MADRID — Spain’s influential far right party Vox has started pushing a project at the Madrid legislature to implement default “porn filters” on devices accessible to minors.
The group, led in the Spanish capital by Spanish-Cuban businesswoman Rocío Monasterio, introduced a formal Non-Law Proposal (PNL) urging all local government offices, NGOs and platforms to endorse a “digital agreement” on the subject.
“Porn filters” — and for-profit apps created by faith-based businesses like Covenant Eyes and Accountable2You — have been endorsed by War on Porn crusaders across the U.S. They are also being widely marketed to American churchgoers, an, in some cases, churches and clergy have been found to use these programs as surveillance tools to spy on parishioners.
Vox’s proposal claims the default porn filters are a response to supposedly increasing “instances of gang rapes among minors.”
According to the group, which is often aligned with the radical right elements in the Spanish Catholic Church, “the trivialization of sexual relations and the lack of parental control over teenagers, and also the precocious sexualization of children and the fact that minors have more ease to access pornographic content through new technology” are causes for those criminal acts.
Vox also cited statistics about minor’s access to adult content, supposedly, according to survey respondents, “which they had not searched for.”
“This situation, together with the sexually suggestive content in social media, songs, music videos, etc., creates a very complicated situation,” the Vox statement alleged.
The far right party also claims that exposure to adult content leads to “high-risk sexual conduct, STI contagion, unwanted pregnancy, and degradation of self esteem.”
The rest of the proposal continues — with no verifiable sources — to blur the line between access to adult content and instances of sexual assault, drug use and “normalization of degradation.”
