Thread by @ASFleischman

Let's look at how the scourge of pornography is affecting the youth. It's been increasingly available for the past 30 years. Here's teen pregnancy rates. /1

Here's the divorce rate. /2

Here's violent crime. /3

Here's life span.

Some idiot is going to pop into my mentions and say that correlation isn't causation.

You know what else isn't causation?

Whatever nonsense you make up off the back of a Jack Chick tract. /5

If pornography had the serious harmful effects you're claiming, there'd be data to support it.

Meanwhile, we have a great control. We can look at countries like Saudi Arabia and Iran that ban pornography. /6

Here's the divorce rate in Iran.

Does a society that murders people who commit adultery result in stronger marriages?

Doesn't look like it. /7

So @MattWalshBlog starts with a premise he hasn't even bothered to establish--that pornography is some way hurts society, as an excuse to get where he really wants, that the government should hurt people who view things he disapproves of. /8

@MattWalshBlog And I promise you, he isn't even going to address any actual numbers, aside from suggesting that a lot of people are *addicted* to porno and that it must be made illegal for their protection.

Of course, no evidence they'd be deterred by criminality. Look at child porn rates. /9

@MattWalshBlog Child pornography is incredibly illegal, and everyone knows it, and yet arrests keep going up, not down. And we take people out of the workforce for years at a time for violating the law.

Why would criminalizing something far more popular work any better? /10

@MattWalshBlog And that's before we get into the Goddamn obvious point that the government has no powers past what are expressly enumerated in the Constitution, and to punish pornography, you are going to need to get juries to agree that their own viewing habits should send them to prison.

@MattWalshBlog What you're asking for is wide-spread jury nullification on a scale not seen since the Fugitive Slave Act, assuming you don't forgo the Constitution altogether in pursuit of some sort of Squad of Vice and Virtue busting down doors. /13

@MattWalshBlog So no, there's no evidence that banning pornography would deter people from viewing it, help society at large, or improve a single person's life.

There is significant evidence that it would result in even more people in prison in a country that already leads the world. /14

@MattWalshBlog @MattWalshBlog may identify himself as a "deep thinker," but he's never seriously grappled with the consequences of the ideas he's pushing.

And I'm happy to debate the man any time, any place, because I don't think he has a clue what he's talking about. /f