At Guilty Pleasure, we are fairly clear that we are not a lobby group – there are some great organisations already out there lobbying government on the topic of sexualization and pornography. Our focus needs to remain on creating awareness about the harmful effects of pornography and connecting people with help.

That said we wanted to let you know about this petition calling on the Prime Minister in Australia to create a national filter that would restrict access to pornography only to those who opt in to be able to access it.

This petition comes after UK Prime Minister David Cameron announced he would be implementing the same kind of filter earlier this year. One CBS article reports Cameron as saying, “If there are technical obstacles to acting on this, don’t just stand by and say nothing can be done; use your great brains to overcome them.”

In October 2012, Guilty Pleasure was part of a Strategic roundtable on pornography which proposed a clean feed option which aims to filter the internet at the ISP before it reaches the home. With the average age of first exposure being 11, one of the benefits of such a system would be making it harder for children to access pornographic content from an early age. It seems that for a large number of us who struggle or have struggled with pornography were exposed to it early on.

On the flip side of the argument, there is concern that such a system would restrict freedom of information.

Of course there are two sides to every argument so we recommend seriously researching the issue before deciding to or deciding not to sign the petition.

You can access the petition right here.

We’d love to hear your thoughts on the matter so feel free to comment below.