SALT LAKE CITY – Viewing porn will condemn your soul to the fiery pit for eternity…but only after it kills you.
So indicates Utah Republican State Sen. Todd Weiler, who on Jan. 27 introduced a bill to declare pornography a “public health hazard.” His rationale? Adult content creates a “sexually toxic environment.”
Weiler is the same lawmaker who in 2013 introduced a state bill condemning sensuous advertising imagery as “gateway porn.” The bill passed.
He may have a fight on his hands this time around. According to Pornhub statistics and a 2009 study by Harvard Business School professor Benjamin Edelman, Utah leads the U.S. in consumption of adult videos.
Among the ills S.C.R. 9 attributes to porn are hypersexualization of teenage girls, infidelity, prostitution, a decreasing desire to marry among young men and dissatisfaction with marital sex among those who do.
“I have read books, and I have had experts tell me pornography is more difficult to overcome than cocaine,” Weiler said, adding similar science lies behind the porn epidemic diagnosis and global warming. His bill is an attempt to stem the “pornography epidemic that is harming the citizens of Utah and the nation.”
Weiler is particularly concerned about internet porn. In a notoriously conservative state where adult shops, gentlemen’s clubs and adult pay-per-view TV are virtually nonexistent, the internet provides both easy access and anonymity.
Oddly, the bill doesn’t seek to curtail one of the primary purposes of porn viewing.
“My resolution does not deal with masturbation,” Weiler told the New York Daily News. “We’re not going to outlaw masturbation in Utah.”
Utahans dodged a bullet there.
