[testbro]

To address your first point: the way the state religion works is a few bishops have seats in the House of Lords. That means they have the power to kick back legislation, but nothing else. That doesn't exclude the influence the Church of England can exercise indirectly through lobbying/high profile members issuing statements of course.

The advisor's statement is correct: this filtering does not depend on legislature. The proposal was to compel ISPs to filter porn by default. If all the ISPs sign up there's no need to create laws to force it. I don't get the impression that this legislation is religiously motivated beyond the puritanical underpinnings of the British public; it's based on "think of the children" rhetoric alone.

[VLM]

"it's based on "think of the children" rhetoric alone."

If I'm reading you right, the .uk cultural outlook is something like pr0n jumps off the screen and gives the kids cooties, so we have to block it like a vaccine? Kind of like how some of our own .us leftward people blame inanimate guns solely for violence, therefore ban the gun... Or perhaps more of a "they'll end up addicts unless we stop them" type thing?

Culturally wrt to pr0n, waaaaay too many "journalist" stories about the self proclaimed guardians of our morality getting busted while combining pr0n with "think of the children" (creepily, I mean it literally) so its awkward enough to totally avoid talking about. Its seen as hyper politicized in that the neocons are simultaneously about 95% of the people both getting busted for the hard core stuff while also being the ones working up an absolute froth about banning the relatively mild harmless stuff. So its very difficult to provide a "balanced news report" if one side makes fools of themselves all the time and the other just sits back and points and laughs.

We (as in .us) generally mostly do the anti-pr0n thing via "Jesus personally told me to force you at the point of a gun to do this because I will judge you, not God, therefore no pixs showing bare ankles" type of thinking, or something like that. There's more than a little hint of "no one believes this, but we're all going to agree to say we do" going thru the motions. I'm not sure how any of that is Christian as I understand it, but it doesn't bother them, so it doesn't bother me, as long as they leave me alone, which they see as a holy obligation not to do, so I guess it does bother me after all... If this doesn't make any sense to people outside the .us, don't feel bad, it doesn't make any sense to us mere consumers either (we used to be citizens, with rights, but now we're just consumers)

When I was a kid (a while ago) there was some "journalist" coverage given to feminist opposition to pr0n WRT exploitation / degrading or whatever, but thats pretty much disappeared from media thus disappeared from consciousness in the .us. We're lucky to spin up any agitprop over actual violent sexual assaults much less merely a picture or two. It was sort of the refer madness approach to anti-pr0n and it backfired and swung the opposite way, I think. Does the .uk have much of that flavor of opposition?

[testbro]

I'm not sure I can really make an appropriate generalisation of the broad attitude towards it. I can, however, cherry pick Diane Abbot's views because she's often called upon for soundbites and political debates. As a consequence, my comment is a subset of reality.

In this case the fears stem from the perception that children viewing porn and sexualised content is damaging. In Diane Abbot's case [1] the concern is that sexualised environments might construct inaccurate attitudes towards women/sex in children.

I suppose that falls in the first and final scenarios you gave.

[1] : http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-21878027

[VLM]

That's an interesting cultural observation because in the .us we have about the same attitude toward nudity, but not toward actually doing it. For example there was a huge outcry about a half time entertainment show during a major sporting event featuring a topless woman (although she wasn't having sex or anything like that, just singing and dancing). But we have plenty of TV drama shows and all that which seem to revolve primarily about having sex, and they show almost everything except the fun parts (as mentioned above) in action and that's considered great family viewing.

So in summary maybe the cultural difference is in the .us we don't ban the action but try to ban the object, but in the .uk its the opposite and they try to ban the action. That probably has some implications WRT dealing with internet censorship by avoiding the whole topic, or maybe why it seems to be hard to avoid offending someone somehow on one side of the pond or the other.