Tag Archive for: pornography

Texas AG Sues Pornhub for Failing to Verify Age of Users

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Texas’s attorney general has filed a lawsuit against pornographic website Pornhub for failing to obey state law requiring pornography websites to confirm the age of users before granting access to their sites. Experts welcomed the news as a step toward protecting minors from sexual exploitation.

Last year, Texas enacted House Bill 1181 into law, which requires pornography sites to verify that a user is 18 or older before allowing access to the site. The lawsuit against Pornhub, filed by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton (R), alleges that Aylo Global Entertainment, the parent company of Pornhub, is liable for up to $1.6 million “plus $10,000 a day from September of last year to the date of the lawsuit.”

“Instead of abiding by Texas law requiring purveyors of obscene sexual material to institute age verification systems, the company immediately presents minors who access their websites with pornographic content,” Paxton stated in a press release. “I look forward to holding any company accountable that violates our age verification laws intended to prevent minors from being exposed to harmful, obscene material on the internet.”

Texas is one of eight states to enact laws requiring porn sites to verify the age of their users in recent years. The other states with age verification laws include Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Montana, North Carolina, Utah, and Virginia.

Pornhub, one of the most visited porn sites in the world, has been embroiled in a series of lawsuits in recent years. Two class action lawsuits have been certified against the company for profiting from child sexual abuse material and sex trafficking. Pornhub is also the target of a lawsuit on behalf of nine women who were secretly filmed while changing in a locker room in which the footage ended up on the site. As of 2023, Pornhub is the defendant in at least 10 lawsuits involving 256 alleged victims.

In a 2020 New York Times exposé, columnist Nicholas Kristof described how Pornhub is “infested with rape videos. It monetizes child rapes, revenge pornography, spy cam videos of women showering, racist and misogynist content, and footage of women being asphyxiated in plastic bags.”

In comments to The Washington Stand, Benjamin Bull, general counsel at the National Center on Sexual Exploitation, confirmed Pornhub’s penchant for allowing illegal material to fester on the site for monetary gain.

“From our own litigation and investigation, Pornhub is a criminal sex trafficking enterprise pretending to be a legitimate business,” he remarked. “It’s about time state law enforcement required them to comply with a common-sense law that protects children from sexual abuse and harm.”

Mary Szoch, director of the Center for Human Dignity at Family Research Council, expressed hope that Texas’s lawsuit will cause the pornographic site to reconsider its exploitive practices.

“Pornhub doesn’t take the exploitation of anyone seriously,” she told TWS. “They don’t care about the women and men whose lives are ruined when they are trafficked and forced to create pornography. They don’t care about the men and women whose brains are literally deteriorating because of pornography addiction. They don’t care about the relationships and marriages ruined because of pornography. And they don’t care about children who will be caught up in pornography addiction and never able to live freely because of it. All Pornhub cares about is increasing profits and spreading their evil filth everywhere. So maybe, Pornhub will care about the over $3.5 million they will owe the people of Texas.”

Szoch continued, “AG Paxton and the people of Texas should be commended for holding Pornhub accountable, and they should continue going after Pornhub until it is completely shut down. There is nothing good about pornography. Nine out of 10 boys and six out of 10 girls are exposed to pornography before the age of 18. This evil drug robs people of their ability to love. It must be stopped.”

AUTHOR

Dan Hart

Dan Hart is senior editor at The Washington Stand.

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EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2024 Family Research Council.

The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

‘The Lost Boys’: Documentary Looks at Impact of Transgenderism on Young Men

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A new documentary is exposing the horrors that the transgender movement wreaks upon men, as well as the social and medical-industrial conditions that have led to those horrors. The Center for Bioethics and Culture Network released “The Lost Boys: Searching for Manhood” this week, featuring interviews with numerous men in both the U.S. and the U.K. who have undergone gender transition procedures, in addition to leading psychologists in the field of gender dysphoria.

The documentary examines the key common factors that lead young men to question their biological sex and seek gender transitions — namely, pornography, grooming, and the latent cultural detritus of feminism. It also explores how the medical industry promotes transgenderism, and how the young men wounded by transgenderism seek recovery and healing.

Some young men begin to question their biological sex during puberty, according to the documentary. One of the chief reasons behind this is the socially prevalent claim that men are inherently dangerous or toxic. “I think the messaging these boys have heard throughout their childhoods about ‘toxic masculinity’ has instilled a sense of shame, shame about being male,” explained clinical psychotherapist Dr. Joe Burgo. “And when puberty hits, that shame is deeply intensified because they don’t know how to process this sexual drive that they’ve got, which is often — I wouldn’t say ‘violent,’ but forceful. It’s fueled also by pornography that’s online.”

Pornography seemed to be a key factor for the young men interviewed in “The Lost Boys.” A man named Brian explained that he discovered pornography at a very young age and quickly became addicted, progressing from gay porn to transgender to what he called “this bizarre subgenre of pornography called sissy hypnosis porn.” Brian said, “I was able to sort of keep a lid on it while I was going to college. When I graduated college, that’s when I spiraled out of control.”

Another young man, Ritchie, explained that he became heavily involved in online forums, where he was groomed by older men in transgender chat rooms. He said he went to these websites seeking answers and advice from men who he presumed had transitioned genders. Most of those men turned out to be homosexual, not transgender, and convinced Ritchie to self-manufacture and distribute child pornography. Other men told Ritchie how freeing and liberating it was to transition and encouraged him to start. “The way I see it specifically in the actual sense of grooming is, say, a trans-identified boy has assignations online with older men who encourage him to dress up in female clothing and they give him lots of praise,” Burgo commented. “They’re predatory men, there’s no other word for them. There’s a whole predatory group of men out there who are exploiting the insecurities and the shame of these young men.”

Ritchie also explained that he was told by older men online that his testosterone made him “toxic.” He said he was told that “testosterone is poison.” Another young man interviewed, Torren, also talked of the influence that social media and online chat rooms had on him. “I keep hearing the messages, from media, reddit and Instagram being big things, and you see all of these people transitioning and they just seem happy. You see them on social media, they seem like they’re just saying like it solved all their problems,” he said. “I think I knew that it was too good to be true, but I struggled with it.”

Graham Linehan, an Irish comedy writer who was largely blackballed for speaking out against the transgender agenda, stated, “There is obviously a problem with young men.” He explained, “Part of the problem is that they are — the things they naturally find funny, the things they naturally find interesting, the things they naturally find sexy have all been problematized — they’re being made to feel like there’s something wrong with all these things, these very natural things they’re feeling.” Linehan added, “On top of that, you have an increasingly censorious kind of atmosphere where they really can’t say what they want to say.”

Burgo agreed, saying, “Pretty much all the messaging they’ve been given — during grade school and growing up, in media, from their families, from their teachers, everywhere — is that men, traditional men are really bad and that men need to be more like women.” He further noted, “I mean, if you look at the American Psychological Association’s guidelines for working with men and boys, they basically pathologize traditional masculinity. These boys grow up feeling like being a man is awful.”

Dr. Az Hakeem, who is billed as the U.K.’s top gender expert, explained that another key factor is mental health conditions that pro-transgenderism medical professionals often overlook. He stated that all of the male patients he has worked with over the past 23 years have been on the autism spectrum. “The thing about the autistic mind is it’s very ‘black and white,’ it loves categories, it loves rules,” Hazeem said. “And what I was hearing from my male patients were, ‘Well, to be male you have to be like this, this, this, and this. I’m not like this, therefore I’m other, I’m non-male, therefore I must be female.’” Burgo explained that young men on the autism spectrum tend to be “very dissociated from and uncomfortable with their bodies and the sensory world, they don’t like touch. And the emergence of sexuality and all the sensations it’s provoked is deeply disturbing and often dissociative.”

Yet medical professionals don’t seek to help autistic young men uncomfortable in their bodies find ways to fit in and accept themselves as they are: they rush to promote gender transition procedures without even diagnosing any other condition. Ritchie described how he was put on a regimen of hormone drugs, approved by Britain’s National Health Service (NHS), and began seeing a “gender therapist.” He said, “The first question I got asked by the NHS psychiatrist was, ‘Do you want genital reassignment surgery?’ And that was my very first psychiatric session at the NHS and I was like, ‘I don’t think so. I think I want therapy to be honest…’”

But his doctor kept asking Ritchie if he wanted surgery. “It was just all the time, constant, constant, constant, ‘Do you want surgery? Do you want surgery? Do you want surgery?” he said. Ritchie responded that he wanted to know what the risks are and wanted to give the procedure careful thought, afraid that he might regret it. He even brought his mother with him to the doctor, and she expressed concern over how the estrogen drugs he was taking were reacting with his antidepressants and how surgery might affect that. Ritchie said the doctor “did his best to shut my mother down and make her believe that if she said anything else [against surgery] it would drive us to suicide.”

