SALT LAKE CITY — The Salt Lake Tribune Editorial Board has condemned the state legislature’s proposed warning label for all adult content as “a cheap way out.”
The bill, HB243, requires a printed warning label on all physical media and a 15-second disclaimer for online content and would impose fines and other penalties if these conditions are not met. The Utah House of Representatives passed HB243 last week by a wide margin and it now sits before the Utah Senate Judiciary Committee.
“Because we cannot be bothered — or don’t know how — to provide our children with accurate, comprehensive sex education, the kind of enlightenment that would help future generations understand the difference between reality and fantasy, between fulfillment and victimization, between diversion and addiction, HB243 amounts to the state of Utah giving up and placing a ‘Bridge Out’ sign on the information superhighway,” the article reads.
The current language of the warning label reads: Exposing minors to pornography is known to the state of Utah to cause negative impacts to brain development, emotional development and the ability to maintain intimate relationships. Such exposure may lead to harmful and addictive sexual behavior, low self-esteem and the improper objectification of and sexual violence towards others, among numerous other harms.
“Maybe,” observes the Tribune’s editorial board. “Though one could also issue a similar warning about exposure to the Utah legislative process.”
The content label provides “no solid definition as to what we are being warned about,” notes the article, and offers "little guidance to either purveyor or customer as to what is legal and what is not.” The Editorial Board also notes the state’s legal definition of pornography is out-of-date.
According to Tribune’s editorial board, HB243 includes language that “amounts to a hunting license” by allowing anyone the power to “sue and collect damages from any website operator.”
The “last thing the Utah judiciary needs,” they observe, “is to be misused by the self-appointed morality police, some of whom will be sincere, others in it for the money or to take revenge on the online sex worker who wouldn’t give out her home address.”
Click here to read the complete editorial.