Peers vote to ban pornography depicting sex acts between stepfamily members
theguardian.com Some ministers had opposed the amendment and suggested the new ban would have been difficult to implement because, under the law in England and Wales, it is not illegal for adults who are step-related to engage in a sexual relationship.
There are several edge cases like this in the UK.
It's obviously not legal for say, me, a middle aged man, to possess a photograph of some 17 year old girl with her tits out. Right? Except well... wait no, because what if I have a photo of my middle aged wife shortly after we first met, so the photo shows a 17 year old girl with her tits out, but the person is my wife, who is like "Yeah, remember when I had long hair? Also, I wish my tits still looked like that". So clearly that is OK after all, it's legal.
And then we have a huge row, she divorces me, now that photo is illegal after all, because I'm definitely not allowed to have photos of under-age girls with their tits out, and now the photo isn't of my wife... not any more.
Knife laws similarly have weird edge cases. 12" long sharp blade? Crime. In a Kebab shop to make delicious kebabs? Legal. I took it with me to the pub after work? Crime; Walking down the street with an ordinary Swiss Army Knife (oversize)? Crime. Tiny version of that knife? Legal. Sword, like an actual medieval sword? Crime. But I need it for this mock battle we're staging? Still a crime. No swords. Use a fake sword which can't hurt anybody or go to jail.
Edited: The "original" Swiss Army Knife is barely short enough that it's always legal, but some oversize variants are not. Like that Kebab knife you can have a lawful reason you needed to carry the knife regardless of size but I hope your reason make sense ("Self defence" is never a lawful reason to carry weapons in the UK)
I believe nudity is generally not illegal at all, as in in itself. Like... Come on, _of course_ it's the UK, not Europe or US....
Are we there yet?
Nude children are or were in the recent past displayed in Britain's museums (National Gallery, Tate Britain and Tate Modern (afair paintings and sculptures, infamous pictures of Brooke Shields), British Museum (antiques))
For example if you were to photograph your own kids frolicking in the garden to immortalise the moments of joy and fun, that'd be also okay BUT of course I'm certain Google/Apple would immediately report you, lock your account and then you'd have to get a lawyer to point the sheer absurdity of it.
And that's at the same time it's perfectly fine for such children to play on the public beaches for example.
...but of course I'm aware we're supposed to police ourselves.
Brits love being gravely offended and prude and the new law further reinforces this notion -- at the moment when the possession of the fake video or fake story of incest relationship is a criminal offence, having a sexual relationship with, say, first cousin is perfectly fine in the UK.
I mean: you can legally and lawfully have a child with your cousin, but if you wrote a story about that INSTEAD that's 2 years in prison.
I can't help myself but I think too many MPs and Lords have affairs with cousins; perhaps worse.
The double edge of the UK version of Roman Law is that Man on the Clapham omnibus - all these edge cases fall to a judge .. who may or may not be as reasonable as your first cousin on the back seat of the omnibus.
The greater irony to me is how this relates to the sometimes interwoven family tree of British royalty.
Royaly screwed: Prince Andrew starring in "stiff upper habsburg lip" - the movie
In the infamous words of George Carlin:
"Selling is legal, and fucking is legal; but selling fucking is not legal."
Moving your finger is legal, holding and aiming a gun is legal, pulling your finger to fire a gun is sometimes not legal.
Framing the gun debate as a restriction on finger movement would also not be productive.
A politician voting for a bill is legal. Giving money to a politician is legal. But giving money to a politician so he'll vote for a bill is not legal.
What are you talking about? This is how laws are passed in the US 8-/
The private money delivering entity often writes the bill!
Which the politician often doesn't even read, just sends to the house from committee for vote...
"Driving is legal. Drinking is legal. But drinking and driving is not legal."
One kills people the other makes people, they're not the same.
You know what really makes people? Polygamy. And I want my f*king human rights, now! Just like President Jimmi Carta says.
