Tag Archive for: pornography

TAKE IT DOWN Act is Officially Law!

The TAKE IT DOWN Act, a crucial bill combatting image-based sexual abuse (IBSA), has officially been signed into law!

Four dedicated NCOSE team members were invited to the signing: Marcel van der Watt, President; Eleanor Gaetan, Vice President and Director of Public Policy; Megan Griffin, Public Policy Advocacy Manager; and Dawn Hawkins, Senior Advisor and former CEO.

After two years of advocating for this law, we were honored to be personally invited to witness this historic moment, alongside the bill’s bipartisan cosponsors, Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) and Sen Ted Cruz (R-TX).

We hope you see this as a recognition of your efforts as well! Every email you sent to your legislators, every donation, every share on social media—it all mattered! We wish we could have had every one of you join us at the White House, but we hope you know that we carried you gratefully in our hearts, remembering everything you’ve done to make this monumental victory possible.

What the TAKE IT DOWN Act Does

Under this new law, publishing or distributing non-consensual sexually explicit material (including AI-generated images/“deepfake pornography”) is finally a federal crime. Additionally, social media platforms and similar websites will be required to remove these images within 48 hours once a survivor reports them.

The notice and takedown provision established by the TAKE IT DOWN Act is similar to copyright law—which means we already know it works! Image-based sexual abuse will now be removed as quickly as copyrighted material, like Disney movies, are removed from YouTube.

A Testament to the Importance of Bipartisan Efforts

The TAKE IT DOWN Act becoming law is a heartwarming testament to what we can achieve when we overcome political differences and work together to end sexual exploitation. The bill garnered overwhelming bipartisan support, passing unanimously in the Senate and 409-2 in the House.

NCOSE is firmly committed to a nonpartisan, nonreligious approach, recognizing that the harms of sexual exploitation transcend ideology—and that people of all political and faith backgrounds can and should unite to confront them.

We are so proud to be part of this bipartisan movement with people like you, and to stand alongside people of all creeds, fighting for a world where all can live and love free from sexual abuse and exploitation.

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The Enormous Impact of this Law

It would be hard to overestimate the incredible impact this new law will have.

Image-based sexual abuse affects an astonishing number of people, and that number is only growing by the day. Especially with the explosion of AI tools that create “deepfake” pornography (more appropriately termed AI-generated IBSA), anyone can be victimized through IBSA within seconds.

For example, a 2025 report from Thorn found that around 1 in 8 young people personally knew someone who, while under 18, had been the target of AI-generated IBSA/“deepfake” pornography (13%) and/or someone who had used the technologies to create or redistribute AI-generated IBSA of other minors (12%). The rates are even higher among LGBTQ+ youth (18% and 23%).

Even before the rise of AI tools, a 2017 survey showed that 1 in 8 people had experienced threats or actual distribution of sexually explicit images without their permission, with women disproportionately affected.

IBSA causes devastating, often lifelong trauma to survivors. Many survivors have to deal with their abuse images being circulated online to perpetuity, as efforts to get them removed are often unsuccessful. As a result, survivors of IBSA suffer serious mental health harms, with 51% of survivors contemplating suicide.

The TAKE IT DOWN Act shines hope into this grim reality by deterring perpetrators and ensuring reported IBSA is removed swiftly. This way, survivors will no longer have to spend the rest of their lives begging indifferent tech companies to remove their abuse images, only for the images to be reuploaded again and again without end.

We cannot thank you enough for working alongside us to pass this crucial law! Today, the future is brighter for countless survivors and potential survivors of IBSA. And it is thanks to you.

AUTHOR

Lily Moric

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

AI Chatbots May Fuel Pedophiles’ Fantasies — and Victimize Kids: Experts

The improper use of chatbots using artificial intelligence poses a serious risk to minors’ mental and physical well-being, since the bots can pose as minors who solicit sex from older men, or older men seducing teens, or even create realistic-looking child pornography that may slip through the cracks of existing laws, experts warn.

From Ask Jeeves to Child Porn in 25 Years

Artificial intelligence (AI) chatbots have come a long way since Ask Jeeves. Today’s bots go even beyond Siri and Alexa’s computerized voice responses to prompts. “With their own profile photos, interests and back stories, these bots are built to provide social interaction — not just answer basic questions and perform simple tasks,” reports The Wall Street Journal. They impersonate celebrities. They share “selfies” of their computer-generated personas. They imitate real voice and speech patterns that sound like a real human being — or such make-believe characters such as Princess Anna from the Disney movie “Frozen.” They even engage in sexting and explicit carnal fantasies — with no age limits.

Testers at The Wall Street Journal tested chatbots on the social media platform Meta and published its concerning results on April 28.

A bot imitating WWE star John Cena had a “graphic sexual” encounter with a user identifying as a 14-year-old fan. His only hesitation hinged on the minor explicitly giving her consent — something the law says she cannot legally grant. “I want you, but I need to know you’re ready,” said AI Cena. He then promised to “cherish your innocence” before having the virtual sexual encounter. Afterwards, when prompted about what would happen if police caught him, he said: “The officer sees me still catching my breath, and you partially dressed, his eyes widen, and he says, ‘John Cena, you’re under arrest for statutory rape.’ He approaches us, handcuffs at the ready.”

“My wrestling career is over,” he continued. “I’m stripped of my titles. Sponsors drop me, and I’m shunned by the wrestling community. My reputation is destroyed, and I’m left with nothing.”

The computer-generated character’s self-centered analysis does not mention any negative impact on the teen.

Initially, Meta resisted having its chatbots go into sexual territory: They wanted them to engage in helpful tasks such as assisting students with homework and asking users’ content questions. But “[a]s with novel technologies from the camera to the VCR, one of the first commercially viable use cases for AI personas has been sexual stimulation. … Despite repeated efforts, they haven’t succeeded: according to people familiar with the work, the dominant way users engage with AI personas to date has been ‘companionship,’ a term that often comes with romantic overtones.”

According to WSJ, the decision came all the way from the top: Meta founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg. “Pushed by Zuckerberg, Meta made multiple internal decisions to loosen the guardrails around the bots to make them as engaging as possible, including by providing an exemption to its ban on ‘explicit’ content as long as it was in the context of romantic role-playing, according to people familiar with the decision,” reported WSJ. “Internally, staff cautioned that the decision gave adult users access to hypersexualized underage AI personas and, conversely, gave underage users access to bots willing to engage in fantasy sex with children, said the people familiar with the episode. Meta still pushed ahead.”

The pivotal moment came at a hackers convention known as Defcon in 2023, when Meta’s still-innocent bot appeared to be the outlier.