A young Norwegian man, Alexander, explained that psychotherapy in Norway is rare, and very serious conditions must be met before an individual may be assigned a therapist. So Alexander “exaggerated” and pretended to be suicidal in order to get an appointment with a therapist who would prescribe him estrogen drugs. After beginning his hormone battery, Alexander talked to his therapist only three times before being given a letter of recommendation for genital surgery. “How can you come to a conclusion that this kind of surgery, life-changing surgery, is the best choice for the patient after talking to the patient three times?” he asked.

All of the young men interviewed talked about the effects estrogen had on them, particularly noting a “brain fog” resulting from the drug. “I never really felt suicidal or anything until I took estrogen. It didn’t make my life any better — in fact, it made my life worse, because I started to feel really depressed,” Brian explained. Estrogen decreases testosterone, and as testosterone decreases in men, they become depressed, lethargic, and unmotivated. As estrogen increases in men, it worsens those issues, impairs memory and attention span, and clouds reasoning and judgement. Both Ritchie and Alexander explained that they likely would have decided against surgery if they hadn’t been placed on estrogen.

“Medical professionals really led me astray with this,” Brian said. “Some people are now messed up for life — I’ll never be able to have kids, my rugged masculinity is never gonna come back. It’s all patient-led, it’s patient-led. ‘I wanna do hormones and I wanna have this surgery.’” He explained, “A good therapist, I think, would have said, ‘Well, maybe you’re transgender, who knows? But let’s get sober for a while and then let’s revisit this topic.’ But that’s not what happened.” Hakeem added, “Parents have bought into it, they’re being fed all this propaganda, like if you don’t let your child do this they’ll kill themselves. There’s no evidence to suggest that’s true.”

By the documentary’s end, everyone agreed that men cannot become women — that the chief claim of transgenderism is a lie. “Gender ideology does not believe that there’s biological sex, it believes that ‘felt gender’ has replaced biological sex, it believes that there are a hundred genders. And I think it’s nonsense. There’s biological sex. You’re male, you’re female, and a very tiny proportion of the people are intersex,” Hakeem explained. Burgo said, “I do not believe that anyone is born in the wrong body nor do I believe that anyone has an innate ‘gender identity’ that might be out of alignment with their sexed body. We are lying to children, I think we need to stop lying to children.”

Ritchie said he started a recovery group for young men who have gone through gender transition procedures. “We’ve all opted for something we call ‘recovery’ rather than ‘detransition,’” he explained. “Because there was no transition, I never went to female, and I’m not going back to male. I never left.” Alexander said, “I’m at peace that I’m a man, that I cannot change that, and I think of it as a biological reality. In Norway we don’t have a word for ‘detransitioner.’ We have a word that can be loosely translated to ‘a regretter.’” Torren stated that he has accepted who he is, saying, “I … realized that all these steps that I was taking to try to somehow ‘be my true self’ were actually taking me away from my true self, were actually taking me away from who I was.”

“The Lost Boys” is currently available for free on YouTube.

AUTHOR

S.A. McCarthy

S.A. McCarthy serves as a news writer at The Washington Stand.

RELATED ARTICLE: Christian Teachers Reinstated as Lawsuit over Transgender Policy Continues

EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2024 Family Research Council.

The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

Meta Will Censor Adult Detransitioners but Not Pornographic Content for Minors

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In September, detransitioner Chloe Cole, widely known for her testimony about the dangers of transgender operations, was censored on Instagram so that her content would not appear to non-followers in any capacity. As the warning she received stated, “Your account and content won’t appear in places like Explore, Search, Suggested Users, Reels, and Feed Recommendations.”

For several years, conservatives have been skeptical of censorship from social media platforms, of which Cole is the most recent victim. In a 2020 Pew Research poll, results showed most Americans share this concern. Out of 4,708 U.S. adults, the survey stated “roughly three-quarters of U.S. adults say it is very (37%) or somewhat (36%) likely that social media sites intentionally censor political viewpoints that they find objectionable. Just 25% believe this is not likely the case.”

While Republicans remain the most skeptical about social media censorship, other concerns are making their way to court. Investigators in New Mexico filed a lawsuit after they created minor profiles on Facebook and Instagram that were, as the suit stated, “exposed to nudity, pornographic videos, and sexually suggestive images of young girls.” Additionally, as The Epoch Times reported, when the investigators used the fake profiles to report pornographic videos sent to it, Meta “said it investigated and found no violation of its community standards.”

Additionally, “Meta also offered the profile a professional account, which would enable her to make money. Meta would provide information on her audience, which was largely male and adult.” Although, its not just the New Mexico investigators that are showing concern.

A bipartisan letter addressed to Mark Zuckerburg, CEO of Meta, from the United States Senate disclosed “deep concerns about Meta’s apparent failure to comply with the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA), as alleged in a recently unsealed complaint filed by 33 states against [the] company.” The letter detailed the ways in which “Meta has not even tried to obtain informed parental consent to continue collecting data on those kids — in direct violation of COPPA.”

COPPA is the only online federal privacy law for children, and the states’ complaints emphasized in the letter are based on substantial evidence that Meta has and continues to violate it. The letter concluded, “Meta’s goal here is clear: To do everything in its power to avoid gaining actual knowledge — or, at least, create the perception that it never gained actual knowledge — that a user is a child. In so doing, Meta sought both to continue monetizing that child’s account and establish a lucrative, long-term relationship with them.”

Chris Gacek, senior fellow for Regulatory Affairs at Family Research Council, commented to The Washington Stand, “It’s almost beyond imagining that” Meta is not aware of the exploitation of minors occurring on its platforms. He explained how, in the last couple years, Elon Musk has managed to take control of Twitter (now X) and clean up a fair amount of the obscenity that was on the app. As far as Gacek is concerned, if Musk is accomplishing this, Meta could do the same. “They can clean this up if they want to,” he said. “So if it’s there, they want it to be there.”

Gacek noted that part of Meta’s indifference about these accounts and the explicit content is because it’s a “mechanism by which they’re making money.” But there is also “this sort of an ideological contour map,” he added, that can contribute even more to the equation. As Gacek put it, what this investigation seems to navigate is that “Chloe Cole can’t be seen, but the pervs can.”

He concluded, “There [could be] hundreds of millions of people watching” or coming across “this stuff, right? I can’t believe there aren’t more people reporting these things.”

AUTHOR

Sarah Holliday

Sarah Holliday is a reporter at The Washington Stand.

RELATED VIDEO: Pornhub Reportedly Pushes Gay/Trans Content to Shape Sexualities of Minors | TIPPING POINT

EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2023 Family Research Council.

The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

Minnesota Middle School Restricted Cell Phones a Year Ago, the Results Are ‘Just Night and Day’

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When I was in middle school, I had a flip phone meant exclusively to contact family members (and maybe a couple close friends). Half the time I didn’t even want to text on it because it was one of those keyboards where you have to press the button two or three times to get the letter you want. I hardly used my phone at all, which I believe attributed to why I enjoyed middle school so much.

Unlike an overwhelming number of kids and teenagers today, I was not glued to my screen. Rather, my time in middle school was rooted in practically anything but the cyber-verse. My friends and I spent every moment before and after school, or in between classes, engaging in quality interactions. We talked during lunch, and it wasn’t about what was trending online. Of course, the older I got, as I went through high school and college, social media grew in prominence. So, really, my time in middle school was the only season I had relatively free of technological domination.

The research and studies conducted on social media use are numerous, and it’s remarkable how the majority of them report negative impacts. The conclusions seem to read the same: “Depression, anxiety, bullying, and anti-social tendencies are on the rise, and it’s all linked to social media usage.” Between October of 2019 and October of 2020, social platforms grew 21.3%, with 93.33% of 4.48 billion (as of 2021) worldwide active on social media.

Although statistics show adults between 27 to 42 are the biggest social media users, I would argue the most unfortunate victims of the social media addiction are the younger generations. Which makes a school such as Maple Grove Middle School in Minnesota a breath of fresh air in a world tainted by online toxins.

