If you can't defeat a specific issue as it is understood, redefine it. You might have better luck that way.
This seems to be an example. Redefine pornography as a public health crisis and see how it goes.
This can also be filed under "culture wars."
Utah state Sen. Todd Weiler doesn’t mind the jokes. In 2016, after the Republican passed a resolution on the “public health crisis” of pornography and proposed a bill that would let individuals sue its producers for inflicting psychological harm, he was mocked by late night comics; Stephen Colbert even made a fake ad for “pornography lawyers.” This week, as his law requiring tougher age verification from adult sites went into effect, Weiler shared his hate mail on social media (“I hope your wife stops putting out,” one message read).
“I grew up watching David Letterman’s viewer mailbag,” Weiler told Semafor. “I think it's fun for people to see what kind of feedback I'm getting, especially when it's over the top.”
Weiler was winning, and Utah was setting a trend. Since 2016, fourteen other states have passed resolutions that declare pornography a public health crisis, in line with tobacco or drunk driving. This year, Utah and Louisiana implemented similar laws that make media companies liable if people under 18 access pornography.
“I don’t think that the point of this is child protection,” said Mike Stabile, the public affairs director of the Free Speech Coalition, which on Wednesday filed a challenge to the Utah law. “I think the point is the chilling effect. In the Utah case, we cannot find an age verification provider that complies with the law, meaning that the law as written doesn't actually allow compliance.”
The age-verification law, which passed unanimously, inspired Pornhub to block any Utah-based ISP from the site; anyone who tried to visit saw a sex-free video from adult performer Cherie Deville urging them to contact their legislators. Weiler laughed about how many VPNs he must have sold, which allow residents to bypass the restrictions by hiding their location.
. . . New anti-pornography laws in red states haven’t stirred up the same emotions as abortion bans or anti-trans bills. Nobody’s filling the gallery of state legislatures to defend Pornhub, and the conventional wisdom is that the laws won’t be enforceable; that if VPNs don’t make them irrelevant, courts will strike them down.
But there is political momentum for restricting access to pornography, starting with the enforcement of laws that already prevent people under age 18 from accessing it — laws that the internet have made difficult to enforce. Anti-porn campaigners are gaining ground by warning about sexual exploitation and damage to young minds, rather than trying to brand material as fundamentally obscene. That change is epitomized by the National Center on Sexual Exploitation: Until eight years ago, it was called Morality in Media.
Fears about human trafficking, child abuse, and revenge porn have drawn attention across the political spectrum, from mainstream feminists to the Qanon-addled fringe, and forced major changes at Pornhub and other sites already.
