Well, the rumors were true. That is to say, here is one thing Morality in Media (and The Daily Caller back in July) got right, the 2012 GOP platform does in fact mention obscenity and pornography beyond just being opposed to the child kind (not exactly a daring stance to take, that).
Straight from the the elephant's mouth, the wording under "Renewing America's Values" and then "Making the Internet Family-Friendly" reads, after a call to outlaw Internet gambling, as follows:
The Internet must be made safe for children. We call on service providers to exercise due care to ensure that the Internet cannot become a safe haven for predators while respecting First Amendment rights. We congratulate the social networking sites that bar known sex offenders from participation. We urge active prosecution against child pornography, which is closely linked to the horrors of human trafficking. Current laws on all forms of pornography and obscenity need to be vigorously enforced.
Isn't just the Republican party for you? Being opposed to sex trafficking, even being okay with social networking sites booting "known sex offenders" (such people, of course, are not guaranteed to be convinced serial rapists, or anyone vile like that) is opposing harm and or just wanting to let websites choose their terms of service.
This is a call to make sure laws against consensual activities are good and followed. This is a call to use government resources to further crack down on consensual activities. And it's not just obscenity, mind you, it's "laws on all forms of pornography." Pornography, if not classified as "obscenity," has First Amendment Protections. So, even if you buy the "know it when I see it" Miller Test nonsense, laws against porn are particularly absurd and censorious.
Head of the Family Research Council, Tony Perkins, who is apparently responsible for this flashback to the Bush Department of Justice, is too chicken to call for new laws against porn and obscenity, though one can guess that he's for them. But the much more sensible thing is always to call for enforcing laws already on the books. People invariably have a harder time arguing with that. But consider that to this day, people are prosecuted and threatened with draconian jail time, simply for making an extreme or disturbing form of speech (porn). That is completely antithetical to the idea of "small government."
And this may be the executive we'll be getting if Mitt Romney beats Obama in November; a president who has a long history of approving of restrictions on pornography.
Even if Paul Ryan wasn't a small government fraud, even if Romney wasn't an opportunist, empty suit consultant, this little part of the platform is a nice reminder that the GOP is no more interested in individual choice than is the Democratic Party,
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