If someone chooses to subscribe to a dozen onlyfans, or join a polygamist relationship, it should be seen in the same way as someone choosing to smoke a pack of cigarettes everyday, or to eat nothing but McDonalds. It's an unhealthy decision, but one entirely within their rights to choose. If someone wants to be heavy-handed in discouraging porn, it should take the form of restricting advertisements that manipulate people into consuming it, just like cigarettes. Give people the freedom to choose without massive corporations spending billions of dollars trying to manipulate their choices.
It's an unhealthy decision, but one entirely within their rights to choose.
You cannot have rights, without putting the responsibility to uphold those rights upon ALL the citizens of a nation who hold those rights. Do you want the responsibility of upholding the rights of others to do all these things? The liberal answer, is yes, you have a responsibility to let other people do what they want to their body, and consume what they want. The religious answer is no, you have a responsibility to keep people abiding the tenets of their religion. The conservative answer is no, but stealthily and gradually yes because it makes their family more money, leaves the poor getting poorer as these bad decisions keep the poor generationally poor, and let the rich carry on their wealth generationally as they teach their kids against these evils. These are just different ideological outlooks.
Which is ideal? I don't know. Let me ask you a different question. When you impose rights upon people like the right to do what they want with their body, will you also uphold the responsibility to it? Most people, pressed upon this will realise that, while it's within the required responsibilities of their citizenship(among others like paying tax) realise they don't actually want to uphold the responsibilities of their nation. Another example of this is when nations put the responsibility of serving in the military upon all their citizens, and even though it's quite often glorified marching bands, standing outside of places to guard them and boy scouts stuff, they don't want this responsibility and search for a nation with more appropriate rights and responsibilities to their sentiments.
When a nation imposes rights you DO NOT want the responsibility of upholding, it's time to think about whether that nation is right for you. It's a slippery slope, supporting the right to do what you want with your body, sets the precedent for imposing responsibilities to pay taxes, mandatory military service etc...
Additionally, this post is given with a western-centric point of view. Within other countries such as the Philippines, it's a legal offence to commit adultery which swings entirely against what you support which is the liberalisation of sex. This means you have a responsibility to the nation to not commit adultery. Personally, I don't want the responsibility of upholding people's right to liberal sex, or their right to adultery. The weakness of this argument is that the nation selects responsibilities, not you, so just because you want to or don't want to uphold a responsibility, and that this is difficult and time consuming to change and you cannot easily change citizenship(and also points of jus sanguini and jus soli). You could try to counteract this by becoming stateless, but most policies protect against becoming stateless... and some nations(America) don't protect against it, but you end up in a legally dreadful situation if you're stateless.
The very notion that rights just exist in a vacuum without responsibility imposed on you by your nation's government is exceptionally naive. Most people when push comes to shove, will
not uphold their nation's responsibilities(and for this point, I think especially in Western-Europe and North America, their populations fall especially deeply in not upholding the responsibilities of their nation). Fortunately push doesn't come to shove, and a lot of police don't bother enforcing dumb laws, and can't enforce laws they don't know about, and there's a lot of blurriness in the law(which is why courts exist)
When you make the absolute that it's within their rights to choose sexual liberation in this fashion, are you willing to uphold the responsibilities that come with it in your day to day life? When you uphold it and support another person in this, you already determined it's "unhealthy", but you're supporting this "unhealthiness" as a responsibility. Are you an agent of "unhealthiness"?
This is in effect the "I disagree with your argument, but will fight for your right to speak it" argument which a lot of leftists despise as it sets the stones for allowing people to be their ultimate hideousness, but it's shifted to "I disagree with your sexually promiscuous lifestyle, but will fight for your right to that promiscuous lifestyle". There are plenty of cases of people with STDs(and also plenty of people with STDs who don't know it and sex makes people do stupid things), going around and intentionally(or incidentally) spreading them, and you have in the self-same tongue fought for their right to that sex? Remember when Covid was a thing, and some people intentionally spread Covid when they got it? It's a similar situation.
The main weakness of this argument, is that citizens are supposed to uphold the spirit of the law and the spirit of their imposed responsibilities(and police and politicians the spirit of financially acquiring a fine spirits collection), but spirit cannot be penned into law. It can only be felt, and when you feel the spirit of the Western world, does it throb with a healthy heartbeat full of vitality? I believe the Western Dream(why western and not American? Because the west is effectively a monoculture where Western Europe are American Proxy states) is unfurling slowly into the next Western twlight of the idols.
No one wants to just be a pawn in the hands of big advertisers.
People who make a living off of marketing? Like youtubers who shake hands with Faust and sell their shadow for a sponsorship deal? Some people want purpose, and even being a pawn provides the elusive purpose of promotion through domination to a queen. Purpose and responsibility mingle, and Police officers supposedly find their life's purpose in upholding the nation's laws and imposing responsibility upon her subjects, and in this, they too are "chivalrous knights" of her kingdom.
Young people are tired of being manipulated.
It's not just young people, it's most people.
"Some people think this is paranoia, but it isn't. Paranoids only think everyone is out to get them. Wizards know it." - Terry Pratchett
