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Ulrika O'Brien's avatar

I think the permissibility of sex acts in public depends not just on ordinary questions of harm, but also on a more nuanced concept of consent. There are enough kinks that depend on watching another's sexual behavior, or being watched in the sex act, to suggest that witnessing a sex act is itself in some measure also a sex act. And if we hold that sex should always be consensual then public sex acts will potentially engage others in non-consensual sex, at least in societies where there is no collective agreement that simply going out in public constitutes consent to witness sex acts there. Likewise, if dressing in drag is construed as sexual behavior, or sexually explicit or suggestive acts happen in a particular drag queen story hour, then this can be understood as a non-consensual sex act with minor children.

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Michael Pergola's avatar

Your public/private comments are spot on and to a large degree this article is only possible due to a collapse of people being able to recognize the difference between the 2 .

The problem with those on the Left , as a recovering democrat myself that I can attest to , is that they condone behaviors they would never allow their own children to take part in.

The way they ignore going into crime-ridden neighborhoods their policies have destroyed

Hypocrisy may be the greatest luxury of them all.

I'm guessing 100 years from now, when we have more accurately mapped the human brain and how it operates we will decry what we permit to enter our eyes and ears -legally- the way we now decry cigarettes and lobotomies.

Let me give you an example.

As an American of Italian descent who despises movies like the Godfather, Goodfellas and shows like the Sopranos I can testify to how simply downloading such distorted inaccurate stories as well as glorifying them can do actual harm including death.

The small cemetery in my Brooklyn neighborhood is filled with the tombstones of young Italian boys and men in their teens and twenties who bought into those films the way people by toothpaste and insurance sold by geckos. They wanted to be gangsters ... they were just young influenceable kids.

I went to many weddings in limos with these movies playing on what was then videotapes. Gorgeous actors , hot wives and/or girlfriends , tons of money .... never had a shot .,

I'm not sure if a fundamentalist approach to the First Amendment is the way to go, not at all. Nor am I sure what the solution is .

What I do know is that when another modern technology was being advanced , the railroad , it averaged about 100 deaths a day attributed to zero regulation ie signage, speed limits etc.

Reasonable people made laws, set limits and things became much safer .

Just claiming someone is an 'adult' is a silly idea given that states define this rather loosely , just look at the age when people can get married .

And not only is it silly it's intellectually lazy .

Having a child of say 8 years old be able to click "yes I am 18 or 21 " on his IPhone and access the horrors of the internet will do more damage to America from within than any enemies abroad ..... and for what ?

To die on the infantile hill of " free speech" ?

Nah , that sounds like the cringiest fringiest Far Left excuses which just got them their asses handed to them on Election Day .

It's ALWAYS the overcorrection.

Be careful what you wish for.

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