Or, to be true to the original:“Driving is legal, and drinking is legal; but driving an alcoholic beverage is not legal.”
Maybe it’s just not street legal but you could do it on a race track?
> driving an alcoholic beverage is not legal
Not sure, probably isn't street legal. But for the curious, it has been done before: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Fqpp-IAXF0&t=25s
People forget Carlin was a comedian.
"It's a big club and you ain't in it". Obviously the problem is the club is too small, that's why for most of the people it is true that they are not part of it.
"Half the population is stupider than how stupid the average person is". As if somehow there's not a single person exactly on the median. In fact there is probably a huge number of people there, and within a margin of error of it.
> People forget Carlin was a comedian.
That would seem to include you?
How do you figure? I don't have a problem with Carlin, but with people who quote him as a source of wisdom.
The commenter who quoted him here in the thread meant to make a joke and I didn't get it? I thought he quoted him as a point against the law we are discussing.
You're semantically quibbling with a clear joke and using those quibbles to avoid engaging with the point it's making.
> "Selling is legal, and fucking is legal; but selling fucking is not legal."
I don't get it. The literal interpretation is a clear joke, as you say. So what's the point that it is making?
To be clear, I think the law discussed is stupid. I also think the argument that if both parts are legal they should also be legal together is wrong. What am I avoiding?
I'm referring to the two other jokes you quoted.
What was I avoiding with those?
I am quite acquainted with Carlin. If there's anyone that can have their absurd logic repeated back to them, it would be a comedian. And That Right Soon.
> This is amusing to me. Legal to do, but not legal to film.
I don't know if it's amusing but the comparison is incorrect. Doing it in public is not legal. These laws are about the public part, not about the doing part.
Carlin's quote in this thread suffers from the same problem, he was eager to say something amusing, instead of correct, and did it prematurely.
That's not that unusual though. Many countries' age of consent is ~15 so you can legally do it sooner than you can film it.
For context, the (now accepted) amendment ensures that "anyone found to posses or publish pornography which shows incest between family members, or sex between step- or foster-relations where one person is pretending to be under-18, will be criminalised, with publication carrying a maximum penalty of two to five years’ imprisonment, depending on the severity of the content."
This coming from a secondary legislature with an average age of 70. I do not think this a liberal move, to put it mildly.
First they came for the porn, and I said nothing, for I am not sexy enough to produce it. Then they came for cryptography, and I kept my peace, for I don't understand the mathematics involved. Then they came for my browsing history, and I could not hide the porn in there, as cryptography was illegal. Well fuck...
“Today we are sending a powerful message: we will stamp out misogynistic and harmful content online and create a safer world.”
I’ve not read the full report, but I have to presume this will ban depictions of women participating in consensual S&M on the ground that someone thinks that’s misogyny? Many times have I eagerly strapped myself on to a St Andrew’s cross and enjoyed a stimulating flogging. It feels good! It releases endorphins! It’s healthy! Sex is about playing with bodies in fun consensual ways.
Maybe it doesn’t ban women’s participation in S&M per se, but the article does mention a ban on choking which is an act which is not without risk but which consensual adults can safely engage in.
What is upsetting is the penalty is prison. For possession of porn made by consenting adults. Awful. Anyway if women can’t see depictions of things they would enjoy, they will be deprived of the opportunity to discover themselves. This is not fighting misogyny this is about enforcing one group’s views on others and criminalizing consensual behavior.
I don't get the point of banning specific pornography niches/fetishes that are otherwise legal.
Are there not much more objectionable fetishes than this one?
> I don't get the point of banning specific pornography niches/fetishes that are otherwise legal.
A typical practice for dictatorships to create a legal system capable of exerting pressure on any opponent.
> Are there not much more objectionable fetishes than this one?
The goal isn't to combat sexual perversions, but to silence anyone the dictatorial regime deems necessary.
