Pretty soon, Utah will probably be dealing with its biggest health crisis yet. Thankfully, this crisis does not involve an outbreak that results in physical sickness and injury. Rather, this new health crisis involves something very, very common among adults: pornography.
Today, Gov. Gary Herbert is expected to sign two pieces of legislation that effectively brands pornography as the state's most recent health crisis. The legislation is aimed at combating what the state said is something that fosters a "sexually toxic environment."
The legislation was the brainchild of Sen. Todd Weiler, who believed that porn quite simply "normalizes violence and abuse of women and children, and that it equates violence towards women and children with sex and pain with pleasure, which increases the demand for sex trafficking, prostitution, child sexual abuse images and child pornography."
Indeed, Weiler's proposal was embraced wholeheartedly by the state senate. In February, the resolution was passed unanimously. According to Weiler, however, the legislation does not in any way criminalize porn. Rather, it is aimed at encouraging people to treat pornography as a scientific health hazard, a lot like tobacco.
"My goal in passing this resolution is to start a national movement to do the same thing with pornography, not to ban it, but to protect our children from it," Weiler said. "Within a few clicks, they can see some of the most vile and disgusting images that the mind can imagine. For us to pretend that this has no impact on our values and on our society and culture and the brain development of our adolescents is very naïve."
The legislation has gotten the support of several prominent groups in the state as well, among them being the Utah Coalition Against Pornography, a group backed by the Mormon Church. In a statement last month, Elder Jeffrey Holland embraced the legislation.
"If this moral plague could catch our imagination the way a medical epidemic does, we would be calling out every available member of the health care industry," he said.
Despite priding itself as one of America's most wholesome states, Utah has actually earned a pretty ironic moniker as a state that consumes a lot of pornography. In a 2009 study conducted by Harvard University, researchers concluded that Utah's religious residents ranked as one of America's top consumers of online pornography.
After today, it looks like a lot of people in Utah will indeed be considered very, very ill.