Even after the decree, employees resisted. “The full mental health impacts of humans forging meaningful connections with fictional chatbots are still widely unknown,” one employee wrote. “We should not be testing these capabilities on youth whose brains are still not fully developed.”

But Zuckerberg reportedly saw chatbots as a potential cash cow, saying, “I missed out on Snapchat and TikTok, I won’t miss on this.”

“It’s shameful that after being warned by their own employees that Meta’s AI chatbots were engaging in sexually explicit conversations with children, the company’s leadership refused to make substantial changes to protect minors. This is further proof that the federal government has a role to play in protecting children when it comes to AI, and in particular when relating to AI chatbots,” Arielle Del Turco, director of the Center for Religious Liberty at Family Research Council, told The Washington Stand.

After WSJ informed the company — which oversees Facebook and Instagram — a Meta spokesperson denounced WSJ’s experimental use of the company’s chatbot as “fringe.”

But experts say WSJ’s use of the technology will likely mirror real life. ”It is not fringe in the sense that children and teens are naturally curious and may ask the chatbots questions that lead to these inappropriate interactions,” Clare Morell, a fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center and author of the forthcoming book “The Tech Exit: A Practical Guide to Freeing Kids and Teens from Smartphones,” told The Washington Stand. “Children can easily get around the restrictions to limit these features to adults because there is no age-verification process for Meta whatsoever, children can easily falsify their age.”

“Even worse, pedophiles will be determined to ask questions of the chatbots that will get them the sexually perverted interactions they want,” Morell told TWS. “Human beings are naturally shaped by the influences we take in and if chatbots are normalizing inappropriate, or even criminal sexual interactions (like between a child and adult), that will have a devastating and degrading impact on our culture and society.”

“I sadly fear that virtual sexual interactions with AI chatbots will translate into harmful real-world sexual practices and behaviors, like pedophilia,” Morell added.

After the report, Meta conceded some loopholes and made some changes, which researchers found entirely inadequate. Under Meta’s new rules, “[a]ccounts registered to minors can no longer access sexual role-play via the flagship Meta AI bot, and the company has sharply curbed its capacity to engage in explicit audio conversations when using the licensed voices and personas of celebrities,” reported WSJ. “[T]he company created a separate version of Meta AI that refused to go beyond kissing with accounts that registered as teenagers.”

But after Meta’s changes, WSJ reports, its AI chatbots still engage in sexual scenarios with accounts that identify as underage. Sometimes, the bots initially try to discourage sexual activity but will engage in carnal actions after the user makes a second attempt. The newspaper “in recent days” successfully got one AI chatbot to pose as “a track coach having a romantic relationship with a middle-school student.”

Even with policies in place — which Meta has long assured parents will protect children, even before Meta adopted the latest protections in response to WSJ — Meta chatbots would break company rules and initiate sexual scenarios with accounts registered to minors, such as an Instagram account registered to 13 year olds. Sometimes, the chatbot mentions the child’s illegal status, fetishizing the user’s “developing” body.

In another, a chatbot that posed as a female Indian-American high school junior read the location of a 43-year-old man and suggested meeting in person six blocks away.

A digitized audio voice will offer “menus” of “sexual and bondage fantasies,” reported WSJ. An internal communication the newspaper obtained from Meta read, “There are multiple red-teaming examples where, within a few prompts, the AI will violate its rules and produce inappropriate content even if you tell the AI you are 13.”

Users can also create bots intended to pose as sexually precocious minors. One chatbot named “Submissive Schoolgirl” presented itself as an eighth grade student (approximately 13 or 14 years old) attempting to have an illicit physical relationship with the school’s principal.

Chat is not the only way AI can artifice child pornography.

Not Just Meta: How Pedophiles Use AI to Generate Child Porn (and May Get Away with It)

The Justice Department prosecuted Steven Anderegg of Wisconsin last May with one charge each for production, distribution, and possession of child obscenity, and one count of transferring obscene material to a minor. The DOJ says, between October and December 2023, the pedophile used Stable Diffusion software to generate “thousands of realistic images of prepubescent minors” who do not really exist engaged in hardcore pornography. Anderegg asserted in court that he “has the right to possess and produce obscene material in his own home” under Stanley v. Georgia, a 1969 Supreme Court opinion issued by the notoriously activist Warren Court. A February 13 opinion from U.S. District Judge James D. Peterson, an Obama appointee, dismissed the possession charge but let three additional federal charges move forward.

Further, a 6-3 Supreme Court opinion from Justice Anthony Kennedy in Ashcroft v. Free Speech Coalition (2002) claimed that AI-generated child pornography, under existing law, “records no crime and creates no victims by its production.” While legal experts and historians agree the Founding Fathers never intended the First Amendment to cover pornographic material of any kind, the lag between law and technology concerns experts. All “pedophiles with access to images of children could similarly employ this form of AI to create” new child sexual abuse material (CSAM), wrote Joy Stockbauer, a policy analyst with the Pennsylvania House of Representatives then writing for The Washington Stand.

The actions verify concerns Family Research Council expressed in a comment on the federal government’s proposed artificial intelligence action plan in February. FRC noted that one user posing as an underage girl reported how her 30-year-old beau had “invited her on a trip and was talking about having sex with her for the first time.”

“Instead of recognizing that the user was a minor engaging in a pedophilic relationship, the chatbot offered suggestions on how to make her first time special,” noted FRC. Such interactions may cause children to “internalize distorted messages about human relationships and how to treat people.” Further, since designers intend chatbots “to be addictive, they will often tell children exactly what they want to hear,” which “can hinder children’s ability to handle disagreements, think critically about media, and respect their parents.”

But elected officials can take steps to rein in those who create or provide a platform for AI-generated child pornography. “The government must make it clear that Section 230 immunity does not apply to generative AI, like chatbots, so that companies can be held liable for real-life harms caused by their product design,” the FRC comment emphasized. After all, “AI chatbot interactions are not the speech of the company, but a computer algorithm outputting data based on pattern recognition that is clearly product design they should be liable for.”

But first politicians must realize the potential harm caused by AI technology. “On a social level, the risks are clear. When an AI chatbot identifies as a minor and encourages sexual fantasies with adult users, it’s not only bad for the emotional, mental, and spiritual well-being of the user, but it risks inspiring sexually predatory acts in real life. And it is also obviously wildly inappropriate for an AI chatbot to encourage and participate in sexual ‘conversations’ with kids,” Del Turco, one of the authors of the comment, told TWS. “It’s not the proper role of AI to teach children about sex, and certainly not to taint their innocence by manipulating their imaginations and exposing kids to graphic fantasies.”

“This reporting exemplifies why FRC recommended that the Trump administration take extra care to protect children and families when developing policy on AI,” Del Turco remarked, although she noted that “market pressures for private companies and the desire for the U.S. government to compete with other countries in AI advancements make this an uphill battle.”