About a year ago, Maple Grove chose to restrict cell phone use in the school. While it wasn’t an outright ban, they encouraged students to place their phones in their lockers at the start of the day, and anyone who did not comply and used their phone would get it confiscated until the school day finished. According to the principal, Patrick Smith, there were a variety of contributions to this decision. “[T]here’s a lot of drama that comes from social media, and a lot of conflict that comes from it,” he said.

When Smith and the school staff noticed the kids were hardly interacting with each other throughout the day, they knew a change had to be made.

After a year of restricted screen time, the “kids are happy,” Smith shared. “They’re engaging with each other. … [I]t’s just night and day.” When the plan was first announced, parents applauded, the principal noted. And they continue to give positive feedback, including parents who have shared that their kids are paying more attention and participating in more discussions. One parent said her son is “thriving.”

Meg Kilgannon, Family Research Council’s senior fellow for Education Studies, explained to The Washington Stand her take on the school’s hopeful results. She deemed it as “a great first step in helping teens regulate their use of technology in an unrestricted culture.” But unfortunately, the downsides of social media go beyond depression and anxiety.

New research revealed that 73% of teenagers surveyed have been exposed to pornography, with some as young as 11 when the explicit material was viewed. Experts say social media plays a key role in this as well as the identity crisis sweeping the nation. “We know that the porn industry is relentlessly targeting youth,” Kilgannon added. Additionally, “The work of adolescence is to form one’s identity by discerning God’s call on your life.” So, for Kilgannon, social media being both a source of sexual content and identity confusion means “limiting [its] access to children during the school day is a bare minimum kind of advance that we should all be able to support.”

When it comes to fostering the development of a child, Kilgannon shared, “This work needs to be done in the safety of a loving family and supported by institutions we build as a culture — churches and schools. These are places where we encounter each other and build relationships.” She continued, “This encounter is interrupted by overuse of personal devices like cell phones.”

Going back to my middle school days, I am so thankful for a community that was not overrun by our pocket devices. The friendships felt so genuine, and the days richer. My experience causes me to believe the kids at Maple Grove will be seriously helped by the school’s actions. As Kilgannon concluded, “What a gift to this community for the school to allow their students and faculty the space for genuine human connection. I hope this school is developing a ‘best practice’ guideline to share with others — we need this to ‘go viral!’”

AUTHOR

Sarah Holliday

Sarah Holliday is a reporter at The Washington Stand.

EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2023 Family Research Council.

The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

Lose—Lose: Mike Johnson, Pornography, and the Scorn of the Left

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Pornography is one of the Left’s favorite political tools. It can be used to cudgel, browbeat, castigate, and shame conservatives into silence — a potential that leftists capitalize on every chance they get. The best part about it — for leftists, at any rate — is that it’s a double-edged sword, as the case of newly-minted speaker of the House Mike Johnson (R-La.) makes evident.

Most of the time, lefties berate conservative leaders who get busted using pornography. Look at Senator Ted Cruz (R-Texas) back in 2017: when Cruz’s Twitter account “liked” a pornographic tweet, leftist media outlets began their bullying, including trying to link Cruz’s political career and personal history to an obsession with the porn industry. It was later revealed that a staffer with access to the Twitter account liked the video, but the cudgeling, browbeating, castigating, and shaming had already begun.

This is the most effective use of porn as a political tool, as it not only isolates the outed conservative from his typically-not-fond-of-porn voter base, but also labels him a hypocrite, as the conservative ideology (and even the Republican Party platform) condemn porn use. But this time around, leftists are taking Johnson to task for… not watching porn.

That’s right, in a recently-resurfaced video clip, Johnson stated that he uses Covenant Eyes, an online filter and accountability program that blocks porn from laptops and cell phones and sends a designated accountability partner a regular update on websites visited. During a panel discussion entitled “War on Technology” hosted last year at Cypress Baptist Church in Benton, Louisiana, Johnson explained that Covenant Eyes had been suggested to him at a marriage conference called “Promise Keepers.” Conference speakers also suggested fathers sign up their sons once they hit the teenage years and serve as their sons’ accountability partners. Following this advice, Johnson signed up his teenage son for Covenant Eyes and the two have been one another’s accountability partners, receiving daily reports on what websites the other visited. He quipped, “I’m proud to tell you my son has got a clean slate.”

Left-wing media pundits and publications have, predictably, piled on Johnson for his position on porn. The vociferously pro-LGBT outlet “Pink News” wrote, “The revelation is yet another example of Johnson’s conservative views, which include him making a number of anti-LGBTQ+ and anti-abortion statements.” The online magazine also asked, “Should House Speaker Mike Johnson allow third-party surveillance apps on his personal devices?”

The far more mainstream Rolling Stone piled on, “Since he was elected Speaker of the House in October, Johnson’s history as a faith-obsessed, election-denying, far-right Christian nationalist has come under the microscope…” and referred to using porn-blocking and accountability software as “creepy Big Brother-ness…” The “Receipt Maven” Twitter account, which resurfaced the original clip, quipped, “[S]o basically don’t watch porn or your son/dad will know…”

Thus far, pornography has been declared a public health emergency in 16 different states: Arkansas, Arizona, Florida, Idaho, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Missouri, Montana, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, South Dakota, Tennessee, Utah, and Virginia. The detriments of pornography are myriad — physically, psychologically, emotionally, and spiritually. This quadfecta affects practically every aspect of the human experience.

Physically, pornography has been shown to cause severe erectile dysfunction in men and reduce sexual activity among couples; coupled with psychological effects, which include depression, anxiety, irritability, decreased self-esteem, decreased motivation, neglect for responsibilities and deadlines, and the altering of the brain’s chemical makeup, these first two categories alone are enough to label pornography detrimental. The effects of pornography on emotions are equally alarming — if not more so. Increased aggression and violence, a deep sense of shame and guilt, and an inability to see other human beings as anything but objects are just a few examples of the emotional toll porn use can take.

As horrific as all of this is, pornography may be most destructive in the spiritual quadrant. Porn use dulls and dims the soul’s ability to see others as being made in the image and likeness of God (Genesis 1:26-27) and instead encourages the soul to turn inward upon itself, consuming others as meat instead of giving of oneself lovingly. Porn use destroys discipline, which impacts everything from fulfilling one’s professional and household duties to making time regularly for prayer. The sense of shame and guilt which accompanies porn use may also drive a soul away from God, too ashamed to seek His forgiveness.

Scientists have often noted that porn use typically progresses into more and more depraved categories. Scientifically, this is because the brain has become so desensitized to the images it sees that, in order to produce the dopamine the porn addict seeks, more extreme imagery must be viewed. In his novel “That Hideous Strength,” the great Christian author C.S. Lewis described this depraved progression of lust:

“It is idle to point out to the perverted man the horror of his perversion: while the fierce fit is on, that horror is the very spice of his craving. It is ugliness itself that becomes, in the end, the goal of his lechery; beauty has long since grown too weak stimulant.”

Spiritually, this seeking out of the more and more depraved, the more and more perverse is even more startling. As most Christians know, virtue is the bending of one’s own will to align with God’s. Those whom we consider holiest, noblest, and most saintly are those whose wills are so in accord with God’s that there is little discernible difference. Cultivating such virtue, of course, is an arduous and even a lifelong task — it is no mere matter of wishing or wanting, and its demands are often high. The martyrs are prime examples of this: from Peter and Paul to Maximilian Kolbe and Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the ardently virtuous offer their wills to God so completely that their very lives come along with them. Although all are, of course, made in the image and likeness of God, the virtuous are those who clarify that image and let it shine brightly and colorfully forth.

Conversely, those who live according to vice turn away from the image of God and remake themselves in the image of Hell. They bend their wills so far away from God’s own that they actually run in the opposite direction. Pornography is a horrifically illustrative example of this principle. God, of course, created sex. He made it to be something beautiful, intimate, loving, life-giving, and self-sacrificial. In fact, sex is itself also made in the image of God: God’s love is so great, so filled is He with love in each of His three persons, that He had to make that love flesh, it had to spill over into new life: mankind.

So also did God create sex to be a blessed marital act mirroring the love of the Trinity, a spilling over of a joyful, self-giving love that bears both spiritual fruit and, if God wills it, the physical fruit of a child. Porn warps and distorts this beauty, it takes the image of God out of sex and turns the whole act inwards upon itself, becoming a matter only of predatory self-satisfaction. No longer the giving of oneself in love and the openness to new life, porn is simply the consuming of others, stripping them of not just their clothes but their God-given dignity, their very humanity.

