Utah Campaign Against Porn Marches On With Phone Filter Ban (apnews.com) 212
Conservative lawmakers in Utah have a passed a proposal this month requiring all cellphones and tablets sold in the state to automatically block pornography. It's unknown whether Gov. Spencer Cox, a Republican, will sign or veto the proposal. He has until March 25 to decide. The Associated Press reports: Supporters argue the restriction is a critical step to help parents keep explicit content away from kids -- especially as more children have their own electronic devices and have been forced to spend more time online during the pandemic. Combating porn is a perennial issue for Utah lawmakers who have previously mandated warning labels on print and online pornography and declared porn a "public health crisis."
Utah's generally conservative culture means racy mainstream magazines and lingerie catalogs can be considered risque. Leaders of the predominant Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints faith have also drawn attention to what they consider the harms of pornography. Even if Cox signs the measure, it wouldn't go into effect unless five other states also enacted similar laws, a provision added after manufacturers and retailers voiced concerns that it would be difficult to implement the filters for a single state. If Cox signs the bill, Utah appears poised to become the first state to mandate filters on devices, according to two prominent technology experts and the bill's sponsor, though federal internet restrictions aimed at preventing kids from accessing porn were passed in the late 1990s and later stuck down in the courts.
Utah's generally conservative culture means racy mainstream magazines and lingerie catalogs can be considered risque. Leaders of the predominant Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints faith have also drawn attention to what they consider the harms of pornography. Even if Cox signs the measure, it wouldn't go into effect unless five other states also enacted similar laws, a provision added after manufacturers and retailers voiced concerns that it would be difficult to implement the filters for a single state. If Cox signs the bill, Utah appears poised to become the first state to mandate filters on devices, according to two prominent technology experts and the bill's sponsor, though federal internet restrictions aimed at preventing kids from accessing porn were passed in the late 1990s and later stuck down in the courts.
How does a phone (Score:5, Insightful)
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Depends who's phone. If it's a Utah priest, then the phone can probably infer 100% of it is porn with very high probability.
Re: How does a phone (Score:2)
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I mean that in a good way though.
Re: How does a phone (Score:4, Informative)
At my college the Mormon girls were exceeded in sluttiness only by the Catholic girls.
Mormon girls were good for general partying. Catholic girls were "anything but intercourse" which meant some amazing bjs and most of them considered anal sex as not intercourse, too.
Gotta love those religiously raised girls finally set free!
Re: How does a phone (Score:4, Interesting)
I met a girl in a bar once, and she took me home. This started a short, but extremely fun little affair.
She had to keep the whole thing secret from her parents of course, as they would have hit the roof if they found out.
I sometimes wonder what her future husband thought on their wedding night, because she wasn't a virgin when I met her, and I understand that sort of thing is important to Mormons.
Maybe she got out of the cult. I hope so, she was a nice girl.
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Behind closed doors, perhaps. But as with all these strict religious communities, it's important to maintain the facade of respectability at all times.
Utah priest, (Score:2)
Does the LDS have priests?
I think thr have bishops, but those are not as high up in the church as those in the Catholic heirachy.
Quite easy (Score:5, Funny)
How does a phone determine what's pornographic? That's a social standard.
Very simple, every web request sent via a phone gets sent to what is called a "jack center".
If someone at the jack center is able to pleasure themselves viewing the URL you attempted to access, then it is blocked, otherwise it goes through.
If you are worried about latency, rest easy - they hire only 18 yo males so the latency is nearly negative.
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True but they return a success string on every query.
Yes, every.
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Penile plethysmography,
Would you need to calibrate for SGBi maybe? LDS? Catholic girl fetish?
The angle of the dangle is proportional to the heat of the meat.
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There are working filters available now. Some of them allow you to select ban-lists from different organizations.
There is no question that the technology exists to implement this.
The real question is whether a filter mandate is an appropriate role for the government.
To be clear, without the government mandate, phone owners can still install filters if they choose. And with the government mandate, phone owners can still remove the filter. So what the mandate does is change the default.
Re: How does a phone (Score:2)
There is no question that the technology exists to implement this.
Not without false positives that are going to occasionally be, at best, extremely inconvenient, and a bunch of false negatives too. Not to mention that it's very likely to be forwarding your https content to a central server at least some of the time. Who's going to be liable when this software stops you doing something essential, or gets hacked and leaks your personal data?