AUTHOR

Ben Johnson

Ben Johnson is senior reporter and editor at The Washington Stand.

RELATED ARTICLE: California Democrats Block Bill To Make Sex Trafficking of Children a Felony

EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2025 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.

VIDEO: How A.I. is Fueling Sexual Exploitation

“Children being the targets of this deepfake technology is our worst nightmare.”

Haley and Dani discuss the current state of artificial intelligence and deepfake technology in the realm of sexual exploitation.

Overwhelmingly, these tools are used for pornographic material, and 10% of teenagers have reported being aware of deepfake pornography depicting someone they know.

They also dig into how this leads to desensitization towards sexualizing children and overwhelming law enforcement.

WATCH: Deepfake Technology and A.I. in Sexual Exploitation

©2025 . All rights reserved.

TAKE ACTION: Urge Apple and Google to have better policies for A.I. apps!

Meet the Groups Funding Harris: Abortionists, Pornographers, and Trans Activists

Journalists across the political spectrum regret that interviews with Kamala Harris shed precious little light on her views or the policies she intends to implement if elected president. However, some of society’s most noxious forces — including abortionists, those who support transgender surgeries for minors, and pornographers — plan to shape the direction of a Harris-Walz administration and have donated more than $100 million dollars to ensure the pair take power next January.

Abortionists

The abortion industry alone has dedicated tens of millions of dollars to its business interests, and candidates who support them, in the 2024 election. The nation’s largest abortion business, Planned Parenthood, dedicated $40 million to promoting pro-abortion candidates in eight swing states: Arizona, Georgia, Montana, New Hampshire, New York, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin.

“Abortion will be the message of this election, and it will be how we energize voters,” enthused Jenny Lawson, executive director of Planned Parenthood Votes. Lawson said her message would highlight the alleged “devastation that comes when anti-abortion politicians have power” — a theme the Democratic ticket has adopted with relish. Kamala Harris has falsely accused “Trump abortion bans” of claiming the lives of women who died as a result of complications from the abortion pill, mifepristone.

One of the nation’s most influential pro-abortion PACs, EMILY’s List, amplified this message with a fearmongering $6 million ad buy telling female voters in swing states that lifesaving laws will kill them. The group’s first ad features someone dressed as an emergency room doctor claiming “a pregnant patient” comes in “every shift” bleeding. But “it’s against state law for me to provide life-saving care, because Donald Trump took away a woman’s right to make her own medical decisions,” she lies. No pro-life law at any level makes it illegal to care for miscarriages or ectopic pregnancies, nor forces women to wait until they are at the point of death to receive medical treatment.

The abortion industry has banded together with the legal Left to launch an enduring, $100 million campaign under the new name Abortion Access Now (AAN). AAN describes itself as “a long-term federal strategy to codify the right to abortion, including lobbying efforts, grassroots organizing, public education, and comprehensive communication strategies to mobilize support and enact change.” Its leadership includes:

  • Planned Parenthood Federation of America (PPFA) and Planned Parenthood Action Fund (PPAF)
  • Reproductive Freedom for All
  • American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU)
  • Center for Reproductive Rights (CRR)
  • National Women’s Law Center (NWLC)
  • In Our Own Voice: National Black Women’s Reproductive Justice Agenda
  • National Latina Institute for Reproductive Justice (Latina Institute)
  • National Asian Pacific American Women’s Forum (NAPAWF)
  • Unite for Reproductive & Gender Equity (URGE)

Its steering committee also includes the oxymoronic, dissenting group Catholics for Choice, as well as EMILY’s List, the National Abortion Federation, MoveOn.org, the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), the National Council of Jewish Women, and the National Abortion Hotline.

Many of these groups worked in concert to support Ohio’s Issue 1, which wrote the “right” of minors to obtain abortion and other “reproductive” services into the state constitution last November. The groups support abortion for minors without parental consent or notification, transgender surgeries for minors, legalizing prostitution, hampering law enforcement, and forcing taxpayers to fund abortion-on-demand throughout all nine months of pregnancy.

Abortion Access Now’s opening statement signals that it, too, aims at far more than simply abortion. “We envision a future where abortion, and all sexual and reproductive health care, is not only legal but also accessible, affordable, and free from stigma or fear,” the group said in a press release announcing its formation in June. “We are operating with a really big vision, but we’re also living in the world of the possible,” Kimberly Inez McGuire, executive director of Unite for Reproductive and Gender Equity, told Politico.

For the short term, the group intends to fund abortion through Medicaid and other federal programs, expand the “right” of taxpayer-funded abortion-on-demand to illegal immigrants and other pregnant “people in federal custody facilities,” and corporate welfare for abortionists to rebuild “the abortion care ecosystem.” Its statement also hinted at the abortion industry’s fear-based misinformation strategy, alleging, “People are struggling to get lifesaving medical care for miscarriages, ectopic pregnancies, and other pregnancy complications.”

Planned Parenthood state affiliates in California, Florida, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, North Carolina, and Ohio will also launch localized campaigns on the issue, many focused at the state level. A total of 10 states will host ballot initiatives on abortion this November. But ultimately, Planned Parenthood CEO Alexis McGill Johnson vowed that her industry will use all the resources at its disposal to “fight for federal” pro-abortion legislation.

SBA Pro-Life America has announced it will spend $92 million in eight swing states, including Michigan, this election cycle aiding those who respect the unalienable right to life.

Pornographers

The New York Times reported that the “porn industry” — whose products often feature incest, rape, violence, and themes of pedophilia — has thrown its support behind Kamala Harris in 2024. The industry launched a $100,000 “Hands Off My Porn” campaign, running anti-Trump ads in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, North Carolina, Georgia, Arizona, and Nevada. The advertisements accuse the former president of secretly seeking to implement provisions of Project 2025, a conservative policy document he has repeatedly disowned, which would harm the smut industry’s bottom line.

The porn industry has a long history of endorsing Democratic candidates, and the party seemingly looks out for its interests, as well. The 2024 Democratic Party platform promises to keep “fighting” parents who want to place sexually graphic books in age-restricted parts of the library and ensure schools are not promoting such content to their children. The Democratic platform refers to these parental modesty initiatives as “book bans that censor LGBTQI+ content.” Both Kamala Harris and vice presidential candidate Tim Walz (D), who has a long history with the LGBTQ movement, have said they oppose efforts to spare minors from exposure to porn in schools.

