pornography

Mississippi Targets Big Porn Using Obscenity Laws

A new Mississippi law harnesses the power of the private sector and obscenity laws to strike back at Big Porn.

Mississippi House Bill 599 enables private citizens to sue businesses for publishing obscene content, which is already against the law. The law also levies steep fines on companies found guilty of posting obscenity in a citizen-led lawsuit, including:

  • Up to $500,000 in noneconomic damages to victims harmed by viewing obscenity.
  • Punitive damages — fines assigned for “especially reckless or malicious content” meant to discourage the entity from reoffending.

Importantly, HB 599 does not apply to social media companies or search engines. Instead, it regulates businesses and companies, like porn companies, that intentionally publish or sell obscene content.

The legislation sailed through the state Congress in March, with a unanimous vote in the House and an overwhelming 51-1 vote in the Senate. Governor Tate Reeves signed it into law on April 10.

Representative Price Wallace introduced the successful bill in January. For him, the law serves two, equally important purposes: It provides relief to families harmed by hardcore pornography and puts porn companies on notice.

“Big Porn companies only care about one thing — money,” he told the Daily Citizen.

“This bill is telling them to keep their filth out of Mississippi. If they don’t, they’ll be made to pay up.”

Mississippi is the third state to create a right of action for private citizens against companies that platform obscenity. The idea originated in 2024 with Dr. Jameson Taylor, the Director of AFA Action’s Center for Government Renewal.

He and Trey Dellinger, a senior legal fellow at AFA Action, had been working on state age verification bills, which force porn companies to verify consumers’ ages, when he received divine inspiration.

“As we were discussing the differences between ‘regular’ pornography and ‘hardcore pornography’ (obscenity), the Holy Spirit inspired me with a novel idea: Why not just enable people to sue commercial websites that post obscenity?” Dr. Taylor recalls for the Daily Citizen.

Obscenity refers to grievously offensive speech not protected by the First Amendment. Content in this category must satisfy three conditions:

  • An average person must find the content appeals to prurient interests, as established by contemporary community standards.
  • It must “lack serious literary, artistic, political or scientific value.”
  • It must depicts sex in a way that violates state law.

Federal law and obscenity laws in all fifty states prohibit publishing, selling or distributing obscene content, which includes child sexual abuse material (CSAM). Mississippi additionally classifies “patently offensive” depictions of sexual intercourse, masturbation, lewd exhibition, bestiality and sadomasochism as obscene.

AFA Action’s legislation establishes a symbiotic relationship with state obscenity laws like Mississippi’s. Because the First Amendment doesn’t protect obscenity, the porn lobby will struggle to challenge it in court, Dr. Taylor explains.

In turn, the law helps enforce obscenity codes by encouraging private lawyers to go after violators. Dellinger expounds:

Publishing obscenity is already a crime, but the problem is enforcement. Prosecutors don’t have the manpower to tackle this challenge alone.
There are 50 private lawyers for every prosecutor in Mississippi. This bill incentivizes those private lawyers to get into the fight by letting them sue Big Porn for big damages for harming kids.

Like Representative Wallace, Dr. Taylor believes Big Porn won’t respond to anything but a hit to its bottom line.

“One of these days, a plaintiff’s attorney — [one of] the guys on the billboards — is going to get a multimillion-dollar payout from a porn website posting obscenity,” he predicts.

“Just like with Big Tobacco, that’s when these companies are going to realize they have to do more to protect kids and families from harmful content.”

Oklahoma and South Carolina grafted AFA Action’s legislation onto their respective age verification bills last year. Taylor and Dellinger say Tennessee could pass a similar law in 2026.

Representative Wallace hopes this will be the case.

“This problem is bigger than just Mississippi,” he emphasizes. “These [porn] websites aren’t policing themselves.”

“If more states adopt this law, it will help us get consistent enforcement to stop this problem.”

The Daily Citizen enthusiastically supports HB 599 and any law helping parents keep their kids’ safe from porn and other online traps.