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Not to mention that it's very likely to be forwarding your https content to a central server
That is not how the filters work.
There is a list of banned URLs. Every day, your phone will fetch the updates to keep the list up-to-date.
When you (or your kid) try to access a site, the URL is compared to the list. Nothing that you type is sent to a server.
Who's going to be liable when this software stops you doing something essential
Nobody. You can turn the filter off anytime you want.
or gets hacked and leaks your personal data?
There is no reason for any of your personal data to be stored.
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Opt-in filtering doesn't affect 1st amendment protections, unlike mandatory filters.
False positives in opt-in filters are not so problematic (unless they start blocking things like the Governor's name).
Re:How does a phone (Score:5, Insightful)
You can certainly detect nudity and sex
The filters don't work by examining images. They work by comparing the URL to the ban-list. The ban-lists are updated regularly.
Yes, it is easy to work around the filter, but once a kid is old enough to bypass it, they are likely old enough to see tits.
strictly a social construct.
The ban-lists are maintained by organizations that are part of society.
If you don't like their ban-list, you can switch to a different list.
Look, if you want to argue that this is a stupid law and the government shouldn't be doing this, fine. I'm with you. But if you are claiming (as you appear to be) that it won't work because computers can't do anything based on "society", that is clearly nonsense. The computer doesn't give a crap about morality. It is just comparing bytes.
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Now you are making stuff up. There is no indication that this would be true for the proposed Utah law.
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The filters absolutely can and do 'recognize' websense has been doing it for almost a decade maybe longer.
Occasionally with hilarious results. i remember it classified the websites of a bunch of summer camps our employees sent there kids too as pornography because it was reacting to photos of kids in swim suits.
Re:How does a phone (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm reminded of the various nanny web filters in the '90s. Also the way that web pages that criticized the nannies in any way ended up on the block lists for sex, violence, nudity, and anything else they could think of.
Meanwhile, we now see what conservative REALLY think about government interference.
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The same way your parents kept pornography away from you? My super religious parents just made it even more interesting. The more taboo it is the more energy is spent to find it. So there is a list that bans URLs. It just means the safe porn is not available. If it were possible we would have solved SPAM and computer viruses a long time ago. Society and human nature shows the same results with every generation. Then when we become adults. We have issues dealing with our sexuality and our bodies. Oh, but the
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The same way your parents kept pornography away from you?
Put it in the back on the top shelf of the closet? That worked until we were old enough to be left home alone long enough to drag a chair over to see what was there (we were actually looking for hidden Christmas presents).
Re:How does a phone (Score:5, Insightful)
...but once a kid is old enough to bypass it, they are likely old enough to see tits.
My kids saw tits from the moment they opened their eyes. They were sucking on tits since before even then. I would say that the problem isn't with the kids, but with the grown adults who are so traumatized by their youth that they can't deal with their own sexuality. In all seriousness, those people need to get out of politics, and get therapy.
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I, for one, think this is a stupid law. I clicked around a bit looking for the justification of calling porn a "public health crisis," and it appears that a lot of politicians (and, presumably, their voters) believe that children are winding up with lower self-esteem and an inability to maintain proper intimate relationships (when they grow up) because of porn.
And, from what I can see, this conclusion has very little science behind it. Though it would be a very difficult thing to study in isolation, so I
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They had to move onto the next thing after the "Violent Video Games" hypothesis was debunked.
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This reminds me of the 1990's when the local university would ban certain Unicode text groups. It got pretty hilarious, and scary at the same time.
alt.sex.white - Okay
alt.sex.asian - Okay
alt.sex.black - Banned
alt.sex.fetish.furry - Okay
alt.sex.fetish.tits - okay
alt.sex.sexual.abuse.recovery - Banned
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This is Utah. Who needs porn when you've got 4 wives.
Wait, never mind, it's the 3 other guys who can't get wives because the elders have married them all.
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This is Utah. Who needs porn when you've got 4 wives.
The FLDS sects that still practice polygamy are located in Arizona and Texas, not in Utah.
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And Mexico, those are the ones that shoot at rival Mormon sub-sects.
