STRASBOURG, France — The Council of Europe, the continent’s main post-WWII human rights organization, published a resolution late last month that recommends sweeping government intervention in the regulation of adult content online.
The Council of Europe resolution is now being hailed by religious anti-porn groups as a blueprint to censor sexual content in all of the 47 member countries of the organization, which includes 27 EU countries.
The text of the resolution was adopted by the Standing Committee, acting on behalf of the Parliamentary Assembly, in November based on a 2019 report of the Committee on Equality and Non-Discrimination headed by Frank Heinrich.
The Council of Europe’s resolution includes a number of controversial and/or suspiciously sourced statements that seem to echo anti-porn propaganda by both religious activists and sex-worker exclusionary feminists.
Exaggerated Statistics About ‘Half of All Internet Traffic”
“Pornography is ubiquitous and easily accessible, particularly online,” the preamble begins, immediately adding, without any sources, the dubious statistic that “it is estimated that over half of all internet traffic is related to pornography and sex.”
The resolution then mentions in passing “research” supposedly showing that “pornography contributes to shaping people’s mindsets on sexuality and perceptions of gender roles, often engendering and perpetuating stereotypes thereby undermining gender equality and women’s self-determination by conveying an image of women as subordinate to men, as objects and trivializing violence against women.”
The Council of Europe’s Parliamentary Assembly claims that “implementing the proposals put forward in [their] recommendations would allow to address the negative and degrading image that pornography portrays of women.”
This November 2021 resolution quotes a previous 2011 resolution concerning what they define loosely as “violent and extreme pornography,” alleging that “this type of pornography further erodes the conditions for achieving effective gender equality, alongside other forms of hard and soft pornography, the widespread use of sexualized images of women for commercial purposes and the portrayal of gender stereotypes by the media and the entertainment industry.”
An Open Call for Morality-Based Censorship
While briefly acknowledging that “freedom of expression is a pillar of democratic societies and a right guaranteed by the European Convention on Human Rights (ETS No. 5),” the resolution immediately reverses that statement with an outright call for morality-based censorship: “It is possible to set limits to this right when they are prescribed by law and are necessary in the interests of, amongst others, the prevention of crime, the protection of morals and the protection of the rights of others.”
European countries, unlike the U.S., do not have a basic jurisprudence touchstone for freedom of speech like the First Amendment, leaving the definition of limits of expressions to a variety of situational factors.
The resolution also calls for European students to be instructed through “sexuality education programs” that “should define, identify and explain the nature of pornography and specify its health, ethical, legal and gender equality implications” and “highlight that pornography cannot replace reliable sources of information on sexuality and that it may convey inaccurate messages on gender roles, perpetuate gender stereotypes and foster sexual violence and other forms of gender-based violence.”
Demand ‘Warning Labels Similar to Smoking’ for Porn
The resolution — without considering any of the vast scientific literature that debunks the myth of substance-abuse-like “porn addiction” — demands that governments “introduce warning label systems requiring pornographic websites to display a notice warning about the potential harms of pornography use, similar to alcohol, smoking or online gambling warning labels.”
The resolution is asking governments to mandate that “pornography providers […] collect and store the identity and contact details of persons uploading pornographic material for public diffusion, with a view to facilitating criminal prosecution in cases where participants have not consented to diffusion or the material originates from trafficking in human beings, child abuse or other criminal activity.”
Going even further, the Council of Europe is asking for sweeping criminal law reforms in the member nations “extending the provisions criminalizing the glorification of criminal acts, as along the lines of Article 131 of the German Criminal Code, which sanctions the diffusion of ‘content that depicts cruel or otherwise inhuman acts of violence against human beings or human-like beings in a manner that glorifies or trivializes such acts of violence or that portrays the cruelty or inhumanity of the act in a manner that violates human dignity,’ to cover violent pornography.”
The committee also wants to explicitly “ensure that regulations on online publishing, such as the European Union’s Digital Services Act, are applied to all media, including pornographic websites; include provisions banning the use of pornography in the workplace in legislation on sexual harassment and other forms of harassment in the workplace, and require employers to install and utilize internet filters to this end; […] require public libraries and schools to install internet filters to block pornography; consider introducing the obligation for manufacturers and distributors of computers and portable devices to activate anti-pornography filters by default (as opposed to pre-installed but deactivated filters, which are currently the norm); require internet providers to apply an opt-in or opt-out clause, asking customers to choose whether pornography should be freely accessible or not through their service; [… and] consider introducing country-wide age verification to access pornography, or a legal obligation for companies distributing pornography to verify age.”
A Ban on All Porn Advertising
Furthermore, the recommendations include “banning public advertising of pornography” and mandating that governments “investigate the possible link between pornography and trafficking in human beings fur [sic] the purpose of sexual exploitation.”
In a striking paragraph that is already being invoked by anti-porn crusaders looking for state funds to be re-routed to their coffers, the Council of Europe asks that governments “promote research and data collection on pornography, based on a transdisciplinary and cross-cultural approach, and allocate adequate funding for it, with a view to providing accurate information to teaching staff, social workers, healthcare providers and legislators, including on the types and frequency of usage of pornography and on the prevalence and impact of sexist portrayals of women and girls in pornographic material, the extent to which they exacerbate gender inequalities and violence against women and girls, and also on their impact on women’s physical, sexual and psychological health.”
Aping the language of anti-sex work activists and “porn addiction”-myth endorsers, the resolution ends with a demand that states “provide adequately funded exit services to people who wish to leave the sex industry, including pornography” and “promote and provide counseling and support services for compulsive users of pornography.”
Read the full text of the Council of Europe resolution here.