The progression of the pornographic perversion from one dehumanization to an even greater and more vile dehumanization is indicative of the soul’s turning away from God and remaking itself more and more nearly in the image of Hell, where, without sincerely repenting and accepting God’s grace and forgiveness, it will surely spend eternity.

Before his execution, Ted Bundy — the notorious serial killer who confessed to the kidnap, rape, and murder of 30 women — spoke to Dr. James Dobson of Focus on the Family about the link between his depraved crimes and pornography. Bundy told Dobson that between the ages of 10 and 13, he began a fascination with “soft-core” pornography. He explained, “I would keep looking for more potent, more explicit, more graphic kinds of materials. Like an addiction, you keep craving something which is harder, harder. Something which gives you a greater sense of excitement. Until you reach the point where the pornography only goes so far.” Bundy stressed that, to all those around him, he was the image of a “normal person,” even the “All-American boy.” But, he said:

“I think people need to recognize that those of us who have been so much influenced by … pornographic violence are not some kinds of inherent monsters. We are your sons, and we are your husbands. And we grew up in regular families. And pornography can reach out and snatch a kid out of any house today. It snatched me out of my home 20, 30 years ago, as diligent as my parents were, and they were diligent in protecting their children.”

Bundy was executed in 1989, back when pornography was only available in magazines and on VHS tapes bought at seedy downtown shops or smuggled from friend to friend at school. The pervasive nature and instant accessibility of internet pornography was something Bundy never witnessed. If pornography could “snatch a kid out of any house” in 1989, it now invades homes and devours children alive through their phones, tablets, and laptops. A recent survey by Common Sense Media found that 73% of teens reported they watch online pornography and over half reported that they had been exposed to pornography by the age of 13. Sadly, 15% admitted that they had seen porn before the age of 11.

As a devout Christian, Mike Johnson knows that it is his fatherly duty to protect his children from the soul-sucking scourge of pornography. Holding his son accountable through using Covenant Eyes in order to cultivate the virtue of chastity is not freakish, backwards, repressive, or controlling — it is noble, loving, caring, and truly masculine. What father would want to condemn his son to a life suffering from erectile dysfunction, emotional instability, an inability to experience emotional and sexual intimacy, a crippling addiction, exponentially-worsening depravity, and spiritual suicide?

It should be no surprise that the same mob which shows no concern for the blood of untold millions of unborn babies would deride a father for shielding his son from the horrors of pornography. Instead, leftists’ mockery of Johnson reveals their obsession with pornography. While they may take a flippant “lose-lose” approach to conservatives and porn — conservatives lose for getting caught looking at porn and lose for actively avoiding it — Johnson clearly takes the Christian approach: recognizing that both he and his son have lost if he doesn’t protect his son from the perverse cancer of pornography.

AUTHOR

S.A. McCarthy

S.A. McCarthy serves as a news writer at The Washington Stand.

EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2023 Family Research Council.

The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

Virginia School District Removes Sexually Explicit Books to Keep Focus on Literacy

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A public school superintendent in Virginia is making it clear that his school district will be focusing on improving the literacy of its students while also protecting them from being exposed to sexually explicit material while in school.

As parents and observers began noticing a rise in gender ideology, critical race theory, and pornographic material present in curriculums and school library books in recent years, many worried that the focus on ideologies was eating up valuable class time that could be spent on developing basic competencies in reading, writing, and math. News came in 2022 and in June of this year that math and reading scores had plummeted to the lowest levels in decades.

Governor Glenn Youngkin (R) rode a wave of energy surrounding the burgeoning parental rights movement to a surprise gubernatorial victory in 2021, and his administration has made education policy a focal point. In 2022, Youngkin signed into law the Virginia Literacy Act, which focused on improving the reading skills of Virginia’s students by providing special training to teachers, sharing instruction results with parents, and partnering with parents to create individualized plans for students who are showing a deficiency in reading.

“There’s a lot of talk in public education right now about implementing Virginia’s Literacy Act, about wanting to improve standards of learning and standardized test scores,” said Mark Taylor, superintendent of Spotsylvania County Public Schools in Fredericksburg, Va., during Monday’s edition of “Washington Watch with Tony Perkins.” “And we’re doing that in Spotsylvania County. But also among those priorities is a debate, really, about parental rights and parental involvement in public education. In Spotsylvania, we are following the directives of Governor Glenn Youngkin, and we are working hard to maximize parental engagement and parental involvement.”

Taylor also noted that he is continuing efforts his school district started in March to remove sexually explicit material from the shelves of school libraries.

“We provide an avenue for parents to opt in or opt out of the availability of sexually explicit materials for their children, and we’re actively reviewing challenges of instructional materials, including library books,” he explained. “I’ve recently removed 23 more books now, for a total of 37 books removed from our public school libraries. Now, we have 390,000 volumes, so there are plenty of books to be read.”

Taylor went on to point out the extreme nature of some of the sexually explicit material that he removed. “[It’s] essentially pornography and doesn’t need to be a part of [school libraries]. In fact, some of it is shocking scenes of violent rape or descriptions of forced bestiality, sex with animals.”

In response to accusations of “book banning” from legacy media and left-wing critics, Taylor emphasized that any books that have been removed from school library shelves are widely available elsewhere.

“The books that I’ve removed, to the best of my knowledge, are all still available in the public libraries, so this is in no way a ban. The books are available in the community, they’re available online, they’re available from a variety of sources. We’re simply trying to, number one, follow the governor’s directives in implementing policy for our school division. And number two, to create what I hope will be a safe space for children to learn the basics of English and literacy and mathematics and other subjects that are essential to their preparation for a positive and beautiful future that we want them to have.”

In April 2022, Youngkin signed into law a measure that requires Virginia schools to notify parents if their child is assigned books or other materials that contain sexually explicit content.

Taylor also shared his thoughts as to why some public school administrations have appeared to show hostility to the concerns of parents.

“I think that what has been enculturated over many years is the notion that the professional educators are specialists in the field with exemplary competencies, and they are best positioned to help the students forward,” he observed. “Professional educators are certainly highly trained and very talented people, but at the end of the day, I think it’s also true that no one knows the child like the parent knows the child. And for public education to be successful, there really needs to be an effective collaboration, a solid partnership, close connection between parents and public school educators working together to prepare students for their very best future. … Let’s work together instead of pulling in opposite directions.”

Taylor concluded by urging for prayer and a strong turnout in the upcoming election.

“Pray for the upcoming election,” he entreated. “Virginia is a purple state next week. Local seats are up, including seats on our Board of Supervisors that appropriates money to the school division and seats on our school board. And this purple state is going to become more blue, or it’s going to become more red. These issues will continue to be debated, and our success or failure depends in part on support from the community and from the voters.”

AUTHOR

Dan Hart

Dan Hart is senior editor at The Washington Stand.

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EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2023 Family Research Council.

The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

Newsom Imposes $1.5M Fine on California School District for Rejecting Textbook Discussing LGBT Activism

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On Thursday, California Governor Gavin Newsom (D) announced that he would be levying a $1.5 million fine on the Temecula Valley Unified School District (TVUSD) over the school board’s recent decision to reject a state-endorsed textbook intended for elementary schoolchildren that discusses the infamous gay rights activist Harvey Milk.

“We’re going to purchase the book for these students — the same one that hundreds of thousands of kids are already using,” Newsom said. “If these extremist school board members won’t do their job, we will — and fine them for their incompetence.”

Joseph Komrosky, the president of the TVUSD Board of Education, has emphasized that the board’s rejection of the textbook is centered around the pedophilia that Milk, a former member of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors who passed away in 1978, engaged in during his life. “My word choice [of calling Milk a ‘pedophile’] is based upon facts represented by Mr. Milk, and I don’t believe those facts are a good example for our children to learn about in elementary school,” Komrosky said in a tweet in response to Newsom’s claim that Komrosky’s tweet was “An offensive statement from an ignorant person.”

The pedophilic actions of Milk have been extensively documented. As noted by The Washington Stand’s Ben Johnson:

“Milk … had a sexual relationship with Jack Galen McKinley, a 16-year-old runaway who committed suicide after their encounter. Milk was attracted to ‘boyish-looking men in their late teens and early 20s,’ wrote LGBT activist Randy Shilts in his biography of Milk, his friend. ‘Harvey always had a penchant for young waifs with substance-abuse problems.’”

