Picking stupid fights

Once again, Christian lobby groups are coming down hard and ignorantly on an issue of sexuality. In this case they’ve entered into the debate around the proposed .xxx top level domain (TLD), and the government has dutifully followed suit.

“The government does not support the creation of the .xxx TLD,” the spokeswoman said. She did not elaborate.

At the time, the plan faced criticism from churches and the adult entertainment industry who found themselves in a rare alliance on the issue.

Christian lobbies objected on grounds that the TLD would make pornography easier for children to access.

Adult entertainment groups were concerned that their constituents would be forced into a ghettoised sector of the internet that would be easy for governments to block.

via Government opposes .xxx domains | Australian IT.

OK, so at face-value, the church’s stand makes sense. Anti-porn, so should be anti anything that helps porn out, right? But what if I go out on a limb and actually suggest we think this one through. For starters, Christian lobbies are worries that it would make pornography “easier for children to access”. Are they serious? There is no way that pornography could possibly be easier to access on the internet: if you can spell “boobs” and get to Google, it’s all over.

If only there was some way that you could tell that the site was porn before you got there – through perhaps the domain name, and could automagically block access to that domain. Surely that has a much higher likelihood of helping parents, schools, etc to restrict access to pornography. Will this allow people to completely block porn? No, of course not – but in this case the Adult industry is correct: this would absolutely increase the “ghetto” mentality of pornography and make efforts to restrict porn much more effective.

Can we please start being smarter about which fights we pick?