Utah's Stupid Dumb Porn Blocker Law
Legislating preferred cultural outcomes is all the rage. Again.
From the “I’m sorry, I thought you guys already knew about this” folder…
On March 23rd Utah Governor Spencer Cox signed into law a measure that would require all cell phones and tablets sold in Utah to have pornography blocking software installed by the hardware manufacturer before being sold in the state. The law is highly unlikely to ever be implemented however -- in order for it to go into effect five neighboring states would have to pass legislation matching the Utah law, an acknowledgment that hardware manufacturers are not going to bother making Utah-specific variants of their devices.
Despite the unlikelihood of the law ever being put into effect, the fact that it exists is extremely troubling. Porn is controversial, I understand that. I also understand that porn has been ruled several times by the Supreme Court to be speech protected by the 1st Amendment and that it is entirely legal for consenting adults to create porn and for adults to consume it. No government should have the authority to interfere with adults consuming legal content on mobile devices they paid for.
The excuse for the law being needed is predictable -- children may be exposed to porn on mobile devices and won’t someone think about the children. The answer to that argument should be obvious; if a parent is so worried about their children being exposed to porn they can install their own damn porn filters on their mobile devices. Why would every person in the state of Utah need to be involved in this decision, let alone have it made for them? Is the insinuation here that parents are too dumb or lazy to do this for their children’s devices? Or is it that, just maybe, children are being used as a smokescreen to restrict actress to porn to everyone in the state of Utah?
Yes I know if this law went into effect all an adult would have to do is deactivate the porn filter on their devices if they choose to. The ease of removal isn’t the point here, it’s that a state government has no business mandating the installation of the filter in the first place. Let me present this same scenario but without porn being involved -- say a state decided in the wake of the GameStop stock controversy, for your own financial protection, to pass a law saying that mobile device manufacturers had to install a default block on users downloading online stock trading apps. It’s absolutely legal for you to spend $400 on a single GameStop stock, why is the government inserting itself between you and Robinhood to make that transaction more difficult? See where this ideology can lead if left unchecked?
This law is endemic of a larger issue that is becoming apparent; conservatives are just as happy to use government power to force their preferred cultural outcomes as progressives are. Jeffery Sachs details the numerous proposals by state-level Republican lawmakers to outlaw “woke” rhetoric in schools, with everything from banning “divisive concepts” from being discussed all the way to policing what faculty members say outside the classroom. These proposals would not solely apply to K-12 schools but also to universities in those states. The message is clear -- conservatives have no issue using the government to mandate their preferred behavior.
The government does not exist to force people into ascribing to your moral or cultural preferences. No, I don’t care if you think your moral or cultural preferences are the correct ones; if you feel that strongly about them go make your case and stop expecting the government to do your heavy lifting for you. Creating and passing laws centered around cultural outcomes will only lead to an increasing arms race between progressives and conservatives that will leave those of us who care about free speech, free expression, and your 1st Amendment right to watch porn on your phone to clean up the rubble.
And I for one, do not want to have to be on cleanup duty after the War of the Authoritarian Dipshits.