Morality Campaigners

A newly reopened sex club in Edinburgh has come to the attention of the Christian Institute for supposedly promoting the same dehumanising trade as brothels and lap-dancing venues.

The After Dark Swing & Kink Club is using former office space on Bankhead Industrial Estate for multiple playrooms, a cinema, kink and BDSM areas.

The Christian Institute's Simon Calvert said: Calling it a swingers' club doesn't alter the fact that they are commercially exploiting some of the worst aspects of human nature and putting women at risk. Of course the Christians don't like to talk about the far worse depravity doled out at the hands of more than a few of its own clergy.

The club's planning application, which has not yet been approved despite already operating, claimed it would diversify and vitalise the employment zone.

A decision on the building's use is set to be made in the beginning of December, on the same day a court reviews the City of Edinburgh Council's ban on strip clubs

Banned! The Mary Whitehouse Story is a 2022 UK TV documentary

In 1963, armed with just a typewriter, a Midlands housewife began a 30-year battle against the permissive society. But how successful was the original cancel culture warrior?

Offsite Review: The BBC's faint praise for Mary Whitehouse

A new documentary claims to be even-handed but can't quite manage it

See article from unherd.com by Charlie Bentley-Astor

Banned! is a new BBC documentary that dubs the 1960s teacher-cum-morality campaigner, Mary Whitehouse, the original cancel culture warrior. A flawed but vindicated woman is the headline. But was she a reactionary or a revolutionary? Was she right in her conviction that Britain was in a media-driven moral decline?

The US campaign group, Morality in Media now refers to itself as the National Center on Sexual Exploitation (NCOSE). The group publishes an annual whinge list of the most immoral organisations on the planet, and then it asks its members to boycott them. This year the group wrote:

NCOSE has revealed that technology companies Meta, Google Search, Discord, and Twitter, and more, are among its 2022 Dirty Dozen List of mainstream contributors to sexual exploitation.

Big Tech holds incredible influence over society, so it's especially egregious when tech companies normalize, enable, and even profit from sexually exploitative practices, policies, and products. There is no other industry that has the capacity to help billions of people by prioritizing user protection and safety like Big Tech.

Other companies named to the Dirty Dozen List include Visa, which allows the exploitative commercial sex industry to prosper; Etsy, which enables sex dolls and pornographic content to be sold; and Netflix, which normalizes the sexualization of children and whitewashes the violence and exploitation in prostitution.

The 2022 Dirty Dozen List includes:

Discord -- Discord consistently fails to address the extensive sexually graphic, violent, and exploitative content on its thousands of private and public channels. Inadequate age verification and moderation mean millions of children and teen users are left with near-unmitigated exposure to child sexual abuse material, nonconsensual pornography trading, and the predatory grooming rampant on its platform.

Etsy -- Global marketplace Etsy is in the business of selling pornographic merchandise, misogynistic and dehumanizing apparel, and sex dolls -- including ones resembling children and young teens. Customers equate unwanted exposure to pornography and sexually explicit content to sexual harassment.

Google Search -- Google Search buttresses the pornography industry by facilitating access to graphic images and videos of sexual abuse -- depicted and real -- including sex trafficking, child sexual abuse, and rape.

Kanakuk Kamps -- Thousands of families have entrusted their children to Kanakuk Kamps--one of the largest Christian sports camps. Tragically, that trust was broken as years of child sexual abuse at Kanakuk Kamps have been swept under the rug.

Kik -- Kik boasts that a third of American teens use the free messaging app to chat with friends and strangers alike. It's also among the most dangerous online spaces for children.

Meta (formerly known as Facebook) -- Meta owns Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp: all of which are consistently under fire as primary places for grooming, sextortion, child sexual abuse materials, sex trafficking, and a host of other crimes. The tech giant has the potential to lead the industry in online safety standards. Instead, Meta is prioritizing new projects like the metaverse and pursuing sweeping encryption despite international law enforcement warnings about the lack of sufficient provisions for child online safety.

Netflix -- Netflix is a staple of at-home entertainment, with over 200 million subscribers streaming their content worldwide. Yet mixed in with the fun and entertainment is rampant sexual objectification and glamorization of abuse. Sociologists have identified a marked increase in graphic sex scenes and gratuitous nudity permeating Netflix shows. Further, Netflix continues a trend of normalizing the sexualization of children while also whitewashing the violence and exploitation in prostitution.

OnlyFans -- OnlyFans exploded in notoriety and profit during COVID-19, as the subscription-based platform known for pornography preyed on widespread financial insecurities and capitalized on youth spending more time online. Sex buyers and pimps maximize buying and selling people behind the security of a paywall.

Reddit -- Referred to as the front page of the Internet, Reddit hosts more than two million user-created communities covering nearly as many topics. Among them are countless nonconsensually shared sexually explicit images and videos, child sexual abuse material, hardcore pornography, and prostitution advertisements.

Twitter -- Pedophiles and other predators go to Twitter to trade in criminal content such as child sexual abuse and nonconsensual pornography. The platform is rampant with accounts and posts functioning as advertisements for commercial sex.

Verisign -- Verisign provides Internet infrastructure and services and has exclusive management over the .com and .net generic top-level domains. 82% of all websites containing child sexual abuse material in 2020 were registered on .com and .net domains.

Visa -- Visa rightly cut ties with Pornhub in 2020 after public outcry regarding the rampant sex trafficking and child sexual abuse material hosted on the pornography site -- but has since re-initiated a relationship with Pornhub's parent company, MindGeek.

A coalition of anti-porn campaigners led by Barnardo's, has signed an open letter to the Culture Secretary Rt Hon Nadine Dorries urging her to introduce mandatory identity verification for access to online pornography.

The organisations are urging the Government to make it a legal requirement within the Online Safety Bill that commercial pornography websites protect children from their content using age verification methods.

There are already proposals in the draft Bill to ensure social media and user-to-user generated sites like TikTok keep children safe and protected from viewing harmful material - but the Bill needs to go further. Children do not access pornography through social media sites alone.

Viewing pornography -- often extreme and violent -- can distort children's understanding of healthy relationships and can normalise abusive sexual behaviour and have a corrosive effect on what children view as healthy relationships.

For the Online Safety Bill to be effective in protecting children, Barnardo's and other organisations believe it must include the following measures:

• Mandatory age verification measures for all sites containing pornographic material.

• Harmful and illegal content such as pornography with child abuse or violence against women and girls must not be allowed to be uploaded onto sites. Taking it down after days or weeks after countless viewings is just not acceptable.

• Extending Ofcom's powers to include regulation of commercial pornography sites which do not implement safety by design and age assurance.

• An end to the two-tier categorisation of sites which cannot be future-proofed as new sites can gain significant child viewers in a short time.

The signatories to the letter are:

• John Carr -- Chair of the Children's Charities' Coalition for Internet Safety
• NSPCC
• The Children's Society
• Childnet International
• Internet Matters
• Internet Watch Foundation
• 5Rights
• Catch22
• Kidscape
• End Violence Against Women Coalition
• Association of School and College Leaders
• Girlguiding
• The Lucy Faithfull Foundation
• The Marie Collins Foundation
• Dr Elena Martellozzo, Associate Professor in Criminology, Centre of Abuse and Trauma Studies, Middlesex University
• P SHE Association
• SafeLives
• ECPAT UK.