Re:How does a phone (Score:5, Funny)
By all the gods, I get in enough trouble with one wife, why would I want four women pissed off at me?
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I imagine they will probably end up with a furry outbreak
How does a lawmaker make law? (Score:2)
Parents do not unbox their kids presents for them because unboxing is part of the “experience” of receiving something new. Phone manufacturers to “comply with the law” will simply set a default of 0000 upon activation regardless of the state and leave it up to parents to change it... which means any child with half a brain will sim
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There is no indication in the article that phone users will be allowed to turn off the blocking.
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Second reply to acknowledge that, although the news article did not suggest that the filtering could be disabled, the text of the proposed law does detail how the filtering could be disabled with a passcode.
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Too easy, set up a different internet protocol, encrypted and specifically for minors. Simply a protocol that can be locked onto children's devices that only allows access to the minors internet. All content has to be checked before it is allowed it. Simply, why doesn't it happen. Psychopathic greed of the establishment because they want to target children with mind disturbing peer pressure advertising because GREED KNOWS NO LIMITS. Really sick as fuck billionaire adults. Have a controlled minors internet a
Re: How does a phone (Score:2)
The same way businesses have been preventing employees from accessing pornography on their computers for decades? There are free filtered DNS services that offer this now. I'm not saying I agree, but it's a pretty simple concept.
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determine what's pornographic?
They are mormons in Utah, so polygamous. They consider 1:1 as porn, but MFF threesomes and moresomes will be OK.
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Phones will need neural accelerator chips installed to pull this off without eating the battery alive. And that will only kick off a cat-and-mouse game between this neural network and adversarial image filters to fool it.
Re:How does a phone (Score:5, Interesting)
Even better, Gov. Spencer Cox would then have to explain to his electors why they can't buy a phone in the store down the road anymore.
But anyway, it is never going to happen. This is what is known as "pandering".
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Maybe based upon a skin tone it could analyze the image and calculate the coverage percentage of the flesh. If that exceeds the limit defined by the legislation then it would be considered pornographic and blocked.
Skin tone analysis shows negative for latex fetish porn, but positive for pictures of babies.
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Plus skin tone analysis alone would either had to account for all possible skin tones and thus have an unacceptable false positive rate, or would have to give some racial groups a free pass.
The only way to get a remotely effective filtering system is with a lot of processing power, a very large staff of reviewers, and a central database. Doable, but expensive - there are lots of subscription services for it, but you're not going to get that for free.
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Oh, it goes on to define the words used in defining the words.
"Nudity" means:
(a) the showing of the human male or female genitals, pubic area, or buttocks, with less than an opaque covering;
(b) the showing of a female breast with less than an opaque covering, or any portion of the female breast below the top of the areola; or
(c) the depiction of covered male genitals in a discernibly turgid state.
(13) "Sadomasochistic abuse" means:
(a) flagellation or torture by or upon a person who is nude or
A business opportunity for someone (Score:5, Insightful)
If the measure to filter cell phones sold in Utah is successful, marijuana won't be the only thing smuggled in next door from Colorado.
Screw That, Automatically Block Scammers. (Score:5, Interesting)
I've complained to my phone company, and my government officials. They gave me the polite "fuck off, not happening"
The phone companies aren't cooperating, the government has no interest in the fight. Everyone I know deals with this crap.
Dammit, I JUST GOT A DAMN SCAM CALL WRITING THIS.
Re:Screw That, Automatically Block Scammers. (Score:5, Insightful)
A flaw in representative democracy is that diffuse non-partisan issues are ignored.
Plenty of people care about spam calls, but far fewer of them care enough to change who they vote for, and those people are spread out across all 435 congressional districts.
No politician benefits from fixing the phone spam problem.
Re:Screw That, Automatically Block Scammers. (Score:4, Insightful)
Many surveys paint most Americans as more progressive than their reputation, but it is the ultra conservatives who are loudest after the election. You can't wait for the next election.
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You still have to constantly communicate with the elected.
If your representative gets 1200 letters about the auto parts factory closing and 3 about phone spam, can you guess which issue will receive attention?
If each representative receives three letters about phone spam, that is 435 * 3 = 1305. It is a bigger issue but spread out. So it is ignored.
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Time to drop your phone service, I guess.