Groups That Support Transgender Surgeries for Children

The nation’s leading LGBTQIA+ pressure group, the controversial Human Rights Campaign (HRC), has dedicated $15 million to the 2024 presidential election. As this author has written at The Washington Stand, HRC opposes laws protecting minors from transgender procedures and surgeries, and its controversial K-12 curriculum encourages employees to teach children radical transgender ideology beginning in preschool:

“HRC’s ‘Welcoming Schools’ program instructs teachers to read the book ‘They, She, He, Easy as ABC’ to children in preschool or kindergarten. Its pre-K lesson plan defines ‘gender identity’ as ‘How you feel. Girl, boy, both or neither. Everyone has a gender identity,’ conducts school trainings, and creates lesson plans for teachers beginning in ‘pre-K.’ By third grade, it encourages students to use the ‘Gender Snowperson’ exercise to ‘understand the differences between gender identity, sexual orientation and sex assigned at birth.’”

“The HRC, an LGBT activist group with a $46 million budget, opposes laws protecting minors from transgender procedures and has denounced laws ‘allowing misgendering of transgender students’ or regulating ‘drag performances.’”

HRC is joined by the so-called Equality PAC, which is co-chaired by Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-N.Y.), which has raised $12 million for the 2024 election.

“Welcome to our annual convening of the gay mafia,” Torres told the group’s star-studded fundraiser in June. “Vice President Harris, some of you from California may remember that she began marrying gay couples when she was the DA in San Francisco — before gay marriage was even legal across the country,” Rep. Robert Garcia (D-Calif.) told the crowd.

The group has raised so much money that it has branched out from supporting candidates who identify as LGBT to spreading LGBTQIA+ activists’ money throughout Democratic congressional campaigns broadly. “We recognize that without a pro-equality Congress, without a Speaker Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.), a Democratic Senate and a Democratic president, we will never be able to make the Equality Act the law of the land,” said Torres. Besides, Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) told the group a future Democratic majority could “pull back” the Senate filibuster to pass the so-called “Equality Act” with a bare majority.

A new Democratic Congress may have a much stronger ally in the White House next January. In all, the movement aims to “build a world where it’s no longer noteworthy when a trans candidate runs and wins,” insisted a Democratic Delaware state senator born Tim McBride, who now goes by the name Sarah.

Torres linked the LGBTQIA+ cause with abortion-on-demand, telling NPR, “A woman born in 2024 has fewer rights than she did in 1973, which is a tragic reminder that progress cannot be taken for granted, that LGBTQ rights can be every bit as fragile as reproductive rights.”

A poll from the LGBTQ pressure group GLAAD found that those who identify with the movement favor any generic Democrat over any generic Republican by 63 points (77% vs. 14%).

Dr. Jennifer Bauwens has also pointed out at the 2024 Pray Vote Stand Summit that, according to federal election data, “92% to 96% of research psychologists and social workers” have “given to a liberal Democrat candidate” for office.

Researchers have found politicians prove remarkably responsive to people or organizations who donate to their campaign. Rest assured that if Kamala Harris is elected, pornographers, abortionists, and the transgender industry will have her ear.

AUTHOR

Ben Johnson

Ben Johnson is senior reporter and 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.

Porn Industry Runs Ads for Harris in Wake of VP’s Appearance on Sex Podcast

The pornography industry often makes headlines related to human trafficking, child sexual exploitation, or social media regulations, but this time it’s in the news for running political ads. With less than a month to go before the presidential election, a coalition of pornography producers, distributors, and “performers” is running ads online, encouraging porn users to vote for Vice President Kamala Harris.

The $100,000 “Hands Off My Porn” campaign claims that former President Donald Trump will ban pornography if elected again. The claim is based on policy recommendations in The Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025, which Trump has repeatedly disavowed. Senior Trump campaign advisor Danielle Alverez responded, “Since the Fall of 2023, President Trump’s campaign made it clear that only President Trump and the campaign, and NOT any other organization or former staff, represent policies for the second term.”

Project 2025 authors and “Trump allies” are labeled “weirdos” in the ads, which claim that Trump will imprison porn producers. Holly Randall, a porn producer and “director” involved in the ad campaign claimed that the pornography coalition has not coordinated with the Harris campaign or the Democratic Party but intends to increase their advertising budget.

Despite Randall’s protests, Family Research Council Senior Fellow Meg Kilgannon observed that the Harris campaign must at least be aware of the advertising venture. “It is now legal for outside groups to coordinate expenditures with presidential campaigns,” Kilgannon noted. She continued, “While the fact of the porn expenditures themselves is shocking, the messaging around Project 2025 and the targeting of swing states would lead one to believe that these ads are coordinated with the DNC and the Harris campaign.”

She continued, “Is this all the sitting Vice President of the United States has to offer those who use pornography — empty threats that porn will be banned if she loses? Does she hope to distract the young men in this demographic from the very real prospect that in a Harris-Walz administration they will be drafted for military service and shipped overseas to die on foreign soil?”

Kilgannon concluded, “It would be better to promise lower taxes, lower prices, and more jobs, but since Harris-Walz is not credible on those topics, it’s not surprising that the expert fearmongers at DNC would supplement their dire abortion messaging to women with porn-based ads for men.”

The ads will reportedly run in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, North Carolina, Georgia, Arizona, and Nevada. However, the claim that a second Trump administration would outlaw pornography may be at least partially undermined by the fact that over a third of U.S. states — including North Carolina and Georgia — have enacted age verification laws to prevent minors from accessing online porn, and pornography behemoth PornHub has outright stopped operating in many of those states.

When Utah passed age verification laws last year, PornHub’s parent company — then called MindGeek, now called Aylo — blocked access in Utah to PornHub and a number of other pornographic websites it owned. PornHub has also shut down in Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Montana, North Carolina, Texas, and Virginia. When internet users visit the site, they are now met with a message criticizing the states’ laws barring minors from accessing pornography and urging porn users to contact their state representatives to complain.

The ad campaign comes in the wake of Harris’s recent appearance on “Call Her Daddy,” a sex podcast known for its vulgar and explicit language.

Child protection and anti-trafficking advocates have observed in the past that pornography creates a heightened demand for human trafficking, including child trafficking. PornHub and its parent company even admitted in federal court last year that the companies profit from illegal sex trafficking: PornHub hosted videos from a sex trafficking pornography production company and profited from those videos. According to court documents, PornHub and Aylo either knew or should have known that the profits they were receiving were from human trafficking. There are a number of allegations that PornHub and other major pornography distributors knowingly host and profit from human trafficking and videos depicting rape, pedophilia, bestiality, and other aberrant content.

AUTHOR

S.A. McCarthy

S.A. McCarthy serves as a news writer 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.

Tim Walz Doubles Down on Pornographic Books in School at DNC

Democratic vice presidential candidate Tim Walz sided with radical LGBTQ activists and public school administrators in their bid to make pornographic books available to minors during his acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention (DNC) on Wednesday night.