You pass a law that's clearly unimplementable, and therefore won't cause much outrage, and then, as expected, the law doesn't work. But when you need to silence someone, a complaint emerges that someone accessed and distributed illegal content (some anonymous on some forum saw their IP-address doing that). In the public consciousness, the violation isn't serious (the law isn't actually implemented), so there's no significant outrage. Meanwhile, you conduct searches of the victim's home, confiscate their computers, laptops, smartphones and other gadgets, and open a criminal case against them.
And then you simply close the case, saying, "Yeah, nothing illegal was found, we are sorry". And the victim (and others) will think twice before going against the dictatorial regime next time. Typical practice, all dictatorships do it
This exactly. I don’t believe the government should be censoring porn, but I have a really hard time arguing that principle against studies that suggest it is normalizing choking and slapping women among the young men exposed to it. Why is this roleplay fetish the beachhead and not something like that?
That's an odd perspective. I have heard of young women demanding to be choked and slapped (with their partners acquiescing) far far more than young men instigating the behaviour.
https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2025/jul/07/no-safe...
> Now thought to be the second most common cause of stroke in women under 40, it can also lead to difficulty swallowing, incontinence, seizures, memory problems, depression, anxiety and miscarriage.
Looks like they are going after that too though.
Not that have reached the top twenty in prevalence at major sites, no. Incest porn has grown (in concert with the typical move-out age increasing due to economic pressures*) from a long-tail niche decades ago to, looking through a certain United States site’s category list today, being approximately 4x as prevalent by quantity than category ‘British’ and 2-10x more prevalent than most other categories. I would imagine that British leaders are particularly hostile to that U.S. cultural export (and we are a, if not the, top exporter in that industry!) for various reasons beyond simple disinterest in it. Monarchies tend to disfavor that which diminishes their ‘above’ness relative to commoners, and export of this now-widespread U.S. fetish into British society certainly could be estimated to have that diminishing effect by British leaders.
* For anyone looking for a controversial Econ/Psy dual-major thesis topic, inflation-adjusted wage and job losses for teens reaching their age of maturity resulted in the ‘moving out’ age spiking, which combined with known U.S. repressionist tendencies, resulted in a corresponding spike in the incest fetish export trade. (psych sidebar about how fantasies serve as an escape valve for being trapped in one's circumstances). (citations needed)
If you really want to know, see the 215 page report commissioned by the UK governments Independent Pornography Review
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/creating-a-safer-...
I'm guessing that incest porn is apparently so popular in the US that it's made finding anything that isn't incest porn on US porn sites much harder for these perfectly upstanding members of the House of Lords.
Wait, am I still allowed to say upstanding members?
The UK government wants to ban porn entirely. Requiring website users to identify themselves (the age verification thing) is the first step. This is another step.
I am sure they each personally researched the topic very thoroughly to come to this conclusion
Intentional pun?
"anyone found to posses or publish pornography which shows incest between family members, or sex between step- or foster-relations where one person is pretending to be under-18"
This reads to me as though sex between foster-relations where one person is pretending to be over 18 is still A-OK. Wasn't it already illegal to depict sex with an under-18 year old though?
Meanwhile is still legal to distribute and claim payment for videos depicting killing, mass killing, torture, crime, drug abuse and dependency and so on. Priorities are where the highest bidder puts them.
It's interesting how restricting the commercialization of recorded sex acts (by consenting actors) has had more success over the last few decades than restricting the commercialization of recorded violence (by consenting actors).
Adding to the curiosity: there seems to be many more possible legal actions in the sex category than the violence category.
Consenting adults should be able to do whatever they'd like with each other and if they want to record it and share it, that's none of my business. How much mainstream entertainment is centered on murder? Is that ok?
