MANY Red States Now BLOCKED!

[BootmanLA]

7 hours ago, ytowndaddybear said:

If issue 1 passes in Ohio today, it won't be long before it is added to the list.   The United States of Fascism coming to a town or state near you.

It may well come in Ohio, but not because of Issue 1.

Issue 1 strictly concerns the percentage of the popular vote needed to adopt a constitutional amendment (60% of those who turn out to vote). The legislature can already enact legislation similar to that in these states with a simple majority vote and the assent of the governor, with no vote of the people involved.

The only way in which Issue 1 could theoretically get involved in this issue would be if First Amendment activists or the like wanted to put a protection for access to adult sites into the state constitution - under Issue 1, if it passes, that would require 60% of voters to approve of that protection in an election. But it doesn't change anything about the legislature's ability to enact such a restriction.

[ytowndaddybear]

Ohio Republicans saw Issue 1 as a stepping stone to enacting God's Law in Ohio.    I have heard this from multiple sources including elected Ohio Republicans as well as the pastor that lives next door to me. He also a pollworker, the one I had to walk up to and get my ballot from yesterday, he was all smiles and neighborly but just his presence there might intimidate or remind some what his opinion on the issue is since he preaches it in his church regularly.    Since Issue 1 would only impact the power of a people's initiative and not the state legislature's ability to propose constitutional amendments, it was obviously a power grab with the immediate impact affecting the chance of the outcome of Novembers election which includes two people's initiatives protecting the right to choice and legalizing recreational use and home grow of marijuana.

Edited August 9, 2023 by ytowndaddybear

[jamobile]

On 8/8/2023 at 12:05 PM, ytowndaddybear said:

If issue 1 passes in Ohio today, it won't be long before it is added to the list.   The United States of Fascism coming to a town or state near you.

Thank Christ it failed!

[hntnhole]

8 hours ago, ytowndaddybear said:

enacting God's Law in Ohio

This is merely demonstrative of how far these magonians have drifted from the Message they claim to uphold.  The one they claim to follow said "feed the hungry, clothe the naked, house the homeless, love one-another" over and over and over again. 

Is it not clear to these people that they have left every vestige of the message in the dust, favoring their hatreds instead of "evangelizing the Original Message"?  

[rawTOP]

Well, this is complicated… Virginia Democrats voted for the age verification bill in exchange for taking homophobic language out of a different bill.

https://www.xbiz.com/news/276065/virginia-democrats-admit-to-trading-off-their-age-verification-votes-for-unrelated-bill

Quote

“I said to Senator Stanley, ‘If you’d like to pass your bill, you need to make the definition” of  “sexual conduct” not include “homosexuality,” Surovell told the Post. “So, basically I stuck my bill into his bill. This is a sort of a belt and suspenders thing, and he was willing to do that if that meant I wasn’t going to put meat on his bill and kill it.”

If your in VA it might be good to write your state senator to say that was a bad deal.

[Guest]

23 minutes ago, rawTOP said:

Well, this is complicated… Virginia Democrats voted for the age verification bill in exchange for taking homophobic language out of a different bill.

[think before following links] https://www.xbiz.com/news/276065/virginia-democrats-admit-to-trading-off-their-age-verification-votes-for-unrelated-bill

If your in VA it might be good to write your state senator to say that was a bad deal.

As despicable (and Un-American) as these bans are, i wonder why someone hasn’t come up with an age-verification aggregator that can securely provide verification services for porn sites, or indeed any site that needs age verification, like a winery, perhaps. Or maybe they’re out there and these state-level bans don’t allow them as well?

[BootmanLA]

9 hours ago, Vancrawman said:

As despicable (and Un-American) as these bans are, i wonder why someone hasn’t come up with an age-verification aggregator that can securely provide verification services for porn sites, or indeed any site that needs age verification, like a winery, perhaps. Or maybe they’re out there and these state-level bans don’t allow them as well?

If a private company wanted to do that on a voluntary basis for companies that wanted to use the service, that would be one thing.

But there is a fundamental problem with a government mandate for age verification to access something on the web: it's a violation of the First Amendment. You have the right to read and obtain information anonymously. (Anonymous insofar as the government is concerned, that is - a private company can require pretty much any information it desires.)