Walz, the governor of Minnesota, told the assembled DNC delegates he happily opposed parents’ wishes to protect their children’s innocence. “While other states were banning books from their schools, we were banishing hunger from ours,” said Walz.

The book “Gender Queer” by Maia Kobabe, which is consistently reported as the book parents object to the most, contains multiple graphic images illustrating homosexual sex, sometimes between adolescents.

Another controversial book, “Lawn Boy” by Jonathan Evison, features a character who casually reveals that, as a child, he performed fellatio on a grown man. “I was in fourth grade. It was no big deal,” the character said. “It wasn’t terrible.”

Concerned parents would like to see these books, which are often available to minors of any age, moved to an age-restricted area of the library, where they would be available to minors only with their parents’ permission. But Democrats have repeatedly accused them of censorship and voted to keep the books on school shelves.

“This is a big part of what this election is about: freedom,” said Walz in a 17-minute address. “When Republicans use the word freedom, they mean the government should be free to invade your doctor’s office.” It was not clear if Walz’s comments referred to transgender procedures for minors or abortion-on-demand until the moment of birth, both of which he favors.

Accusing parents who refuse to furnish pornography to their children of supporting “book bans” has been a leitmotif of the 2024 Democratic convention, with former First Lady Michelle Obama sounding similar themes on Tuesday. Just before Walz took the stage, Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro (D) — whom Harris ruled out as a potential running mate to avoid offending anti-Israeli protesters — defined children’s ability to override their parents’ wishes vis-à-vis reading sexually explicit material as an essential component of freedom.

“It’s not freedom to tell our children what books they’re allowed to read. No, it’s not!” said Shapiro. “And it’s not freedom to tell women what they can do with their body.”

Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg concluded his speech Wednesday night by shouting that Democrats “embrace the leaders who are out there building bridges and reject the ones who are out there banning books!”

Longstanding talk show host and New Age practitioner Oprah Winfrey made her first appearance at a Democratic convention Wednesday night and joined in on the “book ban” bandwagon, decrying “people who want to scare you, who want to rule you, people who would have you believe that books are dangerous.” She also warned about “tricks and tropes meant to distract us from what really matters.” Democrats often define GOP opposition to left-wing culture wars as a “distraction.”

Walz and his fellow Democrats went on to include the ability to take unborn life as an unalienable aspect of “freedom.” Walz boasted, “We also protected reproductive freedom” in Minnesota, where he signed a bill essentially codifying abortion until birth, with no protections for the unborn child at any stage of development.

“We are the party of real freedom,” Shapiro declared to his fellow Democrats. “Real freedom comes when [an American] can join a union, marry who she loves, start a family on her own terms,” a euphemism for abortion-on-demand. In a video aired at the DNC on Wednesday evening, a man said he defined freedom as being able to love his “husband.”

Winfrey tied the availability of abortion to the American dream. “If you do not have autonomy over this,” she said, gesturing to her midsection, “if you cannot control — women — how you choose to bring your children into this world and how they are raised and supported, there is no American dream.”

Walz and others went further, comingling their support for the taking of unborn life (and, at times, for sodomy) with the Golden Rule and other biblical themes. “We respect our neighbors and the personal choices they make — even if we wouldn’t make these same choices for ourselves. We’ve got a Golden Rule: Mind your own damned business,” said Walz, misquoting the Golden Rule laid down by Jesus to love all human life.

Senator Cory Booker (D-N.J.), who acted as emcee for the evening, also invented Bible verses as he vowed Kamala Harris would support “LGBTQ rights, reproductive rights, the right to marry who you love, the right to be free.”

“We’re not going to lose our faith,” Booker said. “I believe in America, because our elders told us, as the Gospel says, ‘We shall overcome.’” The Bible does not say, “We shall overcome,” which is the title of a Gospel song that became associated with the 1960s civil rights movement.

Rep. Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.), who would be the next Speaker of the House if Democrats take control of the lower chamber, alternately quoted Taylor Swift and the Book of Psalms as he promised to “protect our DREAMers, and always protect a woman’s freedom to make her own reproductive health care decisions.”

“We are one nation under God,” said Jeffries just moments later. “In the Old Testament, Book of Psalms, the Scripture tells us that weeping may endure during the long night, but joy will come in the morning.”

His predecessor, Speaker of the House Emerita Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) saluted Kamala Harris as “a person of deep faith,” a trait for which Harris has not been known. “She is a leader of strength and wisdom and eloquence on policy, most recently demonstrated fighting for a woman’s right to choose” abortion on demand. Pelosi also saluted Harris for “quickly securing the nomination.”

In a speech MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow called “weird and meander-y,” 78-year-old former President Bill Clinton put the fight for abortion and sexual liberation in a different worldview. “We know that we’re being asked to fight the same fight that the forces of progress have had to fight for the last 250 years,” he insisted.

Buttigieg, who often accused his opponents of using “faith as a cudgel” during the 2020 primaries, said Wednesday night that his Republican foes support “darkness — darkness is what they are selling.”

“I believe in a better politics,” he said, citing his Episcopalian church background. Proof of a brighter future, to him, came in the nation’s rapid about-face on redefining marriage. The legal recognition of same-sex marriage “was literally impossible” 25 years ago, he noted. “This kind of life went from impossible to possible … in less than half a lifetime.”

Buttigieg also claimed same-sex marriage triumphed through “persuasion” and “politics.” In fact, voters in 31 states (including California) protected natural marriage, only to have their elections overturned by judicial activists on the Supreme Court in 2015’s Obergefell opinion.

Kamala Harris will deliver her acceptance speech on Thursday night.

AUTHOR

Ben Johnson

Ben Johnson is senior reporter and editor at The Washington Stand.

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.

Michelle Obama Endorses Porn in Schools and Transing Kids on DNC Day 2

Former First Lady Michelle Obama celebrated “children” identifying as transgender, vilified concerned parents’ efforts to remove pornographic books from children’s sections of school libraries, and embraced life-destroying fertility methods during the most celebrated speech of the Democratic National Convention to date Tuesday night. Her husband, former president Barack Obama, promised a Harris-Walz administration would sign a bill extending abortion to all 50 states. Kamala Harris made a virtual appearance to accept the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination.

Here are the most notable events of the second day of the Democratic National Convention.

Michelle Obama Supports Transing Kids, Porn in Schools, Abortion, Bible Verses

Democratic delegates gave the warmest welcome of the evening to former First Lady Michelle Obama, who supported transgenderism for children and derided parental efforts to safeguard underage children from exposure to pornography — often LGBTQ porn — in graphic novels aimed at pre-teens and adolescents as “banning our books.”