The decision by the TVUSD Board of Education is the latest in a growing movement of public school systems taking action to remove pornographic books from school curriculums and libraries in response to a nationwide outcry from parents. In February, Broward County Public Schools in Florida announced they would be removing “Flamer,” a pornographic novel, and would be reviewing other books in their schools’ library catalogues for sexually explicit content. In June, the Hanover County School Board in Virginia announced a new policy that would allow parents to file challenges to remove explicit books from school libraries.

These actions followed the enaction of Florida Governor Ron DeSantis’s (R) March 2022 bill that requires all school districts in the state to have their instructional and library reading materials reviewed to make sure they are free from sexually explicit content.

Meanwhile, Newsom’s unusually strong public rebuke and large monetary fine of a school district’s decision to reflect the values of the local voters may be an indication of his plans for a future Democratic presidential run.

“Gavin Newsom desperately wants to be president of the United States,” said podcast host and Family Research Council Senior Fellow Joseph Backholm on a recent episode of “Outstanding.” “California is like a glimpse into the window of the future of what happens when progressives get everything they want.”

“I think he’s absolutely running,” Jonathan Keller, president of the California Family Council, concurred. “The question is, is he running in 2024 or 2028? And I think that we will not know that for a while. We may not honestly know that until the Democratic National Convention next year.”

AUTHOR

Dan Hart

Dan Hart is senior editor at The Washington Stand.

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EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2023 Family Research Council.

The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

5 Reasons You Must See ‘Sound of Freedom’

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UPDATE: Statement by President Donald J. Trump after watching Sound of Freedom.

I really didn’t want to see this movie. Does anyone want to see a movie about horrific crimes against children and the systems that support or fail to stop child sex trafficking? But I felt an obligation to support “Sound of Freedom.” And I was happy to hear the buzz in the conservative media sphere. “Sound of Freedom” was making noise in all the right places.

So I bought my tickets online and told myself that I had at least done my duty to financially support this worthy cause. My seat was sold, and if it went unfilled, the movie theater would still make money. Despite my best efforts to be somewhere else, I found myself in the seat on July 4.

I still don’t quite understand how I left the theater feeling hopeful. I had expected to feel hopeless and disgusted after watching a movie about child sex trafficking. And there were certainly moments of those feelings during the course of the movie. But the power of art to move the human heart is very real, if hard to describe, even after experiencing it.

It’s also hard to describe a movie without spoiling the plot for others. Here are five impressions this movie left on me, and I hope they inspire you to see the movie.

1. “God’s children are not for sale.”

This is the motivation for the main character to move beyond the soul crushing work of tracking organized pedophile networks to rescuing their victims. “Sound of Freedom” made me reflect, once again, on the work we ask others to do in our name: policing, soldiering, guarding. It is hard work, mostly done by men, who lay down their lives to protect and serve others. We ask them to deal with many of the things we do not want to face. Many do this work because of a higher calling, one that needs our support in prayer.

2. “I feel like she’s my daughter.”

Mrs. Tim Ballard texts this message to her husband while he is away searching for a victim. Her love and support for him and his work is beautifully communicated in this movie. She is also asked to bear part of the burden her husband shoulders on our behalf. She represents a much larger group of people who deserve our gratitude and our prayers.

3. “I was that darkness.”

A man contemplates his role as a consumer in the adult sex industry. His redemption from direct involvement is by the grace of God. But this character made me think about what I could or should be doing to address this grave injustice against women and men, girls and boys. At a minimum, opposing the legalization of “sex work” would be a start. Removing pornography and pornographic content from school libraries and curricula is also imperative.

4. “You’re on your own, Tim.”

Government redress of grievances is limited. Tim Ballard, the main character, had to operate on his own to follow the call to protect God’s children. But as Christians we have an obligation to prove that Tim is not alone. Each of us is called to combat the sex industry, whether through promoting organizations like Covenant Eyes that guard against pornography, by speaking out against endeavors to normalize pedophilia, or simply by living a life that upholds the dignity of every male and every female as a human being — not objects for exploitation.

5. “Could you sleep if your child’s bed was empty?”

The plea of a father for his trafficked daughter. This theme was the main reason for my initial reluctance to see the film. And it was one of the reasons why, if I had to see it, I would see it in a theater. Hearing a question like that asked in a movie theater for me is very different from hearing it asked in my living room, with my own children’s beds right upstairs.

There are some movies to see and “leave” at the theater rather than experience them at home. But this movie is one to share with others, at a theater or at your church, or even in your home. While it is not for young children, this movie is a remarkable work of art about a horrific topic. I’m grateful to Angel Studios for distributing the movie, and I encourage you to see it. I am glad I did.

AUTHOR

Meg Kilgannon

Meg Kilgannon is Senior Fellow for Education Studies at Family Research Council.

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EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2023 Family Research Council.

The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

Rural Virginia Parents Fight for the Removal of Pornographic Kids Books from Public Library

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In a victory for a grassroots movement of concerned parents and citizens of a small town in the Shenandoah Valley of northern Virginia, the county Board of Supervisors has agreed to restrict the funds of a public library until an agreement can be reached on what to do with dozens of pornographic books for kids that were found there.

On June 6, hundreds of local Catholics and other concerned citizens packed a Warren County, Virginia Board of Supervisors meeting in Front Royal to make their voices heard in opposition to dozens of pornographic children’s books that were found on the shelves at the Samuels Public Library.

“This is not literature. This is smut,” one dad said after reading an excerpt about anal sex from “This Book Is Gay.” Another soon-to-be mom discussed the book “It’s Perfectly Normal,” which is aimed at pre-teens and includes cartoon depictions of naked couples in various sex positions as well as discussion of masturbation and abortion. “Ideally, funding the library is important, but a sense of decency is owed the community before funding is owed to the library,” she said.

The grassroots movement, which has become known as “Clean Up Samuels Library,” announced on Wednesday that the Board of Supervisors had agreed to address the concerns of the community during a meeting on Tuesday night.

“The Board of Supervisors appropriated 100% of the funding for Samuels Library, but restricted 75% of it until September while board members negotiate with the library about what to do regarding these books,” the group stated in a press release. “The funds will be in a separate bank account until a deal is worked out.”

“From what we can tell, it’s not looking like the books will be removed entirely,” the release continued. “Rather, the board is negotiating to move them to the adult’s section, and to place restrictions on who can access the adult’s section without an adult.”

In an exclusive interview with The Washington Stand, Thomas Hinnant, a community organizer in Front Royal, described how the movement got started.

“A local grandmother was at the library with her grandchildren, and one of her grandchildren, a four-year-old boy, went and found one of these books in the child section, and she was appalled,” he explained. “A group of local folks went into the library and started looking around and realized that this pornography was all over the place in the kid’s section.”

Hinnant continued, “From there, concerned citizens and parents came together … and [decided to] organize an afternoon where a bunch of [mostly] young parents look through these books and send in requests for reconsideration, which is the process that the library uses to evaluate books. Upwards of 450 requests for reconsideration were submitted, and everything that we got back were denials, and the appeals were denied as well. The library has chosen to hide behind the standards of the American Library Association, which are out of touch and out of step with the community consensus of Warren County.”

Front Royal, the seat of Warren County, is the home of Christendom College, a small Catholic university known for its adherence to orthodox Catholic teaching, as well as a number of other K-12 Catholic schools. A notably large population of Christendom graduates and other Catholics have settled in the area since the school’s founding in 1977. Despite being located relatively close to more liberal counties in northern Virginia, Warren County is deeply red, with almost 70% of the population voting Republican in the 2022 midterm election.

Hinnant further noted that while the movement was encouraged by the results of board meeting, their demands have not changed.

“We want the pornographic books totally removed,” he emphasized. “We want democracy in the bureaucracy. Our tax dollars are ours, and we do not want unelected and faceless bureaucrats spending them on pornography for children. We want that space reserved for the great classics and the great works and the many wonderful books that can be on those shelves. There’s a larger list that we’ve put together that we want put into an adult section … that largely involve sexualization of children, LGBTQ, etc. Some would quibble that it’s not exactly pornography. To us, anything that sexualizes a seven-year-old is pornographic in nature, but we’re willing to say this stuff can be moved to another section for now.”

The fight that has opened up in Warren County over controversial public library books aimed at kids appears to be a relatively new front in the broader nationwide battle which has centered on books in public school libraries. Hinnant told TWS that local communities have every right to demand that their values be reflected in how their tax dollars are spent, not just in schools, but in all other public institutions.

