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Republican presidential hopeful Rick Santorum raised a few eyebrows last week, with reports that he intends to go after pornography if elected. As the former senator sees it, America is "suffering a pandemic of harm from pornography," adding that a Santorum administration would target porn distribution online, on cable television, and in hotel rooms.
Because his campaign made this an issue, Santorum was pressed on this issue during a couple of Sunday-show appearances yesterday. Most of his responses were pretty predictable: on CNN, he criticized the Obama administration because it "has not put a priority on prosecuting" Bush-era porn cases.
But Santorum went a little further when talking to ABC.
"[O]bviously Congress, in its wisdom, understood that hard-core pornography is very damaging, particularly to young people, and that exposure on the Internet can be very damaging, and of course it's very damaging to a lot of folks."
Santorum isn't just talking about obscenity laws or illegal content involving children; he's referring to an intended crackdown on pornography because he believes the content itself is "very damaging."
The candidate, in other words, wants to use the power of the executive branch to limit access to adult materials because he thinks porn, like contraception, is bad for you.
To reiterate a point from last week, since Americans clearly have no appetite for adult content online or on television, this will no doubt help deliver millions of votes to the Santorum campaign.
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So Little Ricky wants to ban abortion, contraception, non reproductive sex, premarital and non marital sex (I believe "fornication" is the word for that) and now dirty movies too? He's going to need (no pun intended) a really big, nasty, intrusive, probing government for a job like that.
The nation will need a serious outlet for pent up energy if Mr. Church Lady has his way.
How do you think they motivate the suicide bombers? Not Getting any ? We have 72 virgins awaiting you in heaven. No Burkas too!
"The nation will need a serious outlet for pent up energy if Mr. Church Lady has his way."
Isn't that what wars are for?
Paging Ron Jeremy! Paging Ron Jeremy! ;-)
The truly odd thing is that there is a direct correlation between what market research studies show is the heaviest buyers of on-line porn - both photos and video - and Rick Santorum's support: Rural, southern, white and Christian. I'm just sayin' ....
As a resident of PA "Amish Country" I can attest that even with no access to the internets-no telephone, no electricity- the Plain Folk also consume teh porn.
Funny you mention it. I was back home in rural eastern NC last week, and my, there is a sizeable number of roadside porn shacks for Bible Belt Country!!! More than I typically see here in Baltimore/DC. They're almost as ubiquitous as store-front churches down there... I was actually hoping to get a little southern "souvenir" when I was down there, just to thumb my nose at what I thought were the southern religious social mores...
Actually, this is proof that porn rots peoples' minds. The right-wingers are the biggest "consumers" (no put intended) of porn, and they vote overwhelmingly for Santo and his nut-job friends. Obviously this over-consumption of porn has rotted their brains, contaminated their precious bodily fluids, and turned them into mindless robots for the right. If we ban porn, we might be able to rehabilitate these poor, demented souls and make them progressives! (Follow the money shot.)
Studs Supporting Santorum
Santorum wants to ban sexually explicit things from the internet because they can be very damaging. ... Sounds to me like he's hoping Congress will solve his Google problem.
Even on that point, I found his comments interesting. I'm a little curious about the causal link between porn and kids. Did his kids somehow have access to porn? What does he think of the parenting skills of many Americans? In the interim, why is he not concerned about how some porn objectifies women or encourages violence against them?
The issues that he picks to debate are so irelevant to the current events. He has already learned to play wag the tail of the dog pretty well like so many of the Republicans have. They need to come up with some different tactics. The American people can see right through them. It feels like we are being dragged through the mud with these old, boring topics. He apparentally was born in the wrong century. We should start calling them the 19th century cowboys. It is not porn that is ruining this country, it is people who hate.
If you don't stop doing that, you are going to go blind. I"m over here Rick!
Your supposed to point at your face and say "my eyes are up here".
Or say "Stop looking at my crotch!"
So for anyone who ever looked at the oppressive, sex-obsessed, police state of Iran and thought, "if only they were forcing people to conform to the right religion, it would be paradise," you now have your candidate.
Because that's the excuse given for oppression in Iran, they have to protect the people from "sexual perversion."
