A Sticky Situation

Hide your kids, this discussion is gonna get blue.

For a start, you should read this article by Paul Bernal. It covers the main points of the issue I'm addressing far more intelligently than I could and fairly succinctly highlights all the issues such a motion could raise beyond the "well-meaning" original intentions. I am fully in agreement with what he says and I don't think I'll look to cover any of these points here.

But there is something I want to add regarding the "moral pressure" apparently present that has brought forward this push.

Our Glorious Leader has made his bold and totally vapid stance in the name of protecting children from corruption. The outcries of parents everywhere for a safer world for their kids has been heard, and it has been taken on board. Kids will no longer have to fear the necrotic and toxic presence of pornography online. Thank God.

But who is it that has worked so tirelessly to secure such a bright future for our young ones. Which champions of decency have brought forth salvation to our decrepit lands. What's that? The Daily Mail and The Sun?

It's been mentioned a lot in my online social circle. The irony... no, wait. That's far to light hearted and innocent a term. The SHEER-FUCKING-HYPOCRISY of these two bastions of sleaze shutting down the presence of naked peeps on the Internet is too much to bear. Can we so simply overlook The Sun's daily breasts on Page 3? Or The Mail's horrendously creepy stories that tend to centre on how attractive infants are becoming? Quite frankly, if we're taking moral advice from these bastards, I don't want to be innocent.

But this is not the time to be debating the morality of pornography, (Summary: It has dodgy parts. But, for the most part, it's just people having sex. Are we back to saying sex is immoral again? Because, no.) Now is the time to be questioning just why people should have to take an extra effort to partake in a fairly normal endeavour with absolutely no moral questionability whatsoever, just so lazy, half-arsed parents don't want to put any extra effort into bringing up the kids they are so clearly unsuited to raise.

Because there is yet more depressing irony to the notion that a Prime Minister who spent so much time claiming he would bring discipline back to the younger generations would be doing so much to actually alleviate the responsibility of those who actually need to be sorting this out. Parents. It's not all parents. It's obviously not all parents. Dad's all across the country are probably feeling a bit uneasy right now. But I also assume/know there will be a lot of parents who don't want this. But no-one listens to the majority. They don't need to complain.

I was lucky. I had sensible (well... ish) parents who understood that kids will do all the things that they have done, and the best means of "protecting" children from inevitable experiences is to actually explain these things reasonably and sympathetically.

Sadly, this is not a universal trait. There is that minority of parents who just leave their kids in the dark, and assume its everyone else's job to keep kids in check. This has been felt in schools, where parents blame teachers for the behaviour of their own kids, and in the rise of aggression in kids today (admittedly an assumption, but hard to deny). So when these parents take that rare and fleeting moment to actually take notice of their kids and find that they have seen a pair of boobs on the Internet, then it's obviously Google's fault. Nothing to do with a lack of attentiveness on their part. It's the same argument that was bandied about against gay marriage: "How do I explain this to my kids?" Maybe just by talking to them for once.

As a gamer, this is nothing new. Every week, it seems, there's some parent group bemoaning Grand Theft Auto or Call of Duty for teaching their kids to be violent. This is, of course, utter bullshit. I've played GTA since the London edition, and all it's taught me is that, after 7 or 8 games, GTA gets kind of tired. But still, you get the same, tired Mums Groups that write in to say video games should be banned; never seeing the fact that, if they just stopped buying them the damn things, there wouldn't be a problem.

But no, they have ranted and raved for tougher action and so now everyone has to be labelled a perve for having to stick up their hands and ask for porn. I await with baited breath for the inevitable news story that suggests someone is guilty of a crime based purely on their having "opted-in" to mature content. Our Fearless Overlord even went as far to take a stab at Internet providers and search engines for not doing enough, despite filters already being in place for this very purpose and the ever adapting procedures for taking down and filtering abuse-based content from search results. Yet, at the same time, you can guarantee that The Sun will keep tits on Page 3 and The Daily Mail will continue to salivate over 8-year old girls because El Presidente won't want to bother his press pals any more after the mild inconvenience caused by Levenson.

In short, this whole issue has made me irate, infuriated and just a little nauseated. I can only hope that this news will shortly be followed by the now traditional Tory U-turn, or by the revelation that, in practise, nothing will be changed and all this was just a cheap PR exercise. But I fear the threat of censorship, I fear the potential scapegoating and, above all, I fear for a future that takes us back to the dark ages of 'no sex please, we're British,' of kids that get confused because they grow up with an understanding that sex is all shady and immoral.

I thought we had made an advance since those days.