I care more about how it's warming people up for more age verification and other censorship laws. I don't really care what happens to porn producers. Most of which are exploitative, abusive, and many times downright criminal. There is a non-moral argument to specifically target porn. Your libertarian argument falls flat on it's face when you start looking into who owns the majority of porn and what they've been known for. Extend this to OnlyFans, which simply turned pimps into shareholders. This is of course the fundamental problem with libertarians in general. They stand for absolutely nothing ("allow everything" is not a stance) which makes them simultaneously the worst ally to have and a formidable enemy to societal security.
The moral argument however is worth considering. Numerous well cited studies have discussed the deliterious effects of porn consumption. Porn (over)consumption directly correlates to loneliness, especially among males, for example. It also correlates to poorer relationship outcomes, increases in the rate of STDs, and other interpersonal issues. In general, porn is no different than any other drug with all the downsides associated.
We cannot say the same for "mainstream entertainment centered on murder". Murder in general has trended down year over year since the 60s. One would be able to make a stronger counter argument: the exposure to violent media has possibly made violence less appealing. You are bordering on using "violent video games create violent people" as proof we should not view porn differently. These are not the same argument as shown by a trivial search of elsevier.
Tl;dr
Nah, actually I did read it but I disagree. I don't want people imposing their morals on me. Adults are responsible for their actions
Ok I'm just gonna straight up ask: do people actually like "oh no stepbrother" porn? What's with the huge proliferation of it? I only watch it because it seems like 80% of the well shot, quality porn is step family shit, and I'm wondering if I'm participating in some kind of bizarre feedback loop where step family porn happened to be a category that started getting higher quality production value, which got more views, which led to studios erroneously believing people were watching because they have a step family fetish. I just try to ignore that aspect.
When this has come up in the past the conventional wisdom seems to be the other way around. At some point they noticed that if they slapped a stepfamily label on an otherwise normal vid that most people wouldn't care and still watch it, but it'd also attract the fetish crowd. This way they get more views for the same content.
My assumption is that it's just easy to add and widen the audience to a random shoot? You put in a few lines of dialogue at the start and change the title, and it's not seen as so taboo that viewers will turn it off from that. But it gets some dedicated perverts searching for it where they might have ignored it before, etc.
Like the keyword stuffing that happens on Amazon listings.
Reminds me of the time the porn "actress" doing an AMA on Reddit was innocently asked about the proliferation of incestuous porn, only to go into a meltdown over rampant anti-semitism. Someone accidentally got too close...
I typically watch porn with the audio turned off, because all of the dialog is just so bad in one way or another. I'm not there for the dialogue, and I don't care about the fake set-up before the actual porn starts happening.
They have some kind of story and buildup, the thrill of doing something morally objective, sometimes the "getting caught" aspect
... or so I have heard
The UK gets more absurd by the day.
Unfortunately this is a well established part of their history to criminalize speech they find distasteful.
> well established part of their history
Any historic examples ?
- anti-social behaviour orders (ASBO)
- Public Order Act 1986
- John William Gott / Blasphemy Laws
- Public Order Offences: Using "threatening, abusive or insulting" words in public
- Lèse-majesté laws / Seditious Libel
The list is very very long.
Thank you!
This comment section will inevitably fill up with comments from people who have exactly the same thing to say, namely, that internet censorship is bad. That opinion has transcended the good-take-bad-take dichotomy: it's entered the pantheon of ideas that are seamlessly dumped into any mildly-related discussion and act as an impediment to any more interesting ideas.
Here's a more interesting idea: because the pornography that's banned by this bill is made mainly in the US and Eastern Europe, and because it's distributed by businesses that are also located outside the UK, the UK has negligible ability to impose regulations that differ from other jurisdictions on the dividing line between legal and illegal pornography. The age verification system was imposable because there are very few websites that span the porn/not-porn divide, but this new bill regulates at too fine a level to enforce.
As with most laws that are "useless in practice", this just opening the door and preparing/numbing the public to laws that will further extent control and censorship on internet and everywhere else.
