WASHINGTON, D.C. – Yesterday, Senator Jim Banks (R-Ind.) sent a letter to Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche calling for the enforcement of federal obscenity laws and increased protections for children online.
See the full letter here or read below:
Dear Acting Attorney General Blanche,
I write to you today out of concern for the well-being of children and welfare of the American people.
In 2019, I wrote to your Department regarding an “explosion in obscene pornography” fueled by the internet. Seven years later, online obscenity has proliferated—and been democratized. Most of the 4 million creators on OnlyFans, a subscription service for adult content, sell pornography. An additional 370 million users buy this content. The vast majority of revenue on OnlyFans comes from the United States, and American consumers spend more money on OnlyFans than they do on the New York Times and ChatGPT combined. Explicit content is not limited to OnlyFans or other porn hosting sites: widely-used social media platforms like TikTok, YouTube, and Instagram contain and regularly display sexual material.
It is neither healthy nor safe for sexual content to be so pervasive. OnlyFans has been exposed for allowing minors to sell explicit videos and for featuring child sex abuse content. The site hosts other kinds of extreme and dangerous sexual content, including videos involving bestiality, incest, and acts that demean women. And TikTok has been caught using its algorithm to direct children’s accounts to pornography.
What happens on the internet does not stay on the internet, either. A wide and intellectually diverse coalition has long warned that pornography carries consequences for children, adults, and communities.
Pornography damages the mental and relational well-being of those who consume it and exploits those who participate in creating it. Online obscenity has increased at the same time that violence against women, online sex trafficking, and child pornography have all risen.
You can stop this. Obscenity has long been proscribed in the common law tradition and is not protected by the First Amendment. Federal law prohibits the distribution of obscene material, including over the internet. It is a crime to create and disseminate child pornography, as well as content that is obscene for adults. It is also a crime to knowingly display obscene content for children and to mislead minors into viewing adult content or adults into viewing generally obscene content. Section 230’s immunity provisions cannot override these important protections.
The state has a profound interest in shielding the public from offensive sexual content, and in protecting children from adult content generally. Obscenity laws are still good law, and the federal government has secured countless convictions under them for pornography involving extreme, violent, and demeaning sexual acts of the kinds found on OnlyFans. In addition, courts have repeatedly upheld efforts by state and federal entities to exercise their constitutional powers to limit minors’ ability to access and create adult content.
Despite the Justice Department’s clear authority to keep the internet safe, obscenity prosecutions have vanished. President George W. Bush stood up the Obscenity Prosecution Task Force. The Task Force secured convictions of purveyors of obscenity, including in my home state. During the Obama administration, a group of current and former colleagues of mine on both sides of the aisle asked Attorney General Eric Holder to invoke the obscenity laws and bring criminal cases against pornography distributors. Instead, Attorney General Holder shuttered the Task Force.
Ending obscenity prosecution was a mistake. With explicit content only a click away, there has never been a more important time to enforce our laws. I urge the Justice Department to re-establish the Obscenity Prosecution Task Force, prosecute illegal content to the maximum extent permitted by law, and end this scourge once and for all.
Thank you for your attention to this important matter.
