MADRID — Spain’s influential far-right Vox party has begun pushing the Madrid legislature to mandate default “porn filters” on devices accessible to minors.
The party, led in the Spanish capital by Spanish-Cuban businesswoman Rocío Monasterio, introduced a formal “non-law proposal” urging all local government offices, NGOs and platforms to endorse a “digital agreement” on the subject.
So-called porn filters, along with related for-profit apps created by faith-based businesses like Covenant Eyes and Accountable2You, have been endorsed by anti-porn crusaders across the U.S. They are also being widely marketed to American churchgoers. In some cases, churches and clergy have been found to use these programs as surveillance tools to spy on parishioners.
Vox’s proposal claims that the proposed default porn filters are a response to a number of sensationally reported “instances of gang rapes among minors.”
The group, which is often aligned with radical-right elements in the Spanish Catholic Church, blames that supposed crime wave on “the trivialization of sexual relations and the lack of parental control over teenagers, and also the precocious sexualization of children and the fact that minors have more ease to access pornographic content through new technology.”
Vox also cited statistics about minors supposedly accessing adult content that, according to survey respondents, “they had not searched for.”
“This situation, together with the sexually suggestive content in social media, songs, music videos, etc., creates a very complicated situation,” the Vox statement alleged.
The far-right party also claims that exposure to adult content leads to “high-risk sexual conduct, STI contagion, unwanted pregnancy, and degradation of self-esteem.”
Citing no verifiable sources, the proposal goes on to link access to adult content with instances of sexual assault, drug use and “normalization of degradation.”