Age verification system just push users towards alternative websites or other ways to access it
Guess why a friend of mine who is not into computer science was telling me about him using VPN a few days ago
You are absolutely right! It takes incredible bravery to admit that if we cannot solve the problem in totality then incremental improvements are useless.
Fair point, but I have been very surprised by how many normie friends have gotten a VPN since our state mandated age checks for adult content.
This. Incremental progress is one thing, but incremental movement that makes the problem worse and actually harder to solve later is not progress.
It's indicative that maybe you're attempting to solve the wrong problem.
The law also punishes possession. Therefore, it doesn’t matter that the UK does not produce this good.
> Under this amendment, senior tech figures who have been made aware of *none* consensual sexual materials on their websites could face large fines, imprisonment or both if they do not act to remove without good cause.
theguardian couldn't even be bothered to proof read? emphasis mine
If a conservative doesn't want to consume a product, they ban it for everyone.
Looks like the "we are just protecting children" ploy will now expand to protect even more people!
I honestly expected them to wait a bit longer before doing this
[flagged]
And, until very recently, seemingly encouraged by the NHS?
> A blog published on 22 September by NHS England’s Genomics Education Programme said that marriage between first cousins had “various potential benefits,” while acknowledging that children of first cousins had an increased chance of being born with a genetic condition.
Yup you you just can’t film them having sex
You probably can. You just can't note their relation.
I'd imagine 99.999% of "step-whatever" porn is not actual step-whatevers.
First cousin marriage is legal almost everywhere... in Canada, one can marry their niece or nephew.
"Once the law comes into effect, anyone found to posses or publish pornography which shows incest between family members, or sex between step- or foster-relations where one person is pretending to be under-18, will be criminalised...."
Wouldn't the step/foster bit already be covered by child pornography laws?
Why would child pornography laws have anything to do with someone pretending to be under-18?
That's distasteful, sure, but objectively, people over-18 are not children.
Basic recordkeeping laws should make it easy to ensure that everyone involved is of age, even if they're sucking on a pacifier, wearing a diaper, and saying "goo goo ga ga".
> have anything to do with someone pretending to be under-18?
CP statutes also deal with "simulations" of underage participants.
I'm pretty leery of criminalizing possession here, especially if it's material produced before the law was passed, but even in general. It's not like the material is depicting actual abuse, where you can argue the participants would be harmed by people watching and sharing the material.
Sounds like going forward the way around this would be to emphasize in the script that all the characters aren't related by blood and that everyone is of age.
What is too bawdy, too immodest, too immoral to depict in a figment of film (assuming for the moment that the state even has legitimate authority in this area)?
One of the greatest films ever made is a comedy depicting the combination of psychosis, greed, incompetence, and bigotry bringing about mass murder and nuclear holocaust, culminating with the characters planning orgies in a mineshaft.
If depicting _that_ is OK (and it is - Dr. Strangelove is one of the finest in the medium, not only in its commentary on war, but its commentary on film), how in tarnation can adult actors pretending to be step-siblings cross the line?
WHAT are you doing, step-peers?!
Anything but exposing the abusers who Epstein and Maxwell trafficked to [1] and investigating (let alone prosecuting) child abuse [2][3].
Britain has many real problems. This isn't one of them.
[1]: https://www.pbs.org/newshour/world/the-epstein-files-rattle-...
[2]: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/2/26/british-politicians...
[3]: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/apr/28/outrag...
The UK has been far better at this than the US thus far.
While we were having "No Kings" rallies over our elected Epstein co-conspirator, they arrested and demoted a royal family member over it. And a separate lord.
There was a second person arrested? I thought only Andy got got.
Lord Mandelson, former ambassador to the US.
https://www.npr.org/2026/02/23/g-s1-111196/uk-peter-mandelso...
Help me step bro I’m stuck in 1984.
This is worse than 1984. Next is EU, which has been happily copying all the great inventions in the matters of citizen liberty from Great Britain.
Well at least porn and between first cousins is still legal…
Good.