Sen. Mike Lee of Utah has proposed the Interstate Obscenity Definition Act. The bill would change the legal definition of obscenity across all 50 states, redefining the term with more vague language than before.
It aims to do this by striking out the provision that obscene communications must have the “intent to abuse, threaten or harass another person.” Instead, the newly proposed definition identifies obscenity as including any visual materials that depict nudity, excretion or sexual acts that lack “serious literary, artistic, political or social value.”
Although not explicitly mentioned in its text, the bill is part of a larger effort by right-wing lawmakers to eliminate pornography.
At first glance, this seems like a reasonable goal, especially considering the vast amount of nonconsensual and revenge porn out there. Just last year, Justice Defense Fund Founder Laila Mickelwait published her memoir Takedown: Inside the Fight to Shut Down Pornhub for Child Abuse, Rape, and Sex Trafficking. It details her legal battle against Pornhub and its sister companies regarding the egregious amount of illegal materials they were profiting from while victims suffered.
Certainly, there is a need for better protections against sex abusers in the digital media world, although Mickelwait carefully distinguishes sex workers producing consensual and safe content from these perpetrators, asserting that they, too, need to be protected by freedom of speech laws. (In fact, many sex workers were allies in her team’s investigation that ultimately shut down Pornhub’s illegal operation by helping identify abusive content).
“This newly proposed bill’s vague language would allow the law to target more than abuse.”
However, this newly proposed bill’s vague language would allow the law to target more than abuse. And even more than just pornography.
Notably, a goal of Project 2025 — of which 42% has already been implemented by the Trump administration — is to replace all sex education with abstinence-only curriculum and redefine comprehensive sexual health education as pornography. Another goal is to make pornography illegal.
Page 5 of Project 2025’s foreword states:
Pornography, manifested today in the omnipresent propagation of transgender ideology and sexualization of children, for instance, is not a political Gordian knot inextricably binding up disparate claims about free speech, property rights, sexual liberation, and child welfare. It has no claim to First Amendment protection. Its purveyors are child predators and misogynistic exploiters of women. Their product is as addictive as any illicit drug and as psychologically destructive as any crime. Pornography should be outlawed. The people who produce and distribute it should be imprisoned. Educators and public librarians who purvey it should be classed as registered sex offenders. And telecommunications and technology firms that facilitate its spread should be shuttered.
Note: This paragraph names “educators and public librarians” as complicit parties because “pornography” is redefined in reference to “woke culture” terms like “sexual orientation,” “gender” and “reproductive health.” And the first example given of pornography is “transgender ideology.”
Given this context, what is really being criminalized with this new bill is sex-related communication materials deemed as “woke.” This would criminalize comprehensive sexual education, which intends to educate people about their bodies, teach consent and prevent abuse.
Who is this supposed to protect?
It may protect the average social media user from viewing sexually graphic content during their nightly scroll on X, but only those who have yet to figure out how to access illegal content on encrypted browsers or the dark web. It certainly won’t stop those who already have downloaded the content to their computers.
But it doesn’t seem like this bill is targeting them. Maybe it’s easier to think about who this bill is not going to protect.
This bill will not protect teens from having sex or getting pregnant.
“This bill will not protect children from being raped, molested, assaulted or trafficked.”
Comprehensive sexual education, identified here as “pornography,” has been shown to reduce the likelihood of teen pregnancy in comparison to abstinence-only programs by 50%. In turn, teens who go through abstinence-only sexual education programs have more sex (and more unsafe sex) than teens who go through comprehensive programs.
This bill will not protect children from being raped, molested, assaulted or trafficked.
Comprehensive curricula can be helpful in mitigating a person’s vulnerability to sexual abuse and is more effective the earlier children learn it. In contrast, abstinence-only curricula consistently fail to explain the importance and mechanics of consent in sexual interactions. If children receive abstinence-only sexual education, they are not only more likely to become teen parents — they are more vulnerable to sexual abuse because they do not know how to resist unwanted advances. They are also less likely to be able to identify red flags they should tell a trusted adult.
This bill will not protect gay, lesbian, bisexual or trans Americans.
By proxy of their nonheteronormative identities, LGBTQ Americans’ everyday lives could be considered sexually obscene because they lack “political or social value” to Christian nationalist lawmakers. “Obscenity” has been a common word used in court cases about this community as different versions of “Don’t Say Gay” laws have been proposed throughout our country’s history. And although the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled multiple times that the mere communication of one’s queer identity is not obscene, this vague bill risks challenging that precedent.
This bill will not protect women.
Women’s sexual health care is already a taboo topic to discuss. From menstruation to breastfeeding rights to hushed conversations about abortion access, women already struggle to talk about their bodies without being hypersexualized or discriminated against. We are even sometimes surveilled and criminalized for simply discussing the idea of an abortion. This bill could make communications about women’s sexual health even more dangerous than it already is.
This bill will not protect sexual abuse survivors.
With its vague language striking out provisions that obscenity comes only from the abuser’s hand, will this bill give perpetrators the upper hand in silencing victims and survivors for telling a sexually “obscene” story in the public square? BNG has reported numerous times on how the law perpetuates the silence of victims through legal measures such as Non-Disclosure Agreements and brief statutes of limitations. This could be yet another tool for abusers and abusive institutions to have an advantage over those who wish to expose their obscene actions.
This bill will not protect journalists.
Finally, when the definition of obscenity is vague, journalists who write about controversial topics — like most of us here at BNG — could face storytelling challenges. How does one tell the story of a brave sexual abuse survivor who faced horrific crimes, discuss abortion rights of mothers dying of ectopic pregnancies or talk about the unjust murders of transgender youth when any disgruntled person in power could decide that these “woke” topics are obscene?
If this bill passes, our free speech is at risk. And an elimination of free speech is a dangerous lacuna in American law.
But the good news (if there is any)? Their effort to silence us proves our stories have power — so we should keep saying these “obscene” things anyway.
Mallory Challis
Mallory Challis is a summer staff writer for BNG. She is a master of divinity student at Wake Forest University School of Divinity and is a former BNG Clemons Fellow.
Related articles:
The war on pornography returns to the supply side | Analysis by Mark Wingfield
33 House Republicans introduce bill to ban talking about sex and gender with children under age 10