn, you can find plenty of snippets on YouTube. I'd recommend this if you want to know more about why conservatives oppose it.
We have to keep in mind that half the population has below-average conscientiousness, and will find it very difficult to resist temptations (such as porn) that are daily put in front of them. Christian societies have generally believed that it's good to work together and structure things to minimize the number of such stumbling blocks (to the extent that it's feasible). Banning porn is considered a step towards that goal.
BUT, you're also right that personal liberty is important and might cut against this. My guess is, this bill was framed in terms of age verification to try and work around this; the authors of it are clearly anti-porn, but if anyone asks, they could say "we're not banning porn, just preventing minors from accessing it."
I've noticed some other commenters claiming things like "conservatives are lying about believing X, it's really an excuse to do Y" so let me address that: all of the viewpoints I've described here are very sincerely held, as I know well from many different conversations with people in the community.
> consume it in lieu of putting their sexual frustration to good use by looking for a wife
> consume it while depriving their wives of sexual contact
These are astounding ideas which, empirically, evoke laughter and/or revulsion in honest women.
> A huge amount of porn production is downstream of major personal and societal tragedies;
This clause sounds reasonable. But Texas has shown zero appetite for addressing the personal and social tragedies that lead some people to the porn industry. So, I am very skeptical that caring for the common (wo)man is part of the true motivation.
> all of the viewpoints I've described here are very sincerely held
It would be naive to believe that people cannot sincerely hold beliefs which are simply perpetuating of a self-serving narrative. In fact I'd say it's the norm.
Sincerely held, but bonkers, is still bonkers.
Your heart's in the right place but your logic here is flawed. By framing it this way you muddy the entire concept of consent by declaring an entire class mentally unsound on account of unsubstantiated past events. Exceptions for intoxication are arbitrary enough. Now past "trauma" invalidates consent?
Don't get complacent. It's easier than you think to recruit the next generation of porn stars from stable families; it's been happening in front of us all along. Just expose kids to sexual topics early and often, nudge them in the direction of alternative religions with euphemistic masturbation rituals, promote the idea that promiscuity and "sex work" is normal and empowering, get them used to posing for cameras for validation, offer them more attention than their parents, get them to reblog excerpts of erotic literature with strangers, persuade them to run away, and coerce them into prostitution/child porn. It's the "fuck you mom and dad please help me" pipeline. The sexual abuse starts under your own roof and the rape only begins at the end. It's the parents who assume their family is immune that end up blindsided. Everything throughout is engineered coercion.
Once grooming became a taboo topic, we stopped talking about it long enough to forget what it even looked like. Anyone interested can trawl /r/runaway or Roblox/Discord looking for fresh faces to add to the NCMEC posters. The FBI has been warning about this for years...but fuck those morons, we're "protecting kids" by banning Backpage, TikTok and PornHub. Porn stars don't all start as junkies from broken homes but they often end that way.
If you and your community care as much as you claim, please advocate for effective mandatory parental controls, especially within multiplayer game environments that allow communication. The action against PornHub is an empty stunt that will likely not stand and achieves nothing.
> conventions over how conflicting values are reconciled
We have a functioning government with a legislature.
In other words, I am sure some kids will learn.
In my teenage days, VPN was only used for: corporate site-to-site, illegal activities. It all required a manual fragile setup. Today: download an app, launch that app.
Yes, them 13 yo buying NordVPN subscriptions massively...
"Pornhub and other affiliated adult websites have blocked access to users in Texas, amid a legal battle with the Lone Star State’s attorney general over an age-verification law."
I wonder what kind of consequences would emerge from imposing a world wide ban on the online porn industry.
I see some comments here saying that people would still find a way. But would it be the majority? I don't think so.
The internet without it's common access points like google, youtube, social media, becomes extremely unusable and unpleasent for the majority of the population.
Banning search engines from showing porn would be a quick way to achieve this.
The majority of creators? No. Many would quit, many others would tease and lose money, most adult sites would collapse while a few adapt to said teasing, pushing the line.
The majority of consumers? Yes. Especially in a world where dating is more of a roulette than ever in the US and social spaces are collapsing. Even if it just means taking and consuming the past 50 years of porn underground, people would find a way to relive their primal urge
>Banning search engines from showing porn would be a quick way to achieve this.
Porn is the one exception that has very high demand and extremely effective word of mouth. By default (and even more so with parental controls), search engines try to avoid showing you adult content as is. Banning it outright will, again, just make people search and curate underground.
So we should serve alcohol to minors.
/s