I think, as a rule of thumb, it's reasonable to treat sexual laws as a "fingerprint" of a religious society. That doesn't mean there aren't exceptions. But when my state passed a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage, the polling indicated that support for the measure was strongly divided along religious lines.
So it's not so much a division between religion and morality, but just an observed pattern of religions that happens to be applicable here.
Utah blocking porn is completely a religious issue. Just because the line between religious motivation and anything else isn't 100% black and white doesn't change that.
It's not that it's not 100% black and white. The line basically does not exist. What is the line between someone's personal morality influenced by a society that espouses a particular religion as opposed to whatever basic hacker news atheist liberal democrat morality or whatever? One is supposedly better apparently? The Utah law is clearly influenced by their religion but to distinguish that as religiously motivated as opposed to whatever motivation US coastal elite morality barfs out, it's ridiculous.
This law is religiously motivated because Utah politics usually represent the will of the Brighamites, the Mormon adherents to the corporation that owns the entity of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Or what has the More Good Foundation and other similar orgs been pushing for for the last 15 years?
> Where's the line between religious motivation and morality?
Religions are subcommunity groups, morality is interally driven.
Spain has a super left wing feminist coalition in power and wants to ban porn, prostitution, surrogacy all in the name of feminism. One of the biggest countries in Europe.
I think looking the world through the American conservative vs liberal goggles is just ignorance.
What is their argument? That porn objectifies women?
It does that to men too, but aside from that the majority of women in porn are there consensually, many make a ton more money than they could elsewhere. That is empowering to women! As long as there's no coercion, the woman wants to do it. What happened to my body my choice?
The book "renegade history of the United States" is a great read I recommend. It really goes into aspects of our history that is never covered in school and avoided in polite company. It is both enlightening and fascinating
Are you implying that this is a hypocritical stance for feminists to have? Why do American feminists speak for all feminists in the world?
Even if these were American feminists, you could make the argument that there is manipulation and coercion happening so the "my choice" part might be less than safe to assume. So a ban may be against human trafficking and coercion first and foremost.
> Are you implying that this is a hypocritical stance for feminists to have? Why do American feminists speak for all feminists in the world?
No, I'm asking a question in an attempt to understand.
> Even if these were American feminists, you could make the argument that there is manipulation and coercion happening so the "my choice" part might be less than safe to assume.
Unless you're arguing that any and all decisions are due to manipulation and coercion, then this doesn't get us anywhere and is a strawman version of the 'pro choice' argument. Of course there is manipulation and/or coercion in some cases (from what I've heard, it's a sickly large number at that). That is (IMHO) terrible and unethical and should not be legal. I doubt that anyone (or to avoid absolutes, very, very few people) arguing "pro choice" would take the position that there's no problem with that.
But what about situations where it's voluntary? Do you argue that there is no such situation? If there is any money involved at all, you could say that is "manipulation," but is it any less manipulation than any other job where the person wouldn't be doing it if there weren't some incentive? and does that make all jobs unethical and should be illegal?
Some certainly do, but I think it's important to separate two "pro" arguments as despite arriving at similar conclusion, they're quite different in reasoning:
1. Prostitution is liberating and empowering
2. Women should be able to choose what they do with their own bodies, even if it means prostituting them
For those truly arguing item 1, I couldn't say. That conclusion is certainly not self-evident to me and the chain of logic seems to include at some point something that is supposed to self-evident.
However some of the feminists that appear to argue item 1 are actually arguing item 2 but they're jumping to the conclusion.
Also o/t but France might not be the best example to use of healthy politics that represent the will of the people right now…