Olives @olives@qoto.org

Americans sure love guns, lol.

https://www.sltrib.com/news/education/2023/06/01/bible-is-banned-these-utah/ Obscene Bible removed from a few Utah schools.

Uh, that law backfired...?

Oftentimes, a bill will be far more narrowly worded, and it will still have significant unintended consequences (and might well stop short of it's goals).

This bill has a far wider sweep ("what is 'harmful'?") and consequently has even more room for being, ironically, harmful.

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/06/foreign-intelligence-surveillance-court-has-made-mockery-constitutional-right NSA surveillance makes a joke of the Fourth Amendment.

What could possibly go wrong when you write a vague "eliminate 'harms' to minors" requirement in a bill like the "AADC"?

Newsom's argument for why NetChoice shouldn't vaporize that brazenly unconstitutional bill in court is so lousy.

It has a strong ring of "won't anyone please think of the children?" to try to get someone to ignore how it so brazenly tramples over people's rights.

Similar theory of media affecting someone, although "we want to avoid hurting someone's feelings" (and going way too far) is still different from "we don't think these people's lives are valid".

It's interesting how both "LGBT books / media turn people gay / trans" and "orcs promote racism" (debunked) have a similar theory underlying it.

Some Republicans believe porn can "turn you trans", even though there is no evidence for this claim whatsoever (assertions are not evidence).

The only scientific evidence I know of shows that people who view trans themed porn tend to have more positive views towards LGBT folks.

Isn't greater empathy and compassion towards others a good thing? Okay, maybe, if you hate LGBT people, and want more people to hate them too, that might be a "bad" thing.

For anyone else though, this is bad how exactly? Even if porn was doing something there, this something appears to be... Good?

Also, porn filters and anti-porn policies find it very hard to distinguish between LGBT content and porn, but that's another discussion matter.

Nor is there any evidence about these books... For that matter. Can someone even show these books are read by a significant portion of people who aren't LGBT?

Or even that a significant number of people read them? It feels like someone just saw a bunch of books which offended them and decided they wanted them banned.

There is also a very disturbing wider McCarthy like trend here. If a piece of media contains a crush involving a girl and a girl? Is this suddenly heinous and evil?

How much media would have to be burned because someone has a bunch of baseless and fanciful fears?

You could even say that that part of this blog post has aged like spoilt milk.

Those social conservatives have gone from hardly being taken seriously, and people not catching on until it was too late, to being a huge threat to human rights.

I read that bit at the end a few times.

I think there has been an unfortunate over sensitivity in our society on a few occasions, which in this case hit far off the mark, although I think they are valid concerns about social conservatism.

Those concerns become more and more apparent as time passes...

Considering that for these cases of Dr. Seuss or Orcs, there are far more egregious cases of a pressure group travelling across the U.S. to attend local meetings to censor countless books, religious groups trying to censor porn on the Internet, and Republicans passing sweeping legislation.

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/checkpoints/202004/no-orcs-arent-racist Dr. Christopher Ferguson goes into how orcs in Dungeons & Dragons are not and do not promote racism.

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/checkpoints/202007/13-reasons-why-and-teen-suicide Dr. Christopher Ferguson on how suicides in fictional media do not cause people to commit suicide.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/social-media-age-requirements-are-anti-free-speech Social media age verification is anti free speech.

https://www.utsa.edu/today/2020/08/story/pornography-sex-crimes-study.html
A meta analysis from 2020 of 59 studies which tried to look for a link between pornography and sex crimes and couldn't find one.

It found studies which found a "link" failed to control for factors which might make it appear as if there is a link when there is not.

They also found tell-tale signs of p hacking and citation bias.

Studies which followed best practices didn't find this.
Population level studies showed more pornography was associated with lower crime.

They closed by calling for more research to be done.

It's interesting one researcher is from Texas given how anti-porn the politicians can be there.

I don't quite agree with his framing on one points, although it makes a lot of sense that hopelessness about the future of society might contribute to these ailments.

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/checkpoints/202304/social-media-and-youth-mental-health Dr. Christopher Ferguson goes over why the social media moral panic about teen mental health is very much a moral panic.

U.S. Supreme Court declines to take on a case from a religious group which is against pornography and appears to be filing an ambulance chasing lawsuit against Reddit.

Leaves Ninth Circuit precedent standing upholding Section 230.