Watch a video of a cleric sometime, side by side with an Evangelical giving a sermon, the similarities are chilling. It will make you shiver.
http://youtu.be/ZaJ0z3hx51s Sh*T Santorum says.
God
Guns
Gays
Gynecology
He mentioned Hitler- well he sounds just like him no offense to Hitler!
Santorum makes statements that are obviously repeated from things he has heard from white supremacists.
Many of whom could well be internet porn consumers on a frequent basis, but who cares? Sure seems to me that porn doesn't even rate a position on the list of concerns our president should be addressing. If it's a "problem", it's strictly a personal one. I fail to see how it can possibly be anything other than that.
Did anyone bother to ask him what harm he thinks porn causes? My suspicion is he's afraid they will learn that sex can be fun and there is more than one way to do it.
Republicans always vote for the "fun police".
I have a better question: What does he think qualifies as porn? Because, as this post from ThinkProgress illustrates, we're not all on the same page.
Does Rick Santorum know there are "parental controls" that come with technology? Or is he wanting to legislate "adult citizen controls"?
My main concern: If he's elected, will pie for breakfast the day after Thanksgiving be illegal? Because... it's kinda like a faith-based tradition for me.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UUnH9NECSUU
Interesting. Methinks he -- like Jimmy Swaggart, Ted Haggard, David Vitter, John Ensign, Mark Foley, priests/bishops/preachers en masse, and the endless list of those holier-than-thou guilty of 'sex crimes' -- doth protest too much.
Where exactly are all the "no government intrusion into my life" folks now? Michelle Obama supports healthy eating and the rightwing nuts freak out and eat double cheeseburgers just to make a point all the while calling her names and complaining about government overreach.
But now, Santorum wants to dictate, literally, what you're allowed to spend your money watching on TV or the internet and from the rightwing nuts ... crickets.
No folks porn isn't the problem (if only it were), Mr. Frothy Labotomy is the problem, he and his yellow teeth and his sidecar of control freakish, bible thumping morons.
Have to give him a little credit. At least this republican lets us know beforehand what his agenda will be rather than outright lying about it, and hiding his true intent like a lot of tea partiers did in 2010. Doesn't change the fact that pornography, though it may be a problem for some, is NOT the one we expect our POTUS to spend his time addressing. Besides, history suggests that when someone is overly obsessed with someone elses "problem", it's usually because it's their own as well. Maybe he should spend more time working on his own, and let everyone else's be.
Always interesting when a Republican claims to be a champion of the free market and then wants regulate what consumers buy.
'Freedom' means that he is free to tell us what to do and what not to do.
So, Santorum is heralding a new golden age of Republican liberty and the end of government intrusion...
...by introducing policies that would increase government intrusion to the point of violation of civil liberties. Tell me again why this guy is anyone's ideal President?
Oh, and lest we forget, the good puppets of Avenue Q have an important lesson to teach.
Oh, I know, I know, pick me, pick me..."The Internet is for porn!"
How does he know about porn unless he's watching it? Honestly, this man is a joke. There is definitely something wrong with someone so obsessed with sex and morals. It makes me wonder why with all the major problems to address he picks on contraception and porn. hummmm I never knew it was the President's job to monitor everyone's behavior! Furthermore, I (and I'm sure many other responsible adults) resent being treated like a wayward child!
And since Santorum believes women should be subservient to men, we won't even be able to go ask permissions from MOM! ..."What did your Father say? Because his word is FINAL."
I'm gonna start looking for the ugliest Father's Day tie I can find.
Santorum is living proof that chupacabra rape water buffalo. Mo Mooo Moooooo!!!!
I find the mental images that went through my mind just now disgustingly offensive. I'm gonna tell! You should be censored for introducing those thoughts to my head.
Censorship is the most disgusting act of depravity.
My bad. Mooooo!!!
X@ Well, of course I went there. How the he** am I supposed to rate it as disgustingly culturally depicting if I'm not willing to go there?
Will Santorum take his pornography fight to the Vatican and ask the Pope to paint over the naked bodies in the Sistine Chapel, hack genitals off sculptures and burn books? Santorum is the reincarnation of Fra Savonarola and consider what happened to him. Google is your friend.