“We want a new standard,” he underscored. “We want cultural secession from the American Library Association and the hegemonic left-wing ideology that it represents, and we want community standards that represents the community consensus of an overwhelmingly conservative county. I think that if we were to do that, then those books would not be in the library anyway. … We are not backing down on any of our demands. We also want the leadership of the library to change and change swiftly. These people need to be held accountable for what they did. They fought tooth and nail to keep this pornography in our library, even though the clear popular will is not on their side.”

Hinnant went on to encourage other conservative communities across the country to take back their public institutions.

“We know that this is a roadmap for rural America,” he contended. “Frankly, for too long, conservatives have focused on elections, while well-trained and well-funded leftists have gone into these rural communities and essentially colonized them. We want to commence the decolonization of rural America, and that takes community organizing. That takes disciplined messaging, and that takes ‘We the People’ coming together to hold our elected officials accountable — and not just when the elections happen. We have to hold these bureaucracies accountable, because that is where the deeply-rooted colonization is, and that is where this cancer that rips through rural America is. This is a great example of a community coming together and standing up against this radical ideology that has truly colonized rural America, and they have done it under the cloak of darkness. And I think now people are finally starting to wake up to that. I hope that this will be a wake-up call to other folks in other rural areas.”

“We have got to take a stand here,” Hinnant concluded. “These elections are great, but if these folks are able to just run wild in our institutions that are educating our children, whether its schools, public libraries, anywhere that our public funds are being used, then it’s a problem.”

AUTHOR

Dan Hart

Dan Hart is senior editor at The Washington Stand.

RELATED ARTICLE: Guidance for trans groomers

EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2023 Family Research Council.

The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

A ‘Watershed’ Moment: Pornhub Blocks Access to Utah in Response to Age Verification Law

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In response to a Utah law set to go into effect Wednesday requiring pornography sites to verify the age of users in order to block access to minors, MindGeek, one of the world’s largest pornography companies, has blocked all Utahans from accessing their flagship site Pornhub, along with a number of other porn sites owned by the company. In light of MindGeek’s move, experts are pointing to a potential sea change that could occur in internet safety for minors if more states follow Utah’s lead.

In March, Utah Governor Spencer Cox (R) signed SB 287 into law, a bill that requires “a commercial entity that provides pornography and other materials defined as being harmful to minors … to verify the age of individuals accessing the material.” The bill also stipulates that publishers and distributors of porn will be held liable if they do not comply with the requirements.

Michael Toscano, executive director of the Institute for Family Studies, extolled the Utah governor and legislature’s efforts in enacting laws designed to protect minors from obscenity.

“Utah has put itself forward as a leader for governing the internet on behalf of the American family,” he said on Tuesday’s edition of “Washington Watch.” “Under the leadership of Governor Cox, he has decided that he was going to challenge the powers of Big Tech and Silicon Valley and Big Porn with a raft of legislation that would require these companies to verify the age of its users before admitting access. And it’s sending shock waves across the country. Legislatures across the country are looking at it, as well as on the federal level. It’s a remarkable watershed in the history of this country.”

The legislation is part of a growing nationwide push to implement laws designed to protect minors from being exposed to sexually explicit material online. In January, Louisiana enacted an almost identical law to Utah’s. Four other states (California, Virginia, Arkansas, and Mississippi) have also enacted bills restricting minors’ access to porn and social media sites. In addition, 21 other states have introduced legislation addressing the issue.

Toscano applauded the efforts of the Utah legislature despite protests from pornography industry lobbyists.

“[These] brave men and women were uncowed by the lobby, the lobbyists that were whispering in their ear, telling them that this would be an invasion of privacy or that this would be too burdensome for their companies and legislation,” he observed. “Good policy is a matter of balancing interests, and the legislators in Utah decided that they were going to balance their laws in favor of American families, and I think that was the right choice.”

Haley McNamara, vice president of the National Center on Sexual Exploitation, echoed Toscano’s support for the Utah law and for MindGeek’s response to block their sites statewide in a statement to The Washington Stand: “Even better for children in Utah!”

She went on to note that “age verification for pornography is not a new technology or idea. There is an entire existing industry of age verification technology and standards that respect privacy. … Our laws have long held that those who distribute harmful material to minors are liable for any harm they cause, and the internet should not be different. Just as one must show an ID to enter, or make a purchase in, an adult bookstore or theatre, one should have to demonstrate he or she is an adult to access online pornography.”

McNamara continued, “Pornhub says that it’s a site only for adults, so why would it fight to stop Utah’s law to enact age verification to prevent minors from accessing its site unless it knows its traffic and profits will be impacted once minors aren’t on there?”

Toscano was equally suspicious of MindGeek’s stated reasons behind shutting off their sites in the state.

“They’re acknowledging that a very large share of their traffic comes from underage users,” he concurred. “Pornhub is worried, as one of its senior officials admitted online [this week]. It’s worried that its traffic could decrease in Utah by 50%. And part of that concern is from their perspective that its age verification is enough of a block for people to decide not to go on a porn site. But it also is an admission that many of the people that are going on their site are underage to begin with. This is obviously a bad thing, and it’s only a sign of the effectiveness of this legislation that Pornhub has decided that it was going to play hardball by withdrawing its platform altogether from Utah.”

Studies show that minors are a significant portion of those who view online porn. A report from Common Sense Media found that up to 73% of minors between 12 and 17 had watched internet smut.

Toscano further underscored that policymakers can do more above and beyond age verification in order to combat the porn industry from exploiting children.

“They should actually enforce the existing obscenity law,” he emphasized. “The existing obscenity law does not permit websites or any other producers of media to provide underage Americans with obscene content. The problem is a lack of enforcement. And I think what you see from Pornhub is [they realize] that Utah is very serious. And so they’re withdrawing. And I encourage other states to do the same thing and to show that they are serious about this obscenity problem.”

AUTHOR

Dan Hart

Dan Hart is senior editor at The Washington Stand.

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EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2023 Family Research Council.

The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

How Pedophiles Are Using Artificial Intelligence to Exploit Kids

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Artificial intelligence (more commonly known as “AI”) has gained attention and popularity in recent months, particularly since the launch of the ChatGPT chatbot from OpenAI, which captivated the internet with both its impressive abilities and surprising limitations. The millions of AI users in the U.S. are mostly eager to cheat on their homework or escape writing work emails; however, some bad actors have also discovered how to employ AI technology to attain far more nefarious ends.

Britain’s National Crime Agency is conducting a review of how AI technology can contribute to sexual exploitation after the recent arrest of a pedophile computer programmer in Spain shocked the continent. The man had been found to be utilizing an AI image generator to create new child sexual abuse material (CSAM) based on abusive images of children that he already possessed. The Daily Mail noted that the “depravity of the pictures he created appalled even the most experienced detectives …”

Many AI programs function by inputting data or content that teaches the program to recognize patterns and sequences, and recreate them in new ways. When pedophiles or sexual abusers get their hands on AI, they can further exploit the victims featured in real images to create new — and even more graphic — content. Though the AI-generated images are not “real” in the sense that they are photographs of events that necessarily transpired, they are nevertheless inherently exploitative of the victims used to train the AI, remnants of whose images may still be featured in the new CSAM.

Another form of artificial intelligence that has gained recent notoriety is known as a “deepfake.” In these unsettling images, audio clips, or videos, AI is able to create shockingly realistic manipulations of an individual’s likeness or voice in any scenario that the creator desires. While deepfakes can be used in a variety of harmful contexts, like depicting a political candidate in a situation that would damage his reputation, sexual predators who weaponize the technology have proven to be particularly vicious.

Last week, discussion of deepfake technology reached a fever pitch as a community of female online content creators realized that their images had been uploaded online in the form of pornographic deepfakes. The women who had been victimized reported feeling extremely violated and deeply unsettled with the knowledge that this pornographic content had been created and distributed without their consent — and that people who knew them personally had been watching the deepfakes to satisfy their own perversions. Deepfake technology knows few bounds; pedophiles with access to images of children could similarly employ this form of AI to create CSAM.

The normalization of AI-created pornography or child sexual abuse material serves no beneficial purpose in society — and, in fact, can influence cultural mores in profoundly harmful ways. Already, having the technological capability to manufacture AI-generated CSAM has emboldened pedophile-sympathizers to advocate for their inclusion in the liberal umbrella of sexual orientations.

