TAMPA, Fla. – Following in the footsteps of other legislatures around the country, Florida is now considering a resolution which would declare pornography a “public health crisis.”
The language of the resolution, HR 157, is virtually identical to that of the other states which have issued such proclamations, making flat assertions like “pornography is creating a public health crisis and contributing to the hypersexualization of children and teens” and “pornography objectifies women, normalizes violence and the abuse of women and children, and depicts rape and abuse as harmless, thereby increasing the demand for sex trafficking, prostitution, and child pornography.”
HR 157 was introduced by State Rep. Ross Spano, an attorney from Dover who lists “recreational interests” which include “family, music, reading (and) sports.”
Unlike some of the other state reps who have sponsored resolutions declaring porn a public health crisis, evidence has emerged suggesting Spano may have performed some empirical research into the subject.
Specifically, the Orlando Weekly has uncovered a short porn clip from the account of “Goddess Lesbian” which was ‘favorited’ by Spano’s Twitter account in January.
While there’s nothing wrong with a guy liking a random lesbian porn clip he stumbled across on Twitter, there’s obvious potential for serious awkwardness when the same, self-declared family-friendly guy has sponsored a bill bemoaning porn’s “detrimental effect on families.”
Naturally, Spano isn’t about to confirm the favoriting of a clip from a Reality Kings lesbian porn video, but thus far, at least he hasn’t blamed it on a hack, a rogue friend, or an unnamed staff member, unlike some other politicians I could mention.
“Obviously, I have a long social media history on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram since I was first elected in 2012,” Spano told the Weekly when asked about the favorited tweet. “With a thorough examination of my accounts, it will be easy to see that this is not my doing. I have since gone back, once notified, and rectified the problem. And I’m now looking into how it occurred in the first place.”
In other words, it wasn’t him, he doesn’t know what happened, there will be a full investigation, the dog ate his Twitter – and, by the way, none of this changes the fact porn is pure evil and the source of countless sociocultural ills.
“In addition, referencing my prior statement,” Spano continued, “I don’t believe any of this takes the focus off of the fact that there is a direct correlation between pornography and a host of societal problems, including human trafficking, exploitation of children, sex slavery, and domestic violence.”
I hate to be the one to point this out, Ross, but there’s also a ‘direct correlation’ between public figures’ Twitter accounts liking porn-tweets and endless flows of bullshit explanations for such occurrences coming from the mouths and/or keyboards of those public figures.
I’m not saying I don’t believe Spano, but if he were selling me a used car right now, I’d sure as shit want my own mechanic to take a good look under the hood before I handed over the down payment.
If I were Spano, rather than duck, dodge and deny, I’d use this potentially embarrassing situation to my advantage in trying to get HR 157 passed. All it would take is adding a little verbiage to one of those irritating “whereas” statements already piled into the thing.
Since I’m in a generous mood, I’ll even go ahead and suggest some specific statutory language to be added; the italicized bit below represents my contribution to the cause.
“WHEREAS, recent research indicates that pornography is potentially biologically addictive, resulting in the user consuming increasingly more shocking material to satisfy the addiction, and some porn addicts are less able to avoid publicly expressing affection for ‘expert oral sex’ girl-girl clips than other porn addicts, and some of these porn addicts may in fact be Republican state representatives who could experience irreparable reputational harm if anybody were to find a certain thumb drive filled with lesbian porn stashed in the top drawer of their work desks, and…”
You’re welcome, Ross.
No need to compensate me, by the way – unless you plan to do more with this bill than issue another fundamentally useless non-binding resolution, one which might give your socially-conservative constituents the warm fuzzies, but by itself has no impact whatsoever on the laws or public health policies of Florida.