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-I've found unless you need to pick up phone numbers you don't know the ios 14 feature to block unknown callers works pretty well though I can't use that feature since I must pick up a lot of unknown calls
-short of that, I suppose there are various tools on android I've heard about that work well
-I myself went scorched earth a while back, I ported my number to google voice and signed up for a native number in a fly over state and set my phone to block all numbers from that area code with number shield (best
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Most of them come from India. I wait until someone gets on the line and then ask if their mother knows they steal for a living. They hang up real quick.
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Good luck (Score:2)
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That trick never works! (Score:5, Insightful)
You can't define 'pornography' with any regularity.
'Block lists' inevitably either block non-porn, fail to block actual sex porn, or become subject to someones' 'agenda' sites to block.
Kids will find a way around the blocks and filters no matter what you do.
It's a waste of time and money to even bother with this nonsense.
It is not the job of governments to raise peoples' kids for them; PARENTS get to decide these issues, not politicians!
Meanwhile: we're still in the middle of a global pandemic that's fucking up our economy. You politicians have more important things to worry about than this, get off it and get busy with the things that need doing RIGHT NOW!
Re:That trick never works! (Score:5, Funny)
the 1st may stop this (Score:2)
the 1st may stop this
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Since it is a rule about having a filter on by default, that you can turn off, perhaps your outrage is misplaced?
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"Would you like to turn the porn filter off?" Y
"Are you at least 18 years of age?" Y
"Permission granted."
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Plus, again: IT WILL NOT WORK.
Just stop selling to them (Score:3)
It's only around $3mil people and I bet you most of them would travel out of state in order to get a cell phone.
Wedge issues (Score:5, Insightful)
The corporatists have gotten extremely good at getting us to vote against our own interests for the sake of things that don't really matter.
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or the genitalia of common root vegetables
Well up until just now I had always assumed a "hot potato" was a potato which was straight out of the oven. As ever the internet enlightens in odd ways.
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Didn't say corporation (Score:2)
Wacky nosey religions are the public health crisis (Score:5, Informative)
Tax them, get them out of politics and children's education. That's the better solution.
On public health crises (Score:2)
If you can declare the entire Conservative movement to be a public health hazard [theweek.com]:
Pornography certainly can be declared such...
At least, we know, there is a problem: Westerners [healthline.com] — and Americans in particular [cnn.com] — aren't having as much sex as the previous generations used to. And in their horniest prime too!
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Was just coming to say that conservatism is far more of a public health hazard than porn could be even if every porn star was carrying a full arsenal of STDs and never wore a condom. Conservatism killed at least 100,000 Americans and easily as many Brazilians in this pandemic. Are there even than many people in the whole professional porn industry? And that's not even getting into what privatized health care has done to Americans.
Also conservatism can't have it both ways on teenage sex: Are we supposed to b
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Pretty impressive that they managed to get poor people to continually vote against their own interests. That said I'm fiscal in the conservative sense and liberal in the social.
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people should have lots of it: within marriage. Indeed, the more the marrier.
Yep, that's what the Church Elders argued here. Our courts pointed out that when it is one Elder banging all the teenage girls, after marrying them of course as they're Conservative, it caused a problem for all the teenage boys who couldn't find a wife.
I just checked (Score:3)
https://www.pornhub.com/video/... [pornhub.com]
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They drink sodas, then just lose their minds in hedonism.
Ship With Radios Off (Score:2)
Utah Legislating Magic (Score:2)
Utah seems to believe that by passing a law they can make magic happen. Magically detect porn or other things they find objectionable.
Maybe they want a piece of the pie (Score:5, Interesting)
From 2009: "Utah, Online Porn Capital"
https://www.pcworld.com/articl... [pcworld.com]
And that's based on the number of people paying for porn...
I assume that's (Score:2)
a creampie ...
Wishful thinking (Score:2)
I'd love to see companies finally call the bluff on these things. Cut off the state that implements policies like this, refuse to license tech to business that decide to comply, and let the state go back to land lines and dumbphones. See how long it takes before the citizens revolt against the party leaders.
It'll never happen, but it's fun to wish.
Not news, nor a free speech issue (Score:2)
It is a filter that is enabled by default, that can be disabled. It may be poorly planned and/or executed, but it isn't a bad thing.
