Rick Santorum has run a surprisingly successful Presidential run for someone essentially campaigning on an anti-fun platform. Between speaking out against non-procreative sex, bravely doubling down on his assertion that gays are ruining straight marriage, and his brave plan to encourage women to stay home from work so they can home school their 27 children a Santorum administration would encourage them to have, it's hard to pick which of his views are the most puzzlingly whackadoo. But here's a new entry in the race: his views on pornography. Namely, his campaign website's extensive explanation of how porn will ruin your whole fucking life, and how Rick Santorum can save us all.
According to his campaign website, in these troubled economic times of ballooning government obligations and waning revenue streams and ballooning consumer debt and a stagnant job market and a shrinking middle class, enforcing laws against illegal pornography is more important to Rick Santorum than ever. But before you dismiss his inclusion of an anti-porn pillar in his platform as more evidence that he's just a religious zealot with sparkling visions of taking America back to The Republic of Gilead, consider what he thinks porn does to the fragile human mind.
America is suffering a pandemic of harm from pornography. A wealth of research is now available demonstrating that pornography causes profound brain changes in both children and adults, resulting in widespread negative consequences. Addiction to pornography is now common for adults and even for some children. The average age of first exposure to hard-core, Internet pornography is now 11.
A pandemic! Profound brain changes! Kids crazed by pornography addictions! To make matters worse, the internet is teeming with horrible images just waiting to spontaneously appear on the computers of parents who have been too busy home schooling their children to learn about how firewalls and passwords work. Porn even causes violence against women, according to the Santorum campaign. Contemporary America sounds like a bunch of depraved perverts in need of a Church Lady-like savior.
What would President Rick Santorum do about all of this? Hire an Attorney General that would vigorously prosecute obscenity laws and Keep Our Internet Free of Hard Core Pornography, the way no one intended it to be.
Santorum's not alone in his charge into vaginas, bedrooms, and hard drives; according to the site, other groups from all over the place support his anti-pornography efforts. Groups like the Family Research Council, which bears the dubious distinction of being named a "hate group" by the Southern Poverty Law Center. Declaring war on porn is practically unanimous.
So what none-of-his-business thing will Rick Santorum concern himself with next? The Enforced Sweet Gentle Smile Act of 2013, which will require women to smile sweetly during labor? The Clean of Mind Act, which requires all aspiring high school graduates to take a lie detector test passable only by truthfully admitting they've never watched any pornography? The Hymen Integrity Act? It's been awhile since we've had a Presidential candidate so obsessed with the inherent shamefulness of America's genitals.
[via Reddit]