Utah insists porn must carry a health warning (but polygamy is still fine)

The great state of Utah has always been a bit of an odd-duck when it comes to sex.

With three-fifths of the population identifying as Mormons, the norms aren’t always the same as they would over the border in Nevada, for example.

So it’s not entirely surprising to learn that lawmakers in the state are pushing through laws that will enforce a cigarette packet style government health warning for pornography.

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Utah has been referring to porn as a “public health crisis” for a while now, to the general ambivalence of the population who haven’t reduced their porn use one iota, but that hasn’t stopped the local government from doubling down.

But because the somewhat prudish lawmakers have used the term “adult content”, there’s some concern that the new rules will be abused to ban all kinds of content, triggering angry users and likely litigation.

Early versions of the bill had to be revised as they contradicted the first amendment – freedom of speech – which would have potentially put the porn sites themselves at risk of prosecution for existing.

This has now been softened to protect porn producers whilst labelling their content ‘harmful to minors’. Failure to comply would result in a $2,500 fine.

That still leaves the onus of proof with Utah State to prove that content that wasn’t correctly labelled can be classed as “obscene” – which could be a whole new court case for each porn producer refusing to comply.

However Republican senator Brady Brammer who sponsored the bill said that the difference will come from the majority who obey the ‘spirit’ of the law.

For his part, Sen. Brammer, who doesn’t mention the bill anywhere on his website, wants the warning to read “[this content] is known to the state of Utah to cause negative impacts to brain development, emotional development and the ability to maintain intimate relationships.” with a smaller ramble: “such exposure may lead to harmful and addictive sexual behavior, low self-esteem, and the improper objectification of and sexual violence towards others, among numerous other harms.”

In a sneaky dig, porn portal xHamster briefly changed its front page last week to say, “porn may lead to decreased stress, increased happiness, and lower rates of teen pregnancy,”.

The Utah bill passed hours after a separate ruling designed to ensure that ‘consenting polygamists’ would be spared from jail, despite the Federal Law forbidding multiple partners.

In other words, videos of threesomes may corrupt your childrens’ minds, but having three parents all the time is perfectly fine, which seems just at least a bit hypocritical to us.

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