Sen. Mike Lee Introduces Bill to Make Virtually All Porn a Federal Crime — Social Media Reacts Exactly as You’d Expect
Francis Chung/POLITICO via AP Images
A new bill filed by Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) seems highly unlikely to pass, but that doesn’t mean the internet can’t have some fun with it first.
Lee filed a bill titled the “Interstate Obscenity Definition Act” (IODA), seeking to establish a definition of “obscenity” in order to empower law enforcement “to identify and prevent obscenity from being transmitted across state lines,” according to the senator’s website.
From the text of the bill:
The term ‘obscene’ or ‘obscenity’, when used in a manner or context that explicitly refers to, or could apply to, a picture, image, graphic image file, film, videotape, or other visual depiction, includes a picture, image, graphic image file, film, videotape, or other visual depiction that —
(i) taken as a whole, appeals to the prurient interest in nudity, sex, or excretion;
(ii) depicts, describes, or represents, an actual or simulated sexual act or sexual contact, actual or simulated normal or perverted sexual acts, or lewd exhibition of the genitals, with the objective intent to arouse, titillate, or gratify the sexual desires of a person; and
(iii) taken as a whole, lacks serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value.
Reason senior editor Elizabeth Nolan Brown lambasted the bill for “making[ing] a mockery of the First Amendment.”
If passed, she explained, this statutory language “could render all sorts of legal sexual content illegal,” because it established “the definition of obscenity so broad that it could ban even the most mild pornography, and possibly even more.” Comments by Lee and Rep. Mary Miller (R-IL), the sponsor of the companion bill in the House, made clear their intent includes targeting online pornography, and making it easier to arrest and prosecute those who sell, publish, distribute, ship, receive, import, or transport this “obscene material” — now redefined as “virtually any depiction of human sexuality,” wrote Brown.
It’s also yet another agenda item drawn from Project 2025, which included proposals to redefine sexual education content as pornography and make pornography illegal.
While obscenity is one of the rare exceptions to the free speech protections of the First Amendment, thus far, there has been no federal law passed that specifically defines the term.
First Amendment scholars are extremely skeptical that such a bill could survive a court challenge. “It really struck me that there’s nothing about that definition that I think would survive constitutional review,” said Robert Corn-Revere, chief counsel at the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression. The trouble, however, is that the law could still “cause a lot of damage as the cases played out,” wrote Brown, because it would take years to get lawsuits filed and work through the appellate process.
In the meantime, however, social media users reacted exactly as one would expect in response to a conservative Republican senator sponsoring a bill to essentially ban porn.
Below, a sampling of tweets:
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