The Hypocritical Logic Behind Republican Plans to Ban Online Porn (Unless You Pay $20)

Draft bills in 13 state legislatures would require all internet-enabled devices to come installed with an anti-porn filter, which adult consumers could choose to have removed for a fee of $20. They’re calling it the Human Trafficking Prevention Act. The Daily Beast does a nice job today of exposing the huckster behind this legislation, a 40-year-old EDM musician and anti-porn crusader named Chris Sevier who tried to marry his computer in protest of same-sex marriage, was released early from an Iraq tour for mental-health issues, sued Apple over the dissolution of his marriage, and has been charged with harassing a teen girl as well as country singer John Rich.

Beyond Sevier’s questionable and colorful past, however, a bigger question remains: why are so many state lawmakers—overwhelming Republican—supporting this sort of nonsense? A cabal of legislative cheerleaders from Alabama to Wyoming has embraced the idea that we should require manufacturers of computers, tablets, iphones, smart TVs, and the like to equip devices with the anti-porn filters and require consumers to pay to remove the filters from their devices. South Carolina state Rep. Mike Burns, who co-sponsored one bill in his state, told the Beast that they “do not want more taxes. Period. But we are trying to make a statement, and $20 ain’t gonna kill anybody.”

But of course it’s not only monetary costs to consumers that are are a concern. The porn-filter proposal would also impose costs on product makers, and even steeper costs on U.S. civil liberties. “The way it’s written, it would cover your router. It would cover your modem,” said Electronic Frontier Foundation researcher Dave Maass. “Plus, now Best Buy is sitting on a database of people who wanted their porn filters removed.”

And then there’s question of how the filters would decide what is and isn’t porn—content filters designed to catch explicit content have historically been harsh on all sorts of sexuality-related content, from educational websites to news to art.

Conservative lawmakers seem to support anti-porn proposals like this one because they please certain segments of their electoral base, give people easy fodder against lawmakers who vote in opposition (how does it look at a glance to be against the Human Trafficking Prevention Act?), and aren’t generally a political dealbreaker for those who oppose the plans. The porn-filter laws might irk some or seem silly, but like Rep. Burns said, “$20 ain’t gonna kill anybody.”

This justification might make sense if the idea was simply a tax on porn consumers. But the porn-filter bill is explicitly packaged as a response to porn being a “public health hazard” and “cancer on society” that “perpetuates a sexually toxic environment” in America, normalizes violence against women and children, “portrays rape and abuse as if such acts are harmless,” promotes “problematic or harmful sexual behaviors,” and “increases the demand for sex trafficking, prostitution, child sexual abuse images, and child pornography.”

If Republican lawmakers really believe that online pornography is a public health crisis that directly contributes to human trafficking, isn’t $20 to access an unlimited quantity of it a bit low? Why shouldn’t such a scourge just be banned entirely? Much like liberal counterparts who declare Donald Trump a fascist/Nazi/white supremacist and themselves the #Resistance and then demand more government control of broadcast media, arts funding, etc., conservative lawmakers demonstrate an extreme dissonance of rhetoric and response here. It leaves open three possibilities:

• Republicans really believe that internet porn is a public health crisis that ruins relationships and directly leads to human trafficking—and also that paying $20 absolves one of moral responsibility for such matters.

• Republicans believe porn is a public health crisis that causes sexual exploitation and the $20 fee proposal is just a ploy to get the law passed and filtering mechanisms in place with minimal objection, after which it will be much easier to mandate a fee increase or make it a crime to override the filter.

• Republicans don’t actually believe that porn is a public health crisis that causes human trafficking.

Take your pick.