Arizona Proposes Resolution Declaring Porn ‘Public Health Crisis’

Less than a month after one Arizona lawmaker proposed a bill that would tax porn fans a flat $20 for accessing online adult sites, with revenues supposedly going to build a wall on the Mexican border, another state legislator is pushing a resolution that would make Arizona the seventh state to declare porn a “public health crisis.” The bill, HCR 2009, was introduced by Republican state rep Michelle Udall, and claims that pornography has such “detrimental effects” on its consumers as  “toxic sexual behaviors, emotional, mental and medical illnesses a difficulty forming or maintaining intimate relationships.” The proposal follows similar resolutions that have passed with the last year in Idaho, Florida, and Kansas all based on the same claims, attributing a wide variety of personal and social ills to the viewing of pornography. But such claims have been widely debunked, as AVN.com has previously reported. In fact, government studies have shown little or no correlation between porn habits and sexual or emotional dysfunctions, and that family background plays a far more influential role in shaping sexual attitudes than does exposure to sexually explicit material. Arizona ranks 46th out 50 states in offering comprehensive sex education in middle schools, according to the Arizona Republic leading some Democrats in the legislature there to question why, if Republican legislators are genuinely concerned about children developing harmful sexual attitudes, they have not supported increased sex education measures in the state. "If we really want to look at this, we should start with education,” Democrat Pamela Powers Hannley said, as quoted by CNN. “It's embarrassing that we are one of the states that does not have medically accurate sex education. In testimony, they were trying to blame everything on pornography. That is a stretch.”  Hannley is pushing a competing bill that would help create scientifically based sex education programs in Arizona. As AVN.com reported on Friday, Hawaii legislators are now proposing a "$20 surcharge" bill for porn viewers, But In South Dakota despite efforts by lawmakers to characterize porn as a “public health crisis” demanding state regulation, a bill in that state that would have imposed a $20 tax for internet users to access porn sites was voted down in the legislature on Friday, the Sioux Falls Argus Leader reported.  Photo by Adavyd / Wikimedia Commons