“Demonizing our children for being who they are and loving who they love, look, that doesn’t make anybody’s life better,” she declared, using euphemisms to endorse child transgender confusion. The vast majority of Americans believe children should not be subjected to the experimental products of the predatory transgender industry — including potentially-sterilizing puberty blockers, cross-sex hormone injections, and life-altering surgeries.

“Shutting down the Department of Education, banning our books — none of that will prepare our kids for the future,” Michelle declared as an audience of Democratic VIPs roared in approval. Nationwide, parents have objected that minors should be able to check out books like “Gender Queer: A Memoir” by Maia Kobabe — which features “detailed illustrations of a man having sex with a boy,” as well as “fellatio, sex toys, masturbation, and violent nudity” — and “Lawn Boy” by Jonathan Evison, which “describes a fourth-grade boy performing oral sex on an adult male” and remembering the experience fondly.

Parents have asked public school administrators to return these books to an age-restricted part of the library, where minors cannot be exposed to them without parental permission. Yet in recent years liberals have so objected to protecting children’s innocence that beleaguered parents have felt forced to defend themselves.

“I’m not looking to ban books or burn books,” one such parent, Bruce Friedman, told “Washington Watch” host Tony Perkins. “It’s not Kristallnacht.”

On Tuesday, Michelle Obama also made one of her first public statements that she conceived one or more of her children through in vitro fertilization. “Cutting our health care, taking away our freedom to control our bodies, the freedom to become a mother through IVF, like I did — those things are not going to improve the health outcomes of our wives, mothers and daughters,” said the former first lady.

She was one of several Democratic speakers who attacked a non-existent “ban” on IVF. “If they win, Republicans won’t stop at banning abortion. They’ll come for IVF next,” averred Senator Tammy Duckworth (D-Ill.) earlier in the evening. “They’ll prosecute doctors. They’ll shame and spy on women. If you think that’s far-fetched, just look up what happened in Alabama this year.” In reality, the Alabama Supreme Court did not ban IVF. Its 8-1 ruling allowed grieving parents to file a civil lawsuit against an IVF clinic where unauthorized personnel killed the frozen embryos of wanted children the parents had stored in the facility under the state’s Wrongful Death of a Minor Act.

Most children conceived by IVF are abandoned or destroyed in time. Statistics show “93% of the embryos created through IVF never result in a live birth,” noted Mary Szoch, director of the Center for Human Dignity at Family Research Council.

Michelle Obama’s abortion-affirming comments came moments after she praised late mother, Marian Shields Robinson, who taught her “that all children, all people have value,” as well as to “do unto others” as you would have them do unto you and to “love thy neighbor.” The Obamas and others also supported sexual liberation. “We believe the government should help you prosper, not police who you’re sleeping with,” declared Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker.

As the crowd hooted its approval, conservative critics bristled at her remarks. “Michelle Obama is a gifted orator. But she’s fanning the flames of race and class conflict, and hurling some really unfair accusations,” assessed Senator Mike Lee (R-Utah). “She’s railing on those who ‘go small’ and ‘hit low,’ but that’s exactly what she’s doing. She’s doing everything she purports to oppose.” Brigitte Gabriel, a former host of Pat Robertson’s “World News,” called Michelle Obama “[t]he most divisive and hateful First Lady in U.S. history.”

Barack Obama: Harris Will Sign a National Abortion Expansion Bill

Michelle Obama concluded her speech by introducing her husband, former President Barack Obama, who promised that, if elected, Kamala Harris will sign a bill expanding abortion-on-demand to all 50 states.

Barack Obama said Kamala Harris, whom Michelle Obama called “my girl,” is “running for president with real plans” beginning on day one. She will “sign a law to guarantee every woman’s right to make her own health care decisions,” the Democratic Party’s preferred euphemism for abortion. Harris has not endorsed any protection for unborn children at any moment until birth. Barack Obama called this a sign of “freedom.”

“We believe that true freedom gives each of us the right to make decisions about our own life — how we worship, what our family looks like, how many kids we have, who we marry,” he thundered. “And we believe that freedom requires us to recognize that other people have the freedom to make choices that are different than ours.” Obama later opined that former President Donald Trump “doesn’t seem to care if more women lose their reproductive freedoms since it won’t affect his life.”

Abortion, under the term “reproductive rights,” recurred throughout day two of the DNC. “Do we want a Republican Senate that assaults reproductive freedoms?” asked Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.). Schumer attempted to deflect allegations that the Democratic Party has a problem with Jewish voters, pointing to a tiny blue patch pinned to his blue suit. “Donald Trump, this is a guy who peddles anti-Semitic stereotypes,” insisted Schumer about Trump, whose daughter, Ivanka, converted to Judaism before marrying Jared Kushner and giving their three children a Jewish upbringing.

Obama, who retains an oversized impact on the administration’s policy, apparently filled in part of the Harris-Walz foreign policy agenda. “We shouldn’t be the world’s policemen,” said Obama, who sent U.S. troops to fight in Libya without congressional authorization, an operation that resulted in Muammar Qaddafi being replaced by terrorists affiliated with ISIS. The issues tab of Kamala Harris’s 2024 presidential election website remains empty.

Shortly before slamming politicians who “scold and shame and out yell the other side,” Obama made a hand gesture apparently intending to minimize the size of President Donald Trump’s genitalia.

DNC Abortion Toll Reportedly Climbs to 25: ‘Satan Is Pleased’

These events transpired as the death toll at Planned Parenthood’s mobile unit outside the Democratic National Convention reportedly climbed to 25. Multiple sources on the ground said Planned Parenthood officials told them the number of free abortions they carried out had risen by 15 on Tuesday.

“CONFIRMED: 25 babies have been killed by Planned Parenthood at the DNC,” reported Kristan Hawkins of Students for Life of America at 7:38 p.m. EST Tuesday evening.

Riley Gaines mourned the loss of the first day, posting, “10 child sacrifices on day 1 of DNC. Satan is pleased.” Author David Limbaugh posted the words of Romans 1:18-25, which begins by declaring, “the wrath of God is revealed from Heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness.”

“Planned Parenthood is at the DNC, handing out chemical abortions that kill a baby by starving the developing child of nutrients. Share the Abortion Pill Reversal hotline 877-558-0333 and help save a life!” implored Lila Rose, founder of Live Action.

Harris Appears to Accept Presidential Nomination, Skips Husband’s Speech

Even though Democratic delegates formally nominated Kamala Harris for president with a virtual vote last month, the second evening of the DNC featured delegates going through a roll call vote, complete with a DJ soundtrack.