We will continue covering America’s growing reckoning with Big Porn.

Additional Articles and Resources

If you are a loved one are struggling with porn addiction, Focus on the Family can help:

Counseling Consultation & Referrals

Help For Pornography Addiction

Addicted to Pornography

Your Marriage Can Win the Battle Against Pornography

To learn more about modern pornography and its effect on children, click on the links below:

Porn Companies Condition Viewers to Desire Illegal and Abusive Content

Porn Companies Sued for Violating Kansas Age Verification Law

Proposed SCREEN Act Could Protect Kids from Porn

A Mother’s Sensibility at the Supreme Court Regarding Pornography

Pornhub Quits Texas Over Age Verification Law

Kid’s Online Safety Act—What It Is and Why It’s a Big Deal

To learn more about age verification laws in your own state, check out our bill tracker here.

Porn Companies Condition Viewers to Desire Illegal and Abusive Content

Porn companies aren’t just using content recommendation algorithms to drive users toward more extreme content, a deluge of new data shows — they’re conditioning users to desire child sexual abuse material (CSAM), image-based sexual abuse (IBSA) and other illegal content.

Experts have long acknowledged the toxic link between digital pornography and online exploitation. Companies like Pornhub not only provide platforms for predators to upload and monetize abusive content, but have financial incentive promote it.

Until recently, porn companies could claim violent, abusive and illegal videos had “slipped through the cracks.” But information released in the last two months suggests porn sites do far more than turn a blind eye — they create computer algorithms that drive traffic to CSAM, IBSA and IBSA-themed content.

Content Recommendation

In a new study on the relationship between porn and IBSA, the National Center on Sexual Exploitation (NCSOE) writes:

It is critical to understand that modern distributors of pornography are information technology experts. [These] platforms often feature algorithmic “recommendations” that profile popular content or elevate specific content based on users’ profiles and/or viewing history.

Content recommendation algorithms are built on “tags” — digital identifiers that help the system organize content into categories and lists. So, by banning problematic tags like “unwilling” or “force,” companies like Pornhub could theoretically generate recommendations that steer people away from abusive videos.

But porn companies never eliminate all inappropriate tags. They make the most money by catering to users’ preferences — regardless of whether they are legal.

Pornhub’s profit motive is etched into thousands of internal communications and memos a federal court accidentally published earlier this month. In one exchange reviewed by investigative journalist Nicholas Kristof, Pornhub executives debated banning some concerning tags.

They elected to jettison “kiddy” and “infant.” But “brutal,” “childhood,” “force,” “snuffs,” “unwilling,” “minor,” and “wasted?” Those were all green-lit.

Kristof writes for The New York Times:

Pornhub executives clearly had some concern about illegal content, such as sex videos involving people who were 17 or younger … But my impression is that Pornhub managers felt conflicted, because they closely tracked the popularity of topics and saw that videos of naked teenagers were a huge draw.

Most of the leaked documents pre-date Kristof’s 2020 Times exposé on Pornhub’s predation and negligence, which effectively forced the company to delete 80% of its content. Since then, the porn distributor claims it has adopted sweeping reforms.

Kristof is skeptical. He opines, “[The] website still seems to me to wink at pedophiles and sadists … There are countless references to videos with the words ‘it hurts’ or ‘painful,’ or about ‘schoolgirls’ or ‘school.’”

Notably, outside English-speaking countries, Pornhub users can still search for videos tagged “young” or “adolescents.”

Pornhub isn’t the only porn company making CSAM and IBSA searchable. NCOSE’s study demonstrates the world’s most popular porn sites all contain content algorithms capable of finding and recommending heinous content.

That means, at the very least, these companies are enabling existing offenders to access abusive content. NCOSE writes:

When pornography users consume IBSA-themed material on pornography websites, the sites are designed to further fuel that desire based on the user’s past viewing history.
Shaping Sexuality

Porn isn’t merely enabling people’s sexual appetites — it’s shaping them.

