Rule 34: The Internet Is For...Well, You Know....

Why else was the Internet invented but to provide a p**n delivery system?

A modicum of idiocy is in everyone, religious people have a little bit more and superstitious are full of it.

• Tarif Naaz

In this age of “Everybody-Hates-Porn-Yet-Everybody-Consumes-It” shame, it appears that good, God-Fearing, White Conservative Christian heterosexuals in Louisiana believe they’ve come up with a solution.

And, of course, being the pure-as-the-driven-snow-Christians that they are, the moral beacons in the Louisiana legislature know precisely how to deal with the scourge of pornography.

A coalition of internet users, sex-positive writers, adult entertainers, and anti-busybody activists filed a federal lawsuit Tuesday against Louisiana's new anti-pornography law, which would require age-verification software for websites that include pornography and other "harmful materials" — which the law leaves up to the state's attorney general to define….

The plaintiffs argue that the new law stifles free speech and imposes an unfair burden on content creators, who will be forced to gatekeep their own materials when keeping kids off sites they shouldn't be on is parents' responsibility.

"These laws give the state the power to harass and censor legal businesses," says Alison Boden, executive director of Free Speech Coalition, a plaintiff organization composed of people in the adult entertainment industry. "We, of course, support keeping minors from accessing adult content, but allowing the state to suppress certain speech by requiring invasive and burdensome systems that consumers refuse to engage with is simply state censorship."

NOLA.com adds that other plaintiffs include

an online platform specializing in sexual wellness called Deep Connection Technologies, a sex advice columnist in Seattle and a Slidell military veteran who watches pornography while her husband is deployed.

As is generally the problem when dealing with “pornography,” one person’s porn is another’s idea of free speech. Is an exposed breast pornography, or is it merely an exposed breast, just part of the human body and not necessarily of prurient interest? Because not every instance of an exposed “naughty bit” is or has to be considered sexual.

The human body is only as dirty, nasty, sinful, sexualized, and/or pornographic as we choose to make it.

And what is it about the human body that’s nasty, dirty, and/or necessary to censor?? We all have one, and while an unclothed human body can certainly be useful (and enjoyable) for sexual purposes, that’s by no means the only use. Here in Portland, por ejemplo, we take them for a bike ride every summer.

Of course, the Louisiana law, written by old, technologically Luddite White Conservative Christian heterosexuals, is a monument to ridiculousness…because, well, because that’s how adults seem to think about da Interwebz.

Silly wabbits.

The suit names fucking Louisiana Attorney General Jeff "Rodent Felcher" Landry, fucking Safety and Corrections Secretary Jimmy "P-Farts" LeBlanc, and fucking Commissioner of Administration Jay "Wankbiscuit" Dardenne as defendants in the case.

The law requires sites with porn or other "harmful content" to track users' ages through software that would upload state-issued identity cards, because why would anyone worry about uploading their driver's license to see nakey people doing it? NOLA notes that such software is relatively easy to get around, because of course it is.

Anyone who’s been on the Internet for more than 30 seconds knows how to get around any registration requirements of the sort required by the new Louisiana law. All you need is a virtual private network (VPN). As I write this, every site I’m using for research thinks I’m in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. I don’t have the heart to tell them I’m not, eh?

And, of course, anyone in Nawlins with a laptop and a box of Kleenex can use a VPN to get onto SpankBank or Pornhub or whatever their preferred site is by using a VPN. Man, it’s almost like the fools in the Louisiana legislature have NO idea what they’re doing, knowhutimean??

Oh, and I haven’t even touched on the fact that Louisiana’s “anti-porn” law is about as arbitrary as playing the lottery.

The article adds that the law

[allows] the state attorney general to decide what is considered “harmful material” online and punish content creators with huge fines if their age verification process is flawed or non-existent.

Well isn't that simply arbitrary as fuck? The lawsuit says the legislation is "murky" and open-ended, not to mention unconstitutional.

“The statute is incredibly vague,” plaintiff attorney Jeff Sandman told Gambit. “There are terms of ‘art’ in here that are undefined. A trained attorney can’t make heads or tails of this."

Sandman also says the definition of “harmful material” is broad and fluid, and that kids’ internet access should be decided on by parents, not the government.

Under the whim of a far-right attorney general like Jeff Landry, the law if upheld could prevent teenagers from learning about their own adolescence and accessing sex education materials, and punish experts who share scientific knowledge about those topics online.

But aren't arbitrary standards what a good moral panic is all about? Heck, if you went by standards like the Supreme Court's rulings on "obscenity," then states wouldn't hardly be able to ban anything, and that's just not fair to Republicans who want to protect the hypothetical children, while real 14-year-olds are the only ones who know how to fix Dad's Pornhub account anyway. (Who the fuck has an "account" anyway?)

Be ready for suits in Utah, Texas, and all the other copycatting "religious" red states, which are all the highest porners anyway, because obviously.

Irony is clearly lost on the good, God-fearing White Conservative Christian heterosexuals in Louisiana who passed their “anti-porn” law. So this seems a good time to point out that the biggest consumers of online porn are Conservatives from Bible-belt states.

Is anyone else as (not) shocked as I am? The duplicity is almost tangible, right??

Nah…you can’t make this stuff up. Hypocrisy is more than a river in Egypt…or something like that.

I don’t know what Internet rule number this would fall under, so I’ll call this Cluth’s Law…unless and until someone has a better name for it:

The Internet was invented and exists as a pornography delivery system. And it will resist anyone and everyone’s impulse and efforts to control it. Period. End of Story. Good night. Game over. Drive home safely.

So, despite the clueless attempts by White Conservative Christian heterosexual Luddites to control pornography (when they are some of the biggest consumers of it), the Internet will continue doing what it does. Same as it always has. Because many of the technological advances on the Internet can trace their genesis to porn sites, some of which are the most heavily trafficked in the world.

To this day, there still isn’t a workable, universally agreed-upon definition of what porn IS, which is why the Louisiana law is so vague and arbitrary. No doubt the Louisiana Attorney General will know porn when he sees it, eh? And I’m sure the good people of État de Louisiane will have NO problem whatsoever with one person deciding for the entire state what constitutes prurient interest and what doesn’t.

No problem, right? But wouldn’t you LOVE to see his browser search history??