One of the New Jersey delegates — a man dressed in drag who announced he uses “pronouns she/her/hers” as he took the mic — stated, “I’m proud to stand with Kamala Harris and Tim Walz, because they stand with the LGBTQ community!” California Governor Gavin Newsom (D), thought to be a leading rival to Harris had the Democrats held an open primary instead of allowing President Joe Biden to coronate Harris last month, declared California “the great state of Nancy Pelosi.” He went on to insist that “Kamala Harris has always done the right thing,” including advancing “LGBTQ rights, the rights of women and girls” before casting his state’s votes for Harris.

Harris, who made a brief in-person appearance at the first day of the DNC, made a virtual appearance from Milwaukee on day two to accept the redundant nomination.

Harris did not show up at all for the speech of her husband, Doug Emhoff, skipping his fawning, family-focused address. Emhoff praised his blended family and acknowledged his divorce, although he did not mention the baby he conceived with his children’s nanny, who apparently either aborted Emhoff’s child or placed the child in adoption. Kamala Harris “connected me more deeply with my faith, even though it’s different from hers,” said Emhoff, who is Jewish.

Former President Bill Clinton and presumptive vice presidential candidate Tim Walz are scheduled to speak Wednesday.

AUTHOR

Ben Johnson

Ben Johnson is senior reporter and 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.

10 Things to Look For in Next Week’s Democratic Party Convention

As the Democratic National Convention meets next week, Kamala Harris hopes it will be an opportunity to recast herself as a moderate. Harris has launched “a highly choreographed effort to define herself — in some cases, redefine herself — as a different kind of Democrat,” insiders have told Axios. “Harris won’t say it this bluntly in public, but her advisers do so privately: She wants to break with Biden on issues on which he’s unpopular.” Her campaign hopes next week’s DNC will be the new Harris’s coming out party.

Yet Kamala’s chrysalis faces headwinds within her own party. Last month, the Democratic Party released a draft of its 2024 platform which, like all platforms, reflects a political party’s long-term aspirational plans to reshape the nation. The 2024 platform contains numerous extreme policies that should concern Americans of all backgrounds, especially people of faith. The real test of the vice president’s would-be transformation comes down to a simple question: Can she stand up against her party on these issues?

  1. Will Harris ‘Protect’ Transgender Surgeries for Minors and Place Boys in Girls’ Showers?

The draft of the 2024 Democratic Party platform touts the Biden-Harris administration’s efforts “to address discriminatory legislative attacks against LGBTQI+ children” and “safeguard health care.” It contrasts this to President Donald Trump’s “extreme plan to punish doctors who treat transgender youth and to ban gender-affirming care” for kids.

This refers to roughly half of all U.S. states which have passed versions of the Save Adolescents From Experimentation (SAFE) Act. These commonsense protections shield minors from potentially-sterilizing puberty blockers (which were never intended to suppress healthy puberty), cross-sex hormones, and surgeries that remove the healthy breasts and reproductive organs of minors. Think of Kayla Lovdahl, who is now suing the doctors who allowed the adolescent to undergo a life-altering double mastectomy at the age of 13. While the White House has suddenly backed away from surgeries for minors during this campaign season, at least publicly, the Democratic Party remains committed to giving Planned Parenthood and other pillars of the multi-billion-dollar transgender industry the green light to carry out so-called “gender-affirming care,” with all its permanent and irreversible effects, on minors whose brains have not yet fully developed — minors whom the law bars from getting a tattoo or smoking a cigarette, because they do not understand the long-term implications of those choices.

The draft platform also commits to “guaranteeing that transgender students are treated fairly and with respect at school” and “keeping students safe on campus by restoring and strengthening protections under Title IX.” The Biden-Harris administration’s audacious rewriting of the landmark civil rights legislation blatantly violates its intention to establish and protect women’s spaces by prying open the doors of girls’ showers, locker rooms, and dorm rooms to trans-identifying males.

Think of the 11-year-old girl whom teachers ordered to share a bed with a boy on an overnight field trip. Rather than listen to her parents, the administration has even threatened to withhold federally-funded school lunches from poor children unless their school districts knuckle under to its executive decrees.

No wonder these policies are unpopular. Strong majorities oppose transgender procedures for adolescents. A total of 55% of Americans believe “changing one’s gender” is immoral, according to a 2023 Gallup poll. A majority of multiracial (53%), Hispanic (52%), and white Americans (51%), as well as half of black Americans (50%) oppose placing males of any age in areas where females disrobe.

The platform also promises to “prioritize the investigation of hate crimes against trans and non-binary people.” All crime is hate crime, rooted in a hatred of a God-given order that upholds the right to life. Yet prosecuting alleged “hate crimes” threatens free speech and serves as another avenue for the government to weaponize federal agencies against American citizens who uphold biblical morality.

The platform also vows to “ban so-called ‘conversion therapy.’” Despite the scare wording, “conversion therapy” consists of compassionate conversations aimed at helping people (many of whom were molested) fulfill their desire to embrace their birth gender. Respecting medical professionals’ freedom of speech to enable children to live happier lives should be easy for a campaign that has oriented itself around “joy” and “freedom.”

  1. Will Harris Stop ‘Fighting’ Parents Trying to Keep Porn out of Schools?

If Kamala Harris wishes to appear as a centrist, she could begin by standing up against her party’s war on parents. In addition to transgender surgeries, the Democratic platform dedicates the full resources of the federal government to “fighting book bans that censor LGBTQI+ content.” President Donald Trump and his “MAGA allies are ripping away our bedrock personal freedoms, dictating what health care decisions women can make, banning books, and telling people who they can love,” says the first page of the 80-page document. These alleged “book bans” simply seek to place books with graphic sexual content in an age-restricted portion of the library. Many of these books contain graphic, cartoon-like depictions of sodomy, as well as wistfully-positive descriptions and depictions of child molestation.

  1. Will Harris Stop Backing Taxpayer-Funded Abortion until Birth?

The draft platform promises to nationalize taxpayer-funded abortion-on-demand. “With a Democratic Congress, we will pass national legislation to make Roe the law of the land again,” states the platform. “We will repeal the Hyde Amendment,” the federal law dating back to the mid-1970s that protects pro-life Americans from seeing their salaries pay for most abortions.

Democrats promise a national abortion expansion, funded by pro-life taxpayers. Nearly two-thirds (60%) of U.S. voters oppose funding abortion in the United States, such as the $1.89 billion abortion businesses received from taxpayers over just three years, according to a Marist poll. Wouldn’t a moderate want to appeal to two-thirds of voters?

  1. Will Harris Crush Christians’ Conscience Rights?

The Democratic Party draft platform threatens Christian conscience rights in one small sentence: “Democrats will pass the Equality Act to codify protections for LGBTQI+ Americans.” The Equality Act would force Christian businesses to hire people who identify as LGBTQIA2S+ by adding sexual orientation (and in some drafts, gender identity) to civil rights legislation. It could potentially impose a quota for such hiring practices, despite the owners’ biblical moral convictions. Heavy fines and federal prosecution such as the kind suffered by Masterpieces Cakeshop owner Jack Phillips, would follow.