In April, The Guardian published an investigation exploring the link between digital pornography and pedophilia. The piece included quotes from two men who had been arrested and charged for viewing CSAM. Now in recovery, both claim they had had no sexual interest in children before becoming addicted to porn.

“I didn’t start out wanting to see kids. I was addicted to porn and I went down a road of being totally desensitized as I got further and further from what was normal,” one told the outlet.

“The police never found a single search for images of children: it was all from clicking through links —what the algorithms were offering me,” the other claimed.

These men’s experiences do not negate the seriousness or harm of their choice to view or search for CSAM. They do, however, contextualize data suggesting porn companies are effectively inspiring pedophilic and deviant sexual desires in people that would have never otherwise experienced them.

NCOSE cites a 2016 study of online sexual activity in men. Of the 434 respondents surveyed, 204 (47%) reported they were “involved in a practice or searched for pornography which previously was not interesting or even disgusting to them.”

In 2021, Protect Children, a Finnish child advocacy group surveyed more than 8,000 anonymous child sex abuse offenders on the dark web. Of the more than 5,000 who answered the question, 70% (3,521) claimed they first viewed CSAM as a minor.

Nearly 40% (1962) said they were less than 13 years old.

In a more recent survey from Protect Children,  65% (1,800) of more than 2,700 anonymous offenders reported they’d “habitually viewed adult pornography” prior to searching for CSAM. Of those, 67% reportedly watched “every day” or “most days.”

Pornography’s influence on sexual predilections also manifests in offender demographics. Over the last decade and a half, police in the UK have been overwhelmed by a “huge number of lower-level offenders,” veteran profiler Michael Sheath told the Guardian.

According to Detective Chief Inspector Tony Garner, who leads a team targeting child abuse in Worcester, offenders are also skewing younger.

“We are seeing people who are turning 18 and have had 10 years’ exposure to hardcore porn,” Garner piggybacks off Sheath. “My officers are finding young people watching the most abhorrent material, including child abuse.”

For Sheath, there’s no question the phenomenon is linked to porn:

Before the smartphone, most people’s first experience of sex was with a living person — and that included resistance, pushback, romance.
Now young people are growing up with unfettered access to porn, and porn norms are not about consent. It’s shaping their erotic templates.

Digital porn is neither a commercial product nor a harmless activity — It’s an algorithmic technology that equally profits off online sexual abuse and conditions viewers to seek it out.

That’s an indescribably consequential problem. Parents, legislatures and everyone concerned with children’s health and safety need to address it immediately.

Linked below are resources to help you get started.

If you or a loved one are struggling with an addiction to pornography, Focus on the Family has resources to help.

Additional Articles and Resources

Counseling Consultation & Referrals

Help For Pornography Addiction

Addicted to Pornography

Porn Companies Sued for Violating Kansas Age Verification Law

Proposed SCREEN Act Could Protect Kids from Porn

UPDATED: Pornography Age Verification Laws — What They Are and Which States have Them

A Mother’s Sensibility at the Supreme Court Regarding Pornography

Pornhub Quits Texas Over Age Verification Law

Kid’s Online Safety Act—What It Is and Why It’s a Big Deal

Your Marriage Can Win the Battle Against Pornography

Porn Companies Sued for Violating Kansas Age Verification Law

A child accessed hardcore pornography after four porn sites violated Kansas’ age verification law, the National Center on Sexual Exploitation (NCOSE) alleges in a new lawsuit.

NCOSE and co-counsel sued Chaturbate.com, Jerkmate.com, Superporn.com and Titan Websites this week on behalf of 14-year-old Q.R. In a press release, NCOSE explains that, though his mother had diligently supervised his online activity, Q.R. successfully searched for pornography on an old laptop he found forgotten in a storage closet.

