Scott Tibbs
Age verification is not an infringement on your rights
By Scott Tibbs, September 15, 2023
We should abolish the requirement that stores check for ID to buy alcohol. We should not make grocery stores or liquor stores the enforcement arm of state law. If parents want to keep their teenagers away from alcohol, then they need to more closely supervise those teens instead of having government impose burdens on others. Plus, teenagers who want to drink are going to be able to find alcohol.
The above paragraph is sarcasm. Yes, we should have age verification to purchase alcohol. But people who produce and distribute pornography online think they should have
special rights that are not available to anyone else, and should be permitted to distribute their filth with no age verification. Porn peddlers think they should not have to abide by the same rules everyone else is required to follow.
Some would argue that data can be hacked, which is why age verification is a problem. But we live in an age we shop online all the time, and no one bats an eye at providing sensitive data to Amazon, Target or Potbelly Subs. So why are people so concerned about "privacy" in accessing online pornography, when privacy is not a concern with literally thousands of other retailers? Could it be that even in our degraded age, watching porn carries a special shame? Do I even need to ask that question?
Yes, it is important for parents to be, well, parents. It is important to supervise and train children in morality. If a teenager wants alcohol, then they will be able to get alcohol. But the law is still there. Stores have to card people before they sell alcohol. The same is true for online prostitution: A kid or teenager will be able to bypass age verification. That does not mean there should be no guardrails at all.
And no, porn is not "free speech." I simply do not care what the Supreme Court says. The idea that video of people having sex (or doing God knows what else) is "free speech" is absurd. The men who wrote the First Amendment would literally laugh in your face if you told them that porn is protected by that amendment. They might even question your sanity.
I cannot even buy cold medicine when I am sick and miserable without showing my papers. I have to show my papers to vote, buy alcohol, or board a plane. Sometimes I have to show my papers to drive down the street, when there is a sobriety checkpoint set up to catch drunk drivers! I have no sympathy for the "privacy" argument. Your "privacy" is not more important than protecting the innocence of children. Get over yourself.
Opinion Archives
E-mail Scott
Scott's Links
About the Author
ConservaTibbs.com