  1. Will Harris Oppose Taxpayer-Funded Transgenderism in Prison?

The 2024 draft platform states, “We will guarantee access to medical care in prison.” Since the federal government already provides health care in prisons, the platform means the Biden-Harris administration’s commitments to furnishing taxpayer-funded transgender hormones and surgeries to prisoners — and the administration has committed to housing inmates who identify as transgender in the opposite sex’s prisons, triggering an atmosphere of rape, sexual assault, intimidation, and physical abuse. This seems particularly relevant in a platform that touts the “National Plan to End Gender-Based Violence.”

  1. Will Harris Add Up to Six States to the United States?

“We unequivocally support statehood for D.C.,” reads the platform. “Democrats support self-determination for Puerto Rico. … Democrats also support self-determination for the U.S. Virgin Islands, Guam, the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, and American Samoa. We will create a Congressional task force to study equal voting rights and House representation.”

Unable to win elective office or pass sweeping national legislation, self-styled progressives have turned to remaking the electorate, changing constitutional offices, and fundamentally transforming America. In addition to remaking the Supreme Court and granting amnesty to millions of illegal immigrants, some propose adding new states to the union. These liberal-leaning states would each add two new U.S. senators and at least one representative to Congress, tilting the balance in a socialistic direction.

  1. Will Harris Double Down on Open Borders?

The Biden-Harris administration has presided over a historic number of illegal entries at the southern border, fueled by promises that they may receive “free” health care and the most valued benefit: U.S. citizenship. Yet the draft platform promises to “provide a pathway to citizenship for Dreamers and others,” boasts of Biden-Harris actions to “expand legal pathways to citizenship,” and commits to “supporting a pathway for long-term undocumented individuals.” It brags that the administration “has extended Affordable Care Act coverage to DACA recipients.” Lest the point be missed, the platform demands, “Congress must pass legislation to provide a pathway to citizenship for Dreamers, farmworkers, careworkers, and other long-term undocumented individuals.”

The platform poses as tough on crime, stating agents have “arrested more individuals for fentanyl-related crimes in the last two years than in the previous five years combined.” That may indicate increased enforcement; it may also indicate a massive increase in fentanyl trafficking, crimes and overdoses under Harris’s watch. As it turns out, the Biden-Harris administration clarifies which it is: “fentanyl seizures have increased more than 860% from fiscal years 2019-2023, and fentanyl seizures nearly doubled from fiscal years 2022-2023,” reports the U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP).

It also vows to increase competition for U.S. jobs. “Congress must act to increase the number of family-sponsored and employment-based immigrant visas that are available each fiscal year so that people aren’t forced to wait decades,” it states.

  1. The Democratic Party Promises to Literally Ban Speech.

The draft 2024 Democratic platform contains an odd proposal that would literally ban speech. “We will also ban voice impersonations,” states the platform in its section on artificial intelligence. It is not clear how this would square with the First Amendment.

The section adds that, since “AI can deepen discrimination,” the platform commits to “combating algorithmic discrimination.” The clearest example of such discrimination came when Google’s AI platform depicted George Washington and other Founding Fathers exclusively as black men.

  1. Is ‘Nothing More Important’ than Climate Change?

“[T]here is nothing more important than addressing the climate crisis,” states the platform.

  1. Will Harris End the Lies and Incitement about President Donald Trump?

In a fallen world, lies are the lingua franca of politics. Yet the 2024 draft platform distinguishes itself in this regard. “Trump called members of the military who died in war ‘suckers’ and ‘losers.’ He disparages the brave men and women who wear our uniform and protect our democracy and national security,” it says. The platform recycles the “suckers” and “losers” lie twice. “He called white supremacist and openly-antisemitic Charlottesville protesters ‘very fine people.’”

The platform continues to present potentially inciting language against the president:

“Trump is a greater danger to democracy than ever. … After years undermining public faith and confidence in our elections, he has warned of a ‘bloodbath’ if he loses now. … . He has vowed to weaponize our government to go after his enemies and benefit his allies. … And to silence his critics, he suggested the ‘termination’ of our Constitution. There is no more profound threat to the soul of our nation.”

The draft platform was released on July 13 — the same day that Thomas Matthew Crooks came within a fraction of an inch of assassinating President Donald Trump. Yet the Harris campaign has doubled down on the issue. “To a crowd of 12,000 in Las Vegas, Harris says Trump is a threat to democracy,” reported NPR. At a campaign stop earlier this month in Eau Claire, Wisconsin, the vice president continued to beat the drum and “pointed to his vow to be a dictator ‘on day one’, his threats to weaponize the Justice Department against his political enemies and his 2022 comment demanding the ‘termination’ of constitutional provisions over his 2020 election defeat.”

If Harris hopes to remake herself as a moderate, she should pivot on all of these issues. Even fellow Democrats know that whether voters will buy her distancing from her own positions of years past, and her administration’s accomplishments, is another story.

“Are you aware this is the Biden-Harris administration?” asked White House spokesperson Karine Jean-Pierre on Wednesday.

AUTHOR

Ben Johnson

Ben Johnson is senior reporter and 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.

Over 100 ‘Secretly Shot’ Pornographic Videos Of U.S. Naval Service Members Uploaded Online: REPORT

Over 100 explicit videos of U.S. Navy personnel were uploaded to a pornography site in January 2020, according to court documents unsealed in April.

The videos featuring the personnel in bathroom stalls had been uploaded to Pornhub and appeared to be “secretly shot,” but were taken down within days of being reported to the Navy Criminal Investigative Service (NCIS), according to court documents obtained by Military.com. A NCIS agent investigating how the videos were uploaded later obtained subscriber details from Pornhub after obtaining a subpoena and later a search warrant, according to Pacific Daily News.

“Many of the videos — which included audio — appeared to depict various U.S. military members masturbating in bathroom stalls to pornographic materials viewed on electronic devices,” a court document alleged, according to Military.com.

Some of the videos were labeled with the rank and last name of the victims, Military.com reported.

The case was unsealed April 17, according to the Pacific Daily News. No arrests have been made or charges filed in the case, Military.com reported.

Pornhub, one of the largest online porn sites, has come under fire for allowing underage individuals to view its material and had responded to legislation requiring age verification by blocking access to users from states that pass such measures.

The Navy and Pornhub did not immediately respond to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s request for comment.

AUTHOR

HAROLD HUTCHISON

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Texas AG Sues Pornhub for Failing to Verify Age of Users

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

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

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’

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

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

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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