Q.R. and his mother live in Kansas, one of more than twenty states that require pornography companies to verify the ages of their consumers. NCOSE alleges the defendants violated this law by allowing Q.R. to access hardcore pornography on their platforms without checking his age.

Q.R.’s case is precedent-setting; until now, porn companies have never been sued for violating state age verification laws. But Kansas’ statute creates a clear path for parents like Q.R.’s mom to sue companies that negligently allow their children to access adult content.

The porn cites could face stiff financial penalties if the U.S. District Court for the District of Kansas finds them guilty, including paying:

  • No less than $50,000 per violation of Kansas law.
  • Q.R.’s attorney and legal fees.
  • Damages to cover the harm Q.R. may experience because of their negligence.

“It is unreasonably dangerous for these pornography websites to provide this product, which they know is harmful to children, that children are drawn to access, and do access, without employing age verification as required by Kansas law,” Dani Pinter, Senior Vice President and Director of NCOSE’s Law Center, wrote in the press release.

“Our plaintiff deserves every measure of justice.”

Pornography consumption among minors correlates with cascading social, relational and mental harms. A 2024 study from the Institute for Family Studies (IFS) connects early pornography exposure to “negative development outcomes” like:

  • “A greater acceptance of sexual harassment.
  • “Sexual activity at an early age.
  • “Acceptance of negative attitudes to women.
  • “Unrealistic expectations [of sexual relationships].
  • “Skewed attitudes of gender roles.
  • “Greater levels of body dissatisfaction.
  • “[Acceptance of] rape myths [like allocating] responsibility for sexual assault to a female victim.
  • “Sexual aggression.”

Porn companies, meanwhile, work hard to hook minors on explicit content. Children, with their impressionable, easily-addicted brains, make some of the best customers.

Age verification laws help parents triumph over porn companies’ influence. When Louisiana adopted the first one in 2023, state traffic to PornHub reportedly dropped by 80%.

Nearly half of all states (24) have adopted age verification legislation to date, with another 15 considering age verification bills this year. Congress is also considering passing the SCREEN Act, which would institute national age verification requirements.

In 2023, an organization representing porn companies sued Texas over its age verification law. The U.S. Supreme Court heard arguments in that case — Free Speech Coalition v. Paxton — earlier this year. Their imminent decision will determine whether state laws requiring porn companies to verify customer’s ages are constitutional.

The Daily Citizen will continue covering this legal push to help parents keep their kids safe online.

Additional Articles and Resources

Proposed SCREEN Act Could Protect Kids from Porn

UPDATED: Pornography Age Verification Laws — What They Are and Which States have Them

A Mother’s Sensibility at the Supreme Court Regarding Pornography

Pornhub Quits Texas Over Age Verification Law

Kid’s Online Safety Act—What It Is and Why It’s a Big Deal

Counseling Consultation & Referrals

Help For Pornography Addiction

Addicted to Pornography

Your Marriage Can Win the Battle Against Pornography

Proposed SCREEN Act Could Protect Kids from Porn

Congress will consider passing federal age verification legislation this year via the SCREEN Act.

Short for “Shielding Children’s Retinas from Egregious Exposure on the Net,” the bill requires websites to verify the ages of American consumers trying to buy or access adult content.

Senator Mike Lee (UT) and Representative Marry Miller (IL) introduced the SCREEN Act in both chambers last month. They believe it will help parents shield their kids from pornography that, too frequently, is only a click away.

“It is time for our laws to catch up with technology,” Lee wrote in a press release announcing the bill. “The SCREEN Act addresses the urgent need to protect minors from exposure to online pornography and stop those who profit from stealing the innocence of America’s youth.”

Several pro-family organizations support the bill, including the Family Research Council.