The Young Democrats, the youth division of the Democratic Party in the Netherlands, recently made a statement claiming that not only is pedophilia “a sexual orientation that one is born with,” but also claiming that the “stigma” surrounding pedophilia is causing pedophiles to suffer from higher rates of depression and suicidal thoughts. The Dutch Young Democrats group advocates against criminalizing hand-drawn or AI-generated child sexual abuse material because it “does not increase the risk of child abuse” and could potentially “help pedophiles get to know their feelings without harming other people.”

Pornography of any kind is inherently exploitative — the pornography industry thrives off dubious consent and, often, knowing exploitation of trafficking victims and minors. Using AI technology to create images or videos that constitute pornography or child sexual abuse material perpetuates a chain of abuse even if the new content created is different from abuse that physically occurred.

AI-generated pornography or CSAM cannot circumvent the extreme violations against human dignity caused by creating exploitative sexual content. Modern nations require laws that appropriately address modern concerns; while the progression of AI technology can, in some ways, certainly benefit society, its capability to produce exploitative material and allow the rot of pedophilia to continue festering must be addressed.

AUTHOR

Joy Stockbauer

Joy Stockbauer is a correspondent for The Washington Stand.

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EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

87% of Books Removed from Florida Schools Were Pornographic, Violent, Inappropriate, Data Shows

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An overwhelming majority of books removed from Florida schools since the beginning of the academic year in September 2022 were pornographic, violent, or inappropriate for students’ grade levels, according to school district data submitted to the state’s Department of Education.

Twenty-three out of 56 school districts reported that they had removed a total of 175 books, while 33 districts (59%) said that they had not removed any books this academic year, according to data reviewed by The Daily Signal.

The data reveals that 164 of the 175 removed books were taken out of school media centers, rather than classrooms, and 153 of the books that were removed (87%) were taken out because the district discovered that the book was “pornographic, violent or inappropriate for the grade level for some other reason.”

The school districts in Duval County and St. Johns County removed the most books at 19 each, according to the Florida Education Department data. Duval County schools reported that they removed 16 out of the 19 books because they were pornographic, violent, or inappropriate.

The data comes amid a review of educational materials in Florida schools prompted by the state’s curriculum transparency bill and a national outcry over explicit conversations, books, and materials for school children.

Media outlets like The Washington Post have suggested that Florida is criminalizing nebulously defined books in schools, forcing teachers to get rid of all their books to avoid prosecution.

“There has been no state instruction to empty libraries or cover up classroom books,” Republican Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ press secretary, Bryan Griffin, said in a post on Twitter. “However, we ARE taking a stand against pornography and sexual material in the classroom.”‘

Griffin also denounced the idea that teachers in Florida would be committing a third-degree felony by having certain books and literature in classrooms.

“No. Not literature, not ‘certain topics’ — it’s pornographic material that carries the felony penalty,” he said. “NO classroom or school library should have pornographic material made available to children. Unfortunately, this is a real and ongoing problem. If you are confused about the law, you can review Statute 847.012, which has been the law in Florida for years.”

That statute specifically prohibits adults from knowingly distributing pornography, nudity, or sexual content to a minor on school property.

DeSantis signed a curriculum transparency bill in March 2022, which requires school districts to be “transparent in the selection of instructional materials, including library and reading materials.” The legislation aims at preserving the rights of parents to know and decide what their children are being taught.

“In Florida, our parents have every right to be involved in their child’s education,” DeSantis said at the time. “We are not going to let politicians deny parents the right to know what is being taught in our schools. I’m proud to sign this legislation that ensures curriculum transparency.”

This week, DeSantis officials took to Twitter to highlight some of the more horrifying books found in Florida schools. This includes the books “Let’s Talk About it,” “It’s Perfectly Normal,” and “Gender Queer,” which includes “shockingly obscene comics.”

This article was originally published by The Daily Signal.

AUTHOR

Mary Margaret Olohan

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EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

It Started With A Band-Aid: The Intersection of Racism, Adultification, and Exploitation

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*Gabrielle’s story is a composite story, based on common experiences of black survivors which have been expressed to NCOSE and/or documented in research. The header image for this block is a stock image, not a picture of an actual survivor.

It started with a band-aid.

Gabrielle had tripped during recess and scraped up her knee. Crying, Gabrielle limped inside to go find her Kindergarten teacher, Ms. Evans, and show her what had happened.

Ms. Evans was a kind lady. Gabrielle hoped that, when she saw her bleeding knee, she might give her a hug and a lollipop for comfort. She had seen Ms. Evans do this last week for beautiful, blonde-haired Kylie, when that little girl had fallen off the monkey bars.

But Ms. Evans simply gave Gabrielle a pat on the back, told her to “be a big girl,” and reached inside her desk for a band-aid.

Swallowing her disappointment, Gabrielle took the band-aid and struggled to put it on. She’d never put on a band-aid herself before, but she finally managed to get it to stick.

Only, it looked funny . . .

Gabrielle frowned at the band-aid for a moment, trying to figure out what was wrong.

Then she realized.

The band-aid was “skin color.” Not Gabrielle’s skin color. Kylie’s skin color.

It was that band-aid that first made Gabrielle understand that she was “different.” That the color of her skin somehow made her an outsider.

And as Gabrielle frowned at the band-aid, standing out so pale against her dark knee, she couldn’t help but wonder if the color of her skin was also the reason why Ms. Evans hadn’t given her a hug or a lollipop.

Fact: Studies show that adults tend to perceive Black girls as older and less innocent than White girls. This is known as “Adultification” and it often leads to Black girls not receiving the same level of nurturing and compassion as White girls do. It also often leads to Black girls being sexualized at an earlier age, which increases the risk that they will be sexually exploited.

Gabrielle soon realized that Kindergarten teachers weren’t the only ones who treated her differently. There were also the men. Young men, old men – so many of them seemed to leer at Gabrielle like they wanted to do something to her. Gabrielle didn’t know what that something was . . . until one day, her latest foster father made it clear.

Fact: Black children are overrepresented in the foster care system. Although they make up only 14% of children in the United States, Black children make up 23% of the foster care system. Foster children are ten times more likely to be sexually abused and Black children are sexually abused twice as much as their White counterparts in the foster care system. Statistics show that a history of sexual abuse dramatically increases a person’s chance of being exploited in prostitution. 

Gabrielle carried the trauma from what her foster father did to her for years. She carried it into her first relationship, during which she felt intense fear of doing anything physical. When she told her boyfriend that she didn’t want to, he wasn’t pleased.

“I thought girls like you were always into it?” he said.

Gabrielle didn’t ask what he meant by “girls like her.” She didn’t have to. Because next, her boyfriend showed her his favorite “ebony” pornography videos, as examples of what he wanted to do with her.

Gabrielle had nightmares for weeks.

Fact: Contemporary Internet pornography sites feature grotesquely racist themes such as those depicted in the screenshots below. Pornography is perhaps the only remaining mainstream media where racism is not only permitted, it is encouraged.

After years of enduring experiences of this nature, Gabrielle eventually decided: if the men in the world were determined to see her as nothing but a Jezebel whom they could use and abuse as they pleased . . . well then, she might as well get paid for it.

And so, Gabrielle entered prostitution.

What she didn’t know was that, in the prostitution marketplace, racism would be uglier than ever.

Her grim conclusion that she “might as well get paid” for being sexually used turned out to be misplaced – for she found that she could not make as much money in prostitution as the White girls.

Gabrielle almost laughed at the cruel irony of it . . . She had supposed that in the prostitution marketplace, where all the women were degraded to mere objects, she would be on “equal footing” with other women at last. But no. Even here, she was worth less. It was somehow possible for the color of her skin to sink her even below the value of an object.

Watch Dr. Stephany Powell discuss beauty standards in the prostitution marketplace, and how black women/girls are sold for less money:

Gabrielle was barely scraping by, so when she met a pimp who promised to help her make more money, she agreed to his offer.

That was a terrible mistake.

The pimp wasn’t interested in helping Gabrielle – he was only interested in controlling and profiting from her. Not only did he not help her make more money, but he beat her when she didn’t make enough to satisfy him.

When Gabrielle pleaded for mercy, explaining that it was harder for her to make money than his other girls because she was black, he simply laughed.

“I know that,” he said, his lip curling in a derisive sneer. “Why do you think I don’t beat my White girls? They’re too valuable, I can’t mark up their faces. You on the other hand . . .”

Fact: Traffickers disproportionately target Black women and girls. It is reported that 40% of sex trafficking victims in the U.S. are Black, despite Black people making up only 13.6% of the U.S. population.

Then one day, while Gabrielle was soliciting on the streets trying to make enough money to avoid a beating, she was arrested. She would be charged with the crime of prostitution, the policeman told her.

