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Should we shut the hypothetical street corner porn booth


  • Total voters
    11
This has all been addressed before. The problems you outline at one end of the continuum are the same, in obverse, at the other.

No, calling for it to be shut down is not necessarily akin to calling in the barbarian horde. If enough people say 'yea' (shut it down) - indeed, if a majority say 'yea' - then that is likely to be reflected legislatively (not necessarily, but perhaps likely).

You voted to allow the continuation of the scenario described in #6,682 - that is a vote for the hypothetical continuation of the facilitation of kids seeing porn.

Are you going to justify that?

Previous conversation has revealed that what you call "kids seeing porn" encompasses high school students viewing ancient Greek sculptures and middle school students identifying the parts in an anatomical diagram in a sex education textbook. As your scenario doesn't specify otherwise, I am completely justified in imagining that what's happening at your imaginary street corner booths is an elective fine arts appreciation course for eleventh graders covering oil paintings of the Renaissance, Baroque and Rococo movements. Let's see you justify shutting that down.
 
Previous conversation has revealed that what you call "kids seeing porn" encompasses high school students viewing ancient Greek sculptures and middle school students identifying the parts in an anatomical diagram in a sex education textbook.
Which post?
As your scenario doesn't specify otherwise, I am completely justified in imagining that what's happening at your imaginary street corner booths is an elective fine arts appreciation course for eleventh graders covering oil paintings of the Renaissance, Baroque and Rococo movements. Let's see you justify shutting that down.
The thread has been pretty much (like over 99%) focused on internet porn - that is the context. The sign on the door ('over eighteens only') was a give away. Perhaps you want a thought experiment that covers every conceivable nuance and angle - maybe one that is thousands of words long?
 
The thread has been pretty much (like over 99%) focused on internet porn - that is the context. The sign on the door ('over eighteens only') was a give away. Perhaps you want a thought experiment that covers every conceivable nuance and angle - maybe one that is thousands of words long?

Your thought experiment amply demonstrates points I've made before that you've had no answer for beyond your claim of acceptable collateral damage that most of us would not find acceptable. The only thing you can imagine doing about under-18s visiting hypothetical street corner porn booths is characteristically lazy, vague, and overly broad. "Shut them down" which would also close every library and art museum.

It's a metaphor for the Internet? Fine. Renaissance, Baroque, and Rococo paintings are also on the Internet. For example, on Wikimedia Commons. I can't post or link to examples here because this very site strives to be suitable for all ages, and many people regard paintings of nude heroes and goddesses to be suitable for "over eighteens only." So Wikipedia is one of those metaphorical street corner booths, that fails (by some people's standards) to adequately filter out under eighteens. Therefore you would eagerly shut it down, or at least, have shown no concern at all that whatever lazy, vague, overly broad measure you'd take to shut down the more objectionable content elsewhere on the Internet would also shut down Wikimedia Commons.

In a few days I (and every eligible voter in my state who chooses to) will be voting on a state ballot referendum affirming or repealing a gun control law that is 116 pages long. This might represent impractically excessive verbiage and complexity for a law (that's one of the arguments for repeal) but it shows what can happen when legislation attempts to address most of the repercussions of a complex issue in the real world. Wanting a total ban on all porn everywhere because you're too lazy to account for the potential unwanted consequences or needed exceptions is no improvement over wanting a total ban because you're some kind of sex-hating fanatic.
 
I'm fascinated that you're still flogging the "under 18 sex = eeevillle (hat tip to Father Lamont from Exorcist 2 , 'cause it's Halloween) " angle, when you've long since let that mask slip and admitted that you find all porn icky and want it all banned, full stop.

Side note : when did you change your profile pic to Curly Joe Derita after his second divorce?
 
I'm fascinated that you're still flogging the "under 18 sex = eeevillle (hat tip to Father Lamont from Exorcist 2 , 'cause it's Halloween) " angle, when you've long since let that mask slip and admitted that you find all porn icky and want it all banned, full stop.
Nothing to explain...but it's a better angle to make something happen.
Side note : when did you change your profile pic to Curly Joe Derita after his second divorce?
I didn't, though he does look a bit like Sibelius.
 
That's not the question you asked.
It's implied.
How many will want this shut down?
On every street corner there is a self-service 'establishment' (loosely defined) that stocks porn. A sign on the door says 'over eighteens only' but anyone entering can do so safe in the knowledge that they will be alone and unobserved.

Compared to:
On every street corner there is a self-service 'establishment' (loosely defined) that stocks porn. A sign on the door says 'over eighteens only' but anyone entering can do so safe in the knowledge that they will be alone and unobserved. It is well known that children regularly go there.
 
The shutdown being temporary was in no way implied. You don't get to retroactively rewrite the question because you don't like the answers you got.
This whole thread is an exercise in how to try to make people change the answers you didn't like. Sadly, none of the techniques seem to work, otherwise people could have written a manual, based on this.
 
This thread is certainly demonstrating how many adults can be indoctrinated to see sex in general, even affectionate, pleasurable sex between consenting adults, as something dirty, harmful and shameful.

I'm not in favor of minors viewing (or reading) porn, but I don't think it's anywhere near as harmful as some imagine it to be. The vast majority of adolescents have at least a general concept of what sex involves. I'm personally much more disturbed by the casual availability of depictions of horrific violence in media. Even a PG movie can depict people being shot, stabbed, beaten etcetera, and few people raise any cry of alarm over young children seeing this. I had a friend growing up who, by the time we were ten, had seen several slasher horror films depicting the most appalling acts of violence, which were the main point of the movies. I'm genuinely disturbed by the fact that something beautiful and joyful like sex as an act of love is considered too disturbing for minors to even know to exist, while movies that depict people (often young women) being tortured and mutilated in the most disturbing ways (and often sexualized as "sluts" as if that makes it somehow their fault) are considered "classics", with people displaying T-shirts, bumper stickers, posters and whatnot referencing said films as part of a wistful nostalgia for their youth.
 
@WilliamAB

Just wanted to check that you voted based on the actual question posed:

On every street corner there is a self-service 'establishment' (loosely defined) that stocks porn. A sign on the door says 'over eighteens only' but anyone entering can do so safe in the knowledge that they will be alone and unobserved. It is well known that children regularly go there.
 
@WilliamAB

Just wanted to check that you voted based on the actual question posed:

On every street corner there is a self-service 'establishment' (loosely defined) that stocks porn. A sign on the door says 'over eighteens only' but anyone entering can do so safe in the knowledge that they will be alone and unobserved. It is well known that children regularly go there.

Why are you hassling individual posters over how they voted? How is that even remotely appropriate?
 

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