Utah Republican: The First Amendment protects me from ‘second-hand’ porn at McDonalds

A Utah Republican conceded the First Amendment protects pornography -- but he said the First Amendment also protects him from seeing pornography.

State Sen. Todd Weiler sponsored the recently passed resolution declaring pornography a public health crisis, and the GOP lawmaker explained why he believed the U.S. Constitution should limit the availability of explicit materials, reported Right Wing Watch.

Utah ranked highest for pornography subscription rates, and the Woods Cross Republican said he's heard anecdotal evidence that children are using the free wi-fi at McDonalds to view explicit material -- which the restaurant chain does not filter.

“I said to McDonalds, ‘You’re a family restaurant and you market to children, why would you want to be a purveyor of pornography?’” Weiler said Thursday on the Family Research Council’s “Washington Watch” radio program.

He said libraries were just as big a threat to morality.

“You know, the librarians will put their hands over their hearts and talk about the First Amendment -- and yet if these libraries and these McDonalds were giving cigarettes to our children, we’d all be up in arms, we’d be picketing them,” Weiler said. “But somehow it’s okay if they deliver pornography to them.”

Host Tony Perkins, president of the anti-LGBT Family Research Council, compared those porn consumers to cigarette smokers, poisoning passerby with harmful "second-hand" visual "smoke."

“The public has a right not to be confronted with this,” Perkins said.

Weiler agreed, saying they had a First Amendment right not to see offensive material while chowing down on Big Macs.

“That’s what I think is often lost in the First Amendment discussion,” Weiler said. “Because someone may have the First Amendment right, according to the U.S. Supreme Court, to view pornography, but what about my First Amendment right to not view it?”