Free speech, for those new to people in the USA screaming about it, is something protected by the First Amendment (so only technically in the Constitution) that allows free expression of public ideas/speech, without government interference. Except both the people and the Courts have not really decided what that means, and it doesn't cover private speech (such as Twitter). It is
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Where are the free speech protectors? (Score:2)
I guess spreading violence for your own political side is the only valid free speech.
Re: Where are the free speech protectors? (Score:2)
Fixed (Score:2)
I wonder what he's trying to distract people from?
Have they banned violence and guns? (Score:2)
More democratic than social media bans (Score:2)
All those stories ... (Score:2, Funny)
So, any valid studies showing harm from porn? (Score:2)
Scientifically valid studies that is? No? Thought so. They are just trying to legislate their own misconceptions and forcing anybody into them.
Actual reality is that kids do not care about porn except as an "eww, gross!" thing. And when they are old enough to understand what is going on and to be interested, you cannot keep them away from it anyways. The whole thing is not only a colossal waste of effort, it is completely worthless.
Censorship is in vogue (Score:2)
Censorship of any content that allows people to "identify" as victims is very much in vogue. I'm sad to say that it's become fashionable, and provides status, to identify as a victim whether genuinely victimized or not.
why don't they first address robocalls? (Score:2)
If they think there is a tech capable of doing it (yea, it's an easy url filter after all) then why can't we stop robocalls with a law?
Is there an opt-out? (Score:3)
Does it have a geolocation feature that disables the filter when they descend in the modern-day Sodom that is Nevada?
Boomers? (Score:5, Insightful)
Hate to break it to you, sparky (Score:2, Interesting)
But you clearly haven't spent enough time online outside of your little bubble. Millennials and Zoomers are increasingly way more anti-porn than Boomers. NoFap and other porn addiction recovery movements are almost nothing but Millennial and Zoomer men. Millennial feminists are very often anti-porn.
Boomers are the "if it feels good, do it" generation. Millennials are the generation waking up to the fact that yes, porn addiction is a thing and it's terrible when you actually try to quit it for real.
If you di
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It's psychologically and physically unhealthy to not orgasm. That's not withdrawal symptoms it's you doing damage to your mental and physical body because of an ill conceived notion of something you think you need to avoid but instead should be encouraged. Masturbation and sex are natural and should be encouraged not suppressed.
Masturbation and sex release hormones such as dopamine, endorphins, oxytocin, testosterone and prolactin and many others. The release of oxytocin is associated with lower cortisol le
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It's psychologically and physically unhealthy to not orgasm. ...
It's more complicated than that. When I was between wives I would sometimes feel very strange urges. I hid my feelings at work because I didn't want to be fired for sexual harassment. Porm wasn't enough so I tried visiting strip clubs, which helped for a while but eventually wasn't enough.
What finally worked for me was visiting brothels. I was lucky that there were several within easy driving distance. With a good job and no wife to support I had plenty of entertainment money, so I could have all the s
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Millenial feminism in general tends to be "Pro-sex", and a pretty good way of getting yelled at around young feminists is to criticize sex workers.
As for the "no fap" thing, that kind of stuf really only was a very small minority of 4chan types , and like the alt-right really had almost no support amongst youth culture (Most of the pepe meme spewing idiots turned out to be 50yo inbred fucking idiots who suddenly thought they where "in with the kids" and shouting banal slogans like "conservativism is the new
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...Boomers are the "if it feels good, do it" generation. Millennials are the generation waking up to the fact that yes, porn addiction is a thing and it's terrible when you actually try to quit it for real....
Some years ago I was in Salt Lake City visiting my daughter. Her roommate mentioned that she had left her husband because he "was addicted to porn". I didn't know what she was talking about, and neglected to ask her. Can you explain what porn addiction is, from the point of view of the wife of an addicted male?
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You're overthinking it. They don't expect this to actually pass any more than they'd expect it to work, if it did pass. It's simply so they can keep running the same family-values playbook that got them where they are. A vague desire for "overreaching control" has little to do with it. They take the opposite path (total lack of regulation) just as often, depending on what their paymasters want. They might be ideologues, but they're not idealists.
Control for control's sake is more the Church's area, especial
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That's no longer true, since like eh..1904?...
The other ones are not legally wives anymore.