NAIROBI, Kenya — The Kenyan cabinet official in charge of education, George Magoha, has called for the banning of all porn sites, blaming them for the African nation’s teenage pregnancy crisis.
The 68-year-old politician, who is also a surgeon and an academic, was confronted with Kenya’s high teen pregnancy rates, especially during the pandemic.
“It is about time parents took over control of their children,” Magoha replied. “The issue of our girls and children and grandchildren getting pregnant as if all that we are thinking about is sex.”
“I am going to lobby the cabinets in extension his Excellency the president so that they consider changing the law to block information related to pornography from being accessed by all and sundry in this country.”
Magoha then claimed, without showing any supporting evidence, that countries that have blocked porn sites, had seen cultural changes following these supposed bans.
“I think it is wise, and it is proper to call a spade a spade,” Magoha continued, according to local press reports. “Because you see when you are not thinking about sex and then someone opens the pornographic page then you start thinking about it and generating ideas.”
“By the way, why is that site accessible in Kenya; who needs it? Don’t tell us because it is accessible in the U.S. then it should be accessible here. There are many countries both in Africa and Asia that have blocked it and their culture is better.”
Progressive Kenyan organizations have immediately challenged Magoha’s call for state censorship as nonsensical.
“We would like to inform CS Magoha that watching pornography is not the reason we are having many cases of teenage pregnancy in the country,” wrote Harrison Mumia, president of the Atheists Society in Kenya, in a statement yesterday. “Teenagers are getting pregnant because they are having unprotected sex. That is the only way to get pregnant.”
Magoha’s attempt to institute blanket state censorship regarding sexual expression echoes similar War on Porn attempts around the world, including well-funded campaigns by religiously inspired groups NCOSE (National Center on Sexual Exploitation, formerly known as Morality in Media) and Exodus Cry (an offshoot of Midwestern evangelical group International House of Prayer).