And the only way to prove your age is to prove who you are - to disclose your identity. Telling people "You can't access this otherwise legal content unless you prove your age (and thus who you are)" is unconstitutional.

[hntnhole]

11 hours ago, BootmanLA said:

is unconstitutional.

and will remain so, if all of us vote to preserve our rights.  Look what just happened in Ohio.  The R's in that state just got a swift kick in the balls for their mendacious meddling.

[rawTOP]

On 8/11/2023 at 3:08 PM, Vancrawman said:

As despicable (and Un-American) as these bans are, i wonder why someone hasn’t come up with an age-verification aggregator that can securely provide verification services for porn sites, or indeed any site that needs age verification, like a winery, perhaps. Or maybe they’re out there and these state-level bans don’t allow them as well?

They exist, but they're cost prohibitive for sites like this one - which makes them unconstitutional.

Then there's the issue of the validator knowing too much about you which violates your privacy.

There is a double blind solution in the works, but it's not ready yet. Hopefully it won't be cost prohibitive.

[Hard1]

Great site!! Thanks

On the states and feds restrictions of us, when they attack one the attack from all angles to tax and regulate us.

Freedom of speech, ground water rights, land restrictions/regulations, taxing entities created in all sectors of day to day stuff.

 

Thanks for use of site, my 2c

 

[polyglutton]

I'm unlucky in that though I live far away from any of the states with bans, inexplicably my IP address hovers somewhere between Louisiana and Mississippi, a part of the country to which I've never even visited. So now my access to this site is intermittently blocked and I have no idea how to fix it. If I have to get a VPN, I want it to be a good one. Please if anyone can recommend a quality service?

[ErosWired]

On 8/11/2023 at 11:24 PM, BootmanLA said:

Telling people "You can't access this otherwise legal content unless you prove your age (and thus who you are)" is unconstitutional.

So is this to say that these odious laws are fatally flawed and we need merely bide our time until someone challenges them in the courts? But are they unconstitutional if the court that is supposed to judge constitutionality doesn’t find them to be unconstitutional, even if they patently are? In this day and age, I’m not sure even the Declaration of Independence could have been written, because we seemingly can’t hold any truths to be self-evident.

[BootmanLA]

8 hours ago, ErosWired said:

So is this to say that these odious laws are fatally flawed and we need merely bide our time until someone challenges them in the courts? But are they unconstitutional if the court that is supposed to judge constitutionality doesn’t find them to be unconstitutional, even if they patently are? In this day and age, I’m not sure even the Declaration of Independence could have been written, because we seemingly can’t hold any truths to be self-evident.

AFAIK, none of the current "spate" of identity verification laws have been challenged, yet, or at least, if they have been, no injunctions have been issued of which I'm aware.

But the jurisprudence from prior efforts at this sort of thing make the unconstitutionality clear. Now, an individual federal district judge may hold otherwise, particularly if the lawyers challenging the law aren't good at their jobs; courts have no obligation to act as the lawyer for either side, pointing out cases that they may have missed citing in their legal briefs. So you could get a crappy lawyer with a not-particularly savvy plaintiff challenging the law in a court with a judge (like many of the Trump Texas judges) who has a proclivity to uphold this kind of shit, and lose the case at that level. Hopefully, the appellate court with jurisdiction over that district court would correct the error, but there are appellate courts (looking at you, 5th, 6th, and 11th Circuits) that issue awful opinions all the time, and more often than not get struck down if they go to the Supreme Court.

But that doesn't mean a more successful challenge won't be brought elsewhere, with top-notch attorneys well versed in First Amendment jurisprudence. So we might end up, for a while, with a patchwork of laws that are almost identical on their face, held unconstitutional in some regions and constitutional in others. That's the usual prescription for the Supreme Court eventually acting, but that process could easily take 3-4 years from the date the first challenge is filed.

[polyglutton]

After a few months of only having intermittent access to this site despite not living anywhere near the states with bans because of my IP randomly bouncing between Mississippi and Louisiana, I finally broke down and got a VPN subscription. Sigh.  

[rawTOP]

Just a reminder - Texas will go back to being blocked within a week.