(HuffPost) Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) reintroduced a bill earlier this month that would broadly redefine what content can be classified as “obscenity” in an attempt to criminalize pornography, a move that’s drawn comparisons to the right-wing initiative Project 2025. “Obscenity isn’t protected by the First Amendment, but hazy and unenforceable legal definitions have allowed extreme pornography to saturate American society and reach countless children,” Lee said in a May 8 release introducing the Interstate Obscenity Definition Act.
Lee’s bill has striking parallels to Project 2025, an initiative from the conservative Heritage Foundation that laid out policy blueprints for President Donald Trump’s second term. Despite Trump’s attempts to distance himself from Project 2025, he has placed key architects of the project into influential positions in the federal government. In the 920-page playbook, the Heritage Foundation claimed pornography “has no claim to First Amendment protection” and should be outlawed, MSNBC reported.
“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,” text from Project 2025 reads.
Lee’s bill would broaden the legal definition of “obscenity,” which is not protected by the First Amendment, to any material that “appeals to the prurient interest” in nudity or sex, “depicts, describes or represents” sexual acts and “taken as a whole, lacks serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value.” Any content that lawmakers feel meets the criteria could be defined as obscenity, meaning its transmission across state lines, including on the internet, could be criminalized under federal law.
The bill’s definition of obscenity is “so broad” that it could apply to media like the HBO Max show “Game of Thrones,” Ricci Joy Levi, president of the Woodhull Freedom Foundation, told Reason.
In an MSNBC op-ed, Jacob Mchangama and Ashken Kazaryan of the Vanderbilt University think tank The Future of Free Speech argued that the bill has implications that go way beyond pornography.
“It empowers the federal government to police speech based on subjective values,” they wrote. “When lawmakers try to enforce the beliefs of some Americans at the expense of others’ rights, they cross a constitutional line — and put the First Amendment at risk.”
This is the second time Lee has introduced the bill. The legislation was first introduced in 2022, but failed to pass. Mike Stabile of the Free Speech Coalition, a nonprofit, non-partisan trade association for the adult industry, told Vice at the time that the organization saw the bill as a threat. “Our members understand this for what it is: It’s a threat to their business, to their livelihood. It’s a threat to their community,” Stabile said.
The bill’s co-lead in the House is Rep. Mary Miller (R-Ill.), who said in the announcement that the legislation would “equip law enforcement with the tools they need to target and remove obscene material from the internet.”
While critics of the legislation see it as a serious danger, many on the internet are making fun of the bill, some by recalling the time Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) liked a hardcore porn video on Twitter.
