According to StarTribune.com, the county commissioners plan to soon vote on the policy. The proposal seeks to link pornography and sexual violence — though there is a startling lack of evidence to support this theory — and is backed by the Minnesota Health Department.
“This is not unlike what we went through with smoking,” said Patty Wetterling, the Health Department's director of Sexual Violence Prevention. “Back in the ’60s and ’70s, people would say, 'I have a right to smoke, it's my body.' But then, we recognized there is the secondhand-smoke thing. And even though you don't smoke, you are impacted by somebody else who smokes. It's not unlike that with pornography.”
Commenting on the StarTribune.com’s editorial it would seem that many Minnesotans would be against this proposal.
“Another do-gooder Strib Editorial trying to take away our Constitutional freedoms by fabricating a ‘connection’ between something they don't approve of [pornography] and something nobody approves of [sexual violence],” said site user adelphia.
“Pornography exists — this is a fact and cannot be changed by the so called moralists on the right nor the closed door self-styled feminists on the left,” commenter jakejustjake said. “Again, as is poorly emphasized in the article, there is no connection between pornography and sexual violence. None. Never been demonstrated. Do sexually violent people like porn? Yes. So do normal, nonviolent, good partners everywhere. Perhaps we should move to ban oxygen since most sexual predators use it.”