The Bill

The SCREEN Act, H.R. 1623 in the House and S. 737 in the Senate, would create new Federal Trade Commission (FTC) regulations on the sale and display of content “harmful to minors,” including what which:

  • “Appeals to the prurient interest in nudity, sex or excretion.
  • “Depicts, describes or represents in a patently offensive way, with respect to what is suitable for minors, an actual or simulated sexual act or sexual contact, actual or simulated normal or perverted sexual acts or lewd exhibition of the genitals.
  • “Taken as a whole, lacks serious literary, artistic, political or scientific value as to minors.”

The bill would require online websites and companies to use age verification software to ensure people purchasing or accessing adult content aren’t minors.

Unlike some state age verification laws, the SCREEN Act would apply to all companies that offer inappropriate content — regardless how much or whether they turn a profit on it.  

The FTC would prosecute violations as “unfair or deceptive practices” under the existing Federal Trade Commission Act.

Porn Proliferation

The SCREEN Act would protect kids from pornography, proponents say, a damaging vice more readily available to children than ever before. A shocking 80% of American kids will be exposed to pornography between 12 and 17 years old, according to a 2016 study by the Barna group.

A 2024 study from the Institute for Family Studies connects early exposures like these to “negative development outcomes,” including:

  • “A greater acceptance of sexual harassment.
  • “Sexual activity at an early age.
  • “Acceptance of negative attitudes to women.
  • “Unrealistic expectations [of sexual relationships].
  • “Skewed attitudes of gender roles.
  • “Greater levels of body dissatisfaction.
  • “Rape myths [like allocating] responsibility for sexual assault to a female victim.
  • “Sexual aggression.”

Perhaps the hardest thing for parents to hear is how poorly online filters protect children. An analysis by the Kaiser Family Foundation finds protective filters don’t work on 1 in 3 porn sites kids access unintentionally, and 1 in 10 porn sites they visit on purpose.

Miller believes the SCREEN Act will increase parents’ ability to shield their kids from porn

“As a mother of seven and grandmother to 20, I am committed to defending parental rights,” Miller wrote in support of the Act.

“The SCREEN Act provides parents with more control over their children’s online access and protects our kids from exposure to pornography.”

In the States

This is the second time Congress will deliberate the SCREEN Act. Legislators first introduced the bill in March 2023, when age verification legislation was still a novel idea. It failed nine months later.

The legislative landscape has changed dramatically since then. Twenty states have passed age verification laws, thirteen of which adopted them after December 2023.

Another sixteen states will deliberate age verification bills this year.

Kid’s Online Safety Act

The SCREEN Act could also capitalize on momentum generated by last year’s Kid’s Online Safety Act (KOSA).

KOSA, which failed in December 2024, would have imposed sweeping child- protection regulations on social media sites. The bill passed the Senate, despite concerns that it failed to regulate porn companies and could increase federal censorship.

The SCREEN Act may win KOSA opponents by going after big porn and working within existing laws.

Free Speech Coalition v. Paxton

The Supreme Court’s ruling on Texas’ age verification law (HB 1181) could determine the SCREEN Act’s fate.

The Free Speech Coalition (FSC) represents more than a dozen pornography companies opposed to age verification legislation. The group sued Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton over HB 1181 in 2023, arguing the law infringed on pornographers’ free speech and citizens’ privacy.

Free Speech Coalition v. Paxton made its Supreme Court debut on January 13, 2025. The justices will decide what legal threshold HB 1181 must meet to be constitutional — strict scrutiny or rational-basis review.

Laws that infringe on constitutional rights are subject to strict scrutiny, the most stringent standard of judicial review. A law passes strict scrutiny if it serves a compelling government interest in the least violating way possible.

U.S. District Judge David Alan Ezra issued a preliminary inunction against HB 1181 in 2023 after finding the law likely would not pass strict scrutiny. The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals overturned Ezra’s ruling in 2024, arguing the law only had to pass rational-basis review — an easier judicial test evaluating whether the proposed law serves a legitimate government interest.

The Supreme Court has historically used strict scrutiny to evaluate laws making it harder for adults to access matures content. In oral arguments, however, some justices expressed willingness to review that precedent.