As she sat in the police station, Gabrielle knew she ought to be afraid, but she couldn’t help but feel hope . . . Perhaps if she told the police about being under the control of an abusive pimp, they would recognize her as a victim. Perhaps they would rescue her from her situation and give her services, rather than a sentence.

Unfortunately, that didn’t end up being the case.

Gabrielle told her story – but only skeptical, unimpressed faces stared back at her.

Watch Dr. Stephany Powell explain how implicit bias can influence how black survivors are treated by law enforcement and non-profit agencies, and how NCOSE is seeking to address this with their training programs:

ACTION: Request Information about the ELEET Training Program

The Equipping Law Enforcement to End Trafficking (ELEET) training program was developed with a working group of survivors, prosecutors, and seasoned officers in order to educate law enforcement and/or prosecutors on the importance of developing a victim-centered approach during initial contact with victims of human sex trafficking while minimizing the court appearance of victims and addressing implicit bias. Request to book a training or get more information here.

Stories like Gabrielle’s are not rare. Together, adultification, implicit bias, racism and more are risk factors for experiencing sexual exploitation, and even decrease opportunities to exit. We must act together to learn about these realities ourselves, to hold entities responsible for normalizing these themes, and to better equip those who serve survivors.

AUTHOR

Lily Moric

EDITORS NOTE: This NCOSE column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

VIDEO: What is Human Trafficking?

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HUMAN TRAFFICKING HAS TRULY BECOME A GLOBAL THREAT to vulnerable men, women, and children worldwide. It is an injustice that affects millions of people every year on every continent and at all socioeconomic levels. Human trafficking is a highly-organized and lucrative business, generating 150 billion USD per year, 99 billion of which is generated by sex trafficking within the prostitution industry.

The latest global estimate according to the International Labor Organization (the United Nations agency that deals with global labor issues), calculates that nearly 21 million people are victims of human trafficking worldwide. Roughly 4.5 million of those victims are trafficked for the purpose of sexual exploitation.

The most significant number of victims are said to come from Asia and the Pacific region, although human trafficking in Africa continues to grow when compared to its 2005 estimates. The International Labor Organization also estimates that 55 percent of all trafficking victims and 98 percent of sex trafficking victims are women and girls. That is why sex trafficking is often considered a “gender” crime and why Exodus Cry focuses its intervention largely on women and girls.

Defining human trafficking

The most widely accepted definition of human trafficking comes from the Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, especially Women and Children, otherwise known as the Palermo Protocols. Adopted by the UN General Assembly in 2000 and accepted by over 150 countries, the Palermo Protocols defines human trafficking as:

“The recruitment, transportation, transfer, harbouring or receipt of persons, by means of the threat or use of force or other forms of coercion, of abduction, of fraud, of deception, of the abuse of power or of a position of vulnerability or of the giving or receiving of payments or benefits to achieve the consent of a person having control over another person, for the purpose of exploitation.”

Exploitation is at the heart of human trafficking. In the case of sex trafficking, exploitation implies the forced prostitution or sexual abuses of vulnerable men, women, and children. The United States’ Trafficking Victims Protection Act (TVPA) declares it a crime to coerce, force, or mislead men, women, and children into sex slavery, whether those efforts to coerce are subtle or overt. However, if a victim is a minor (under 18), it is a considered a crime regardless if there is evidence of force, fraud, or coercion.

Victims are trafficked across both national and international borders, infiltrating nearly every part of the world, according to one World Health Organization report. The global scale of the problem is attributed to the various roles nations play in the exploitation of the victims, whether that be recruiting, harboring, transporting, or acting as destinations for victims. One UN report estimates that trafficking victims represent over 130 different nationalities and are present in almost 120 countries. While the problem is clearly of global scale, with some 600,000 to 800,000 victims trafficked across international borders each year, most human trafficking surprisingly still occurs within national borders.

The effects of human trafficking on victims

HUMAN TRAFFICKING HAS A DIRECT EFFECT ON THE PHYSICAL AND MENTAL WELL-BEING OF VICTIMS. During the initial trafficking, victims are coerced and deceived usually through the exploitation of their current circumstances, as most victims have a history of abuse and are already living in precarious circumstances.

Once enslaved, victims typically are forced into unsanitary and stressful living conditions and receive little to no healthcare or basic services. Their movement is often restricted, their personal documentation withheld, and most experience significant physical, emotional, sexual, and psychological violence. Escaping from slavery is extremely difficult and dangerous, putting the victim at great personal risk. If rescued, integration back into society is incredibly difficult because of the shame, stigma, threat of retribution, and trauma experienced during enslavement.

Global efforts to combat human trafficking

There are several international organizations fighting human trafficking at the global level. The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime combats human trafficking worldwide through promoting policies that incriminate traffickers and protect victims. The UN agency also produces tools and publications to help train law enforcers and raise awareness of this injustice worldwide.

Additionally, many governments are taking action to protect potential victims from trafficking predators. The United States’ Trafficking Victims Protection Act (TVPA) was established by the US Department of State and has been highly influential in protecting potential victims worldwide. The TVPA defines, mandates, and funds United States’ anti-trafficking efforts, including producing the annual Trafficking in Persons Report, which is the most comprehensive resource of governmental, anti-human trafficking efforts in the world. The United States’ Officer to Combat and Monitor Trafficking in Persons is also combating human trafficking worldwide through three avenues—prevention, protection, and prosecution—which includes activities to raise awareness, identify victims, enforce appropriate laws, and convict traffickers.

However, perhaps some of the greatest work being done to combat human trafficking is performed by non-governmental organizations (NGOs). These anti-trafficking groups are working hard to prevent human trafficking, protect vulnerable populations, lobby for policy reformation, and even rehabilitate victims both at local and global levels. Exodus Cry is an active part of this global community of abolitionists and involved in these key areas of intervention.

How you can help combat human trafficking

You can join us in our fight to stop human trafficking and end modern-day sex slavery through engaging in any of our three areas of action—shifting culture, changing laws, and reaching out.

Through committing to praying for victims, raising awareness, advocating for policy reform, and donating to organizations like Exodus Cry who are combating this injustice, you are playing a direct part in ending slavery today.

Join the movement. Sign the pledge. Become an Abolitionist.

©The Exodus Cry. All rights reserved.

PODCAST: What It Will Take To End Sexploitation

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In a follow up Dawn Hawkins, as the new CEO of NCOSE, wants to share more about HOW we can achieve a world free from sexual abuse and exploitation.

Hear about my vision:

Before any real problem solving can be done, it’s essential the problem is properly laid out and defined. That’s why NCOSE’s work to expose the interconnected web of sexual exploitation issues is so critical to achieving our vision—we cannot solve one problem while ignoring the influences and tangled nature of another.

Our nearly 60-year history has given us a unique, panoramic perspective which enables us to see that we cannot succeed in preserving human dignity if we approach the work from a narrow lens, such as a singular religious, political, or social perspective. It’s this wisdom that has allowed NCOSE to adapt and change over the past decade to unite and grow a movement and address current issues while utilizing myriad advocacy tools, cutting-edge tactics, and the latest research.

NCOSE has built a diverse team of top experts, broad coalition partners, and a deep grassroots network and it now leads the movement to end sexual abuse and exploitation through research, litigation, and corporate and legislative advocacy

This is what it will take to build a world free from sexual abuse and exploitation: 

  1. Destabilize the pornography industry and make pornography intolerable in society. Pornography does not have room to exist in a world that truly believes in human love, connection, and equality.
  2. Stop sex buying to end sex trafficking and all exploitation. The world should not allow and even celebrate the commodification of any human being, especially the most vulnerable, who are preyed upon by the commercial sex industry.
  3. Protect children online. The Internet should be a safe space for all, including the children who are now growing up with access to people and unlimited information.

Read About Our Tactics Here

With your help, the National Center on Sexual Exploitation has made significant progress on these three objectives and more in just the last few years. Best of all, there are more victories and accomplishments to come!

The light of human dignity will always burn brighter than the shadow of exploitation. By eschewing the boundaries of politics, religion, and other divisive backgrounds, NCOSE is in a unique position to ignite that light and continue to bring organizations and individuals from all walks of life out of the shadows of a world that allows and normalizes sexual exploitation to thrive.

All our work is dedicated to realizing the vision of a world free from sexual abuse and exploitation—a world I know is possible.

EDITORS NOTE: This NCOSE column with podcast is republished with permission. ©All right reserved.