Rick Santorum riled up Twitter last week when he announced his intentions to ban Internet porn if he were to be elected president. Even if he were to win the presidency, the plan would be met with too much resistance. Too bad the same doesn’t apply to Egypt.

The Egypt Independent is reporting that the government is taking the first steps to ban all online pornography. The ban is being instigated by Minister of Telecommunications and Information Technology Mohamed Salem. The first step is to create a National Telecommunications Regulation Authority that will discuss how they can control porn sites.

Salem must have a good reason for wanting to ban access to porn sites, right? He says that the issue of porn is becoming “persistent and worrying to families.” I think that porn has always been “persistent and worrying” to anybody who has children. That’s why families install filters or keep a close watch on their child’s Internet usage. That’s apparently not good enough for the People’s Assembly Transportation and Telecommunications Committee as they asked the government in February to ban access to all porn sites within the nation.

The Next Web reports that a similar law was almost passed in Tunisia. That one didn’t make it through because critics found that it would allow the government to block any Web site that was deemed immoral or offensive. The Egyptian courts might throw out the law or they might pass it. Either way, the Egyptian people will probably see it as an affront on their freedoms and protest again.

From Santorum’s speech on porn to these new attempts to ban it just go to show you how far people will go to protect families and children. Yes, porn should be kept out of the hands of children, but governments shouldn’t punish an adult’s individual freedom in the name of protecting children. There are ways to protect children from offensive content than just an outright ban. This also puts the responsibility to protect children on the parent’s heads and I know that’s so hard these days. The government shouldn’t be your children’s parents as that leads down the road to them becoming big brothers.