Comment by Spivak
8 months ago
If you live in one of the states that hasn't yet added one of these laws. I expect it will become a federal bill in a year or two so there aren't 20 variants of the same law.
You can really feel the "big tent" nature of the GOP when these bills are being pushed despite being absolutely abhorrent to large swaths of Republican voters.
I actually can see an argument for age verification, if it could be truly guaranteed to apply only to porn.
The constitutionality of the current laws was upheld on the basis of treating age verification for access to porn as an incidental burden, and thus warranted only intermediate scrutiny.
My (naïve?) hope is that any future mission creep will be rejected by the Supreme Court under strict scrutiny, especially as it extends into general and political speech.
However, once you have the legal and technical frameworks in place, mission creep is almost inevitable, and it could easily take years of litigation to resolve.
“Think of the children” has always been the thin end of a wedge used by those looking to incrementally dismantle inconvenient civil liberties.
All that said, we’re in a much better position in the US under the first amendment. The UK’s “online safety bill” is already targeting a myriad of forms of political speech, and is just the latest example of the significant shift towards the curtailment of free speech across Europe, Australia, New Zealand, and Canada.
I voted for Trump and would make the same choice today without hesitation but agree the Republicans pushing this state by state age identification is pretty bad. State level Rs and house reps leave a bit to be desired. My vote is essentially a vote against the other party. Sometimes we have to choose between the best of two less than perfect choices. Politics is so often a deal with the devil against a worse devil
Can't really say I agree after being quite pleased with Biden's admin—would have been more than happy with the sequel. I clearly don't see the same thing you see in this guy but at least someone is happy and optimistic about it. A center left Democrat reaching across the isle so hard it pissed off her own base and with a platform of not rocking the boat sounds way better than whatever this mess is.
I hear exactly what you are saying. I voted for Biden and Clinton before. The country went insane from 2020 thru 24 and the concealing of Biden’s decline was atrocious. For me the left just went to far. I have 2 white heterosexual sons and I could not vote for a party that declared them an enemy. Everything else was downstream of that for me. Ill vote for the bad guy before I vote for that. Trump has actually surprised me, delivering on many of the issues I voted for him on. If I have to endure his grift and other flaws its a price I’ll pay. I voted against what the Dems offered.
I completely understand and empathize with why some people are upset or even dismayed at what he’s doing though; i just think it’s necessary.
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Sure would have been great if, in 2016 and 2024 elections, the democrats had nominated someone who could have beat Trump. Or conversely, had not nominated the two people who didn't stance a chance.
But yeah, keep railing against the GOP.
Im not sure anyone could have beaten Trump. It was his time, the prior 4 years pushed many over to his base. I voted for Clinton and Biden but there was no one that could have gotten me to vote Dem last election
I said it many times on this forum, Harris had no platform. There was nothing to vote for.
I’m just so tired of “fuck the GOP” when, as you say, it was inevitable. People love to hate a villain, I get it. “It was Hilarys turn, we will just keep marching forward” really didn’t work out. This GOP narrative is basically screaming into a mirror. Not your GOP narrative, not picking on you. Just frustrated.
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