The Republican presidential candidate and staunch social conservative wants to ban hard-core pornography. He calls it “toxic to marriages and relationships” in a new statement posted on his official website.
“America is suffering a pandemic of harm from pornography,” the former Pennsylvania senator writes. “It contributes to misogyny and violence against women. It is a contributing factor to prostitution and sex trafficking.”
He demands a crackdown on the distribution of hardcore pornography on the Internet, in addition to material on cable/satellite TV, hotel/motel TV, retail shops and through the mail.
What qualifies as “hardcore” remains unclear.
Santorum points to a “wealth of research” showing pornography causes “profound brain changes in both children and adults,” and rips President Obama for not doing enough.
“The Obama administration has turned a blind eye to those who wish to preserve our culture from the scourge of pornography and has refused to enforce obscenity laws,” he writes. “While the Obama Department of Justice seems to favor pornographers over children and families, that will change under a Santorum administration.
Hmm, so a large swath of feminist literature now agrees with Santorum; isn’t that interesting? If this is not an ideal way to start a discussion, the statements by Santorum are getting at an interesting societal question, see: http://nymag.com/nymetro/news/trends/n_9437/index1.html for a more “respectable” / “reasonable” take on the issue.
Alan – There have been feminists who have opposed porn, which they view as the ultimate objectification of women, since the beginning of the modern movement in the 1960s. To suggest that this is a new phenomenon is laughable.
The real issue here is that, once again, we have Big Government conservatives — fresh from their state-enforced rape-by-shaming-wand debacle — threatening to restrict what Americans can and cannot read — eager to stand up an army of law enforcement bureaucrats to monitor the hundreds of millions of computers and smartphones in this country to ensure that no one is viewing anything naughty.
The crazy part is that right-wingers complain about government spending except when it comes to pet projects like this. Santorum’s Vatican-inspired police state would cost to hundreds of millions of dollars a year to operate, but that’s okay with conservatives.
Replace popeyes chicken with KFC and the blacks would have a party.