I hope this means he will denounce Rush Limbaugh who admitted to watching porn when he told Susan Fluke she should post the videos of all the sex she's having on the web so he can watch it. Why is no one talking about Rush's porn request?
Insanitorium misses the "good old days of the Spanish Inquisition". It will start a "War on Porn" that will fill overcrowded prisons to bursting capacity if elected.
Porn discussions are always followed by "constitutional protection of free speech". This is just another example of a 90% versus 10% issue where the GOP is on the loosing side.
Top shopping categories in order of popularity.
If you want to eliminate porn, you purchase/install a firewall with a porn filter and enable the censorship option.
"Adult content" web sites must register or face prosecution, so this works fairly well.
Any remaining porn that makes it through a properly configured firewall should be reported to the following so the feds can make sure the site is registered.
Insanitorum wouldn't know anything about this because he believes all science and technology activities are sinful and corrupt.
"Nooooobody expects the Spanish Inquisition. Our chief weapon is fear. Fear and surprise. Our two, two main weapons are fear, surprise, and a ruthless efficiency. Our three, three main weapons are fear, surprise, ruthless efficiency, and an almost fanatical devotion to the Pope. Ah. Amongst our weapons are fear, surprise.... Amongst our weaponry are.... Ah. I'll come in again."
The devil made do it.
I so can't wait until the GOP primary comes to California in June ~ they will have to answer our Prop question as to '...should actors in the porn industry be required to use protection.....' ~ there is no good answer if you are against Big Government & against Porn ~ hurry, hurry June!
You do remember that the last time California voters had an important decision that they chose a governor with the following resume.
How does he know so much about hardcore porn... unless he's watched it... ?
Wow. The only way to be a porn expert is to go there.
Other people are catching on.
The 1st Amendment does not protect OBSCENITY. If pornography is not obscene, disgusting, and repulsive, then what is?
You are correct. The 1st Amendment does not allow pornography on public airwaves, highways, buildings, public distributed materials, or public institutions. The public has the right to not be directly exposed to obscenity without choice, and to expect public owned property and services to be free from obscenity.
Private regulated venues... that's another matter.
You are also correct. The censoring of obscene materials allows one individual to decide what is morally acceptable and what is not. So, you decide if pornography is obscene, disgusting, and repulsive or not. If not, then what is?
Obscenity can be easily defined and usually is defined by states as pedophilia, bestiality, etc. It does not include naked bodies and ordinary sex acts. What Santorum wants to ban is pornography which is a broad form of depiction of sexual acts between consenting adults. The problem with pornography is that it encompasses works of art because distinguishing art from pornography is subjective. I was in Rome and Pompeii and there are many museums that have works of art that would qualify as pornography. The only difference is the form such as painting or sculpture as opposed to film and photos.
I suppose the question here is why do people consider sex and nakedness to be obscene since they also simultaneously argue that it's natural?
Sex is an evil awful disgusting thing that you're only supposed to do w/ someone you love
Personally I'm all for laws banning child pornography or bestiality or pornography depicting things like someone being gang raped
But everything else just seems silly to me
It is from Judeo-Christian religion that we get our ideas about sex. If you look at ancient Rome and other ancient cultures, sex was a natural part of life so there were very few things that were taboo. It was St. Augustine's writings that now form the foundation of Christianity's attitudes toward sex.
That's a little bit off, Mike. The negative view of sex is at least partially rooted in Middle Platonism. I really don't know how to adequately explain this without going into detail about religion and philosophy in late antiquity, so I won't. I'll just assume that you're reasonably familiar with basic Platonic thought concerning the real and the Ideal. Now, go from that to a much latter idea which held that the human mind is divine, but the human body is bestial. It's an idea that you find in Middle Platonists of all sorts: pagan, Christian and Jewish. People in late antiquity are more diverse, and sometimes more repressed, than you give them credit for.
He Guys, Maybe we could give these people , www.dutchbracelet.com , a new text for their bracelets? Something like outside: Ban Internet Porn! ; Inside : do it yourself, thanks Rick!
"Santorum? Isn't that Latin for @sshole?" -- Senator Bob Kerrey (NE)