Justice Thomas noted that previous Supreme Court rulings on pornography occurred in a “world of dial-up internet,” court reporter Amy Howe relayed.

“You would admit that we’re in an entirely different world [now],” Thomas remarked.

Justice Roberts further emphasized the variety and severity of adult materials available to children today. Howe paraphrases, “Not only is it much easier for teenagers to get access to porn, but the kind of porn that they can access has changed as well, becoming much more graphic.”

The Supreme Court’s decision in Free Speech Coalition v. Paxton is expected early this summer

Additional Articles and Resources

UPDATED: Pornography Age Verification Laws — What They Are and Which States have Them

A Mother’s Sensibility at the Supreme Court Regarding Pornography

Pornhub Quits Texas Over Age Verification Law

Kid’s Online Safety Act—What It Is and Why It’s a Big Deal

‘Only Fans’ is a Social Toxin Destroying Lives

You can tell a lot about a culture by how its people spend their free time and disposable income.

OnlyFans, an X-rated internet content site based in England, generated over seven billion dollars last year. With over 300 million users, more than 40% of which are believed to be based here in the United States, the company strives to provide its subscribers with all kinds of tawdry and pornographic content.

The site boasts 4.1 million “creators,” 84% of whom are female. Not surprisingly, 70% of the paying customers are male.

Last week, one “creator” filmed herself having sex with 1,000 men in a single day. The site eventually removed the video because they said they couldn’t prove if everyone involved was over the age of 18.

That same woman claims to be making over one million dollars a month on the site.

Friday’s Wall Street Journal features the sad tale of “celebrity women” cashing in on the perverted interest of voyeuristic men:

Today, the most lucrative way for many female celebrities to sell sex is OnlyFans. In theory, it is a content-neutral platform that enables any individual to sell subscriptions of any kind to fans, promising “creative ownership,” “inclusivity” and “freedom” to would-be “creators.”

Lily Allen, a British singer who had two platinum-selling albums in the 2000s, posted on X last year that she earned more money selling pictures of her feet on OnlyFans than from streams of her music on Spotify. Drea de Matteo, who won an Emmy for her role on The Sopranos in 2004, has said that she joined OnlyFans after acting work dried up and she faced foreclosure on her mortgage.

It could be argued that pornography is not new. The first publications of lewd material and images are said to date to Rome in the 1500s. The advent of photography in the early 1800s and then film in the early 1900s provided more opportunity to exploit and commodify human sexuality. The internet is yet one more, albeit supercharged, medium to make a mockery of God’s gift of sexuality .

It would be easy to chastise the women who are voluntarily exploiting themselves on OnlyFans or other similar sites. To be sure, a number of them are being exploited by others. But the main reason the women are engaging in this industry and forum is because there’s a market for it. Men are willing to pay, so women are willing to perform.

Focus on the Family founder Dr. James Dobson was invited by President Ronald Reagan back in the 1980s to serve on the Attorney General’s Commission on Pornography. It was a grueling and difficult assignment. He and his co-laborers spent several years identifying the wickedness of the industry and made substantive recommendations. They contended it was a “winnable war.” Congress enacted many of their proposals, but sadly, time and culture have erased many of the gains.

I’ll always remember what Dr. Dobson said to me once about pornography’s scourge. He once said, “You go into the house of every serial killer, and you’ll always find pornography. Always.” He wasn’t suggesting everyone who looks at porn becomes a mass murderer, but he was warning about the insidious and incremental nature of the sin.

Friday’s Wall Street Journal article concludes by quoting an Only Fans “creator” who recently told a documentary filmmaker that navigating the escalating, sometimes unnervingly depraved requests of “fans” is “like doing a deal with the Devil.” Another woman said, “I felt objectified by creepy men.”

Tragically, that’s the evil nature of the pornography industry. If you or someone you know is caught in its grasp, please know Focus on the Family has resources available to help you break free and be liberated from it.

Image from Shutterstock.