New York state moves closer to banning ‘revenge porn’

March 4, 2019 CNA Daily News News Briefs 0 Print

New York City, N.Y., Mar 5, 2019 / 12:11 am (CNA).- Lawmakers in New York have passed a bill to outlaw “revenge porn”— the non-consensual sharing of explicit images of a person, typically done by an ex-romantic partner.

The bill, passed by legislators last week, has the support of Governor Andrew Cuomo, who is expected to sign it into law, the Associated Press reports.

Forty-one states, the District of Columbia, and several cities and counties across the U.S. have already banned revenge porn.

Without an explicit ban on the practice, judges have turned down appeals to help victims of revenge porn, citing freedom of speech, The New York Times reports. Five years ago, when New York’s revenge porn ban was first introduced, only a handful of states had passed similar bans.

In addition to jail time for offenders, Senate bill 1719C would also allow victims to sue the person who had shared the revenge porn, and would make New York the first state in the nation to allow judges to order websites or social media platforms to take down the explicit photos or videos, according to NYT.

This provision has led to opposition to the bill from technology companies who worried that they could be held liable for revenge porn hosted on their sites. The final version of the bill includes broad immunity under federal law through the Communications Decency Act for websites where people might post the explicit images.

Nevertheless, the Internet Association, which includes large technology companies such as Google and Facebook, has spoken out against the bill in the past, including during June 2018 when the bill was up for debate.

Several states have moved to ban revenge porn in recent years. Former Gov. John  Kasich signed a revenge porn ban into law in Ohio in Dec. 2018 after a similar measure failed to pass in 2016.

Montana lawmakers introduced a bill to outlaw revenge porn in January 2019, after having failed to ban the practice in 2017. The law would provide for fines and possible jail time for those who publish or distribute any type of nude or sexualized photos or videos without the consent of the person depicted. The bill is currently in the Montana senate.

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Martin Luther King Jr. delivered a message of faith, hope and love, niece tells EWTN

January 15, 2021 CNA Daily News 1

Washington D.C., Jan 15, 2021 / 05:23 pm (CNA).- In an interview with EWTN News Nightly (ENN), the niece of Reverend Martin Luther King Jr., Alveda King, highlighted that her famous uncle was a man of faith, who always looked for “nonviolent and Bible-based” solutions to the challenges of his time.  

ENN’s host Tracy Sabol opened the interview, on Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday, Jan. 15, highlighting that “honoring Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. still give us as a nation an opportunity to pay tribute to his enduring legacy,” before asking King, director of Civil Rights for the Unborn for Priests for Life, about the civil rights icon’s place in history.

“When I remember my uncle during the Martin Luther King holiday week, I think about his messages of faith, hope and love,” she said, adding that in “all of his life, he exemplified solutions that were nonviolent and Bible-based.”

King remembered that her uncle used to say that faith is “like climbing a staircase; you take one step at a time and the faith builds. And so he was very sure that if he continued to trust in the Lord and to have faith and hope and love, then he could carry a message that God had given him to carry.”

“My uncle was a nonviolent man. He believed that we were one human race … God made all people to live together on the face of the earth. And as one human race, we really could learn to live together as brothers and sisters and not perish together as fools. All of his sermons and his messages led us to understand that our answers would come from God and that we must unite and learn to get along,” King also said.

She also recalled that Martin Luther King Jr. “decided to stick with love.” 

“Hate is too difficult a burden to bear. And then we bear each other’s burdens and concerns, seeing each other as human beings, regardless of skin color. We could see skin color, of course, we really are not colorblind. We could see, but we should see ethnicity as something to be celebrated, not to be fought over,” she said.

“Martin Luther King Jr. lived a life of service and love,” said his niece in closing. 

“If he were here today, he would be praying for us and with us and encouraging us to set aside strife and to come together in love. And as we do that, we can surely be blessed, and 2021 will be a very different year than 2020 turned out to be.”

Martin Luther King Jr. Day is observed on the third Monday of January each year. The holiday was signed into law by President Ronald Reagan in 1983 but was officially observed in all 50 states for the first time in 2000.

 


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