How Pornography Bans Are The FIRST STEP Toward Authoritarian Control
IF you’re here, you probably think that erotic content is pretty cool and you want to have the freedom to consume it. If that’s true, then you need to take a moment to read this, because the right that you have—that all Americans have—to consume the content that you want is at risk. The most important amendment to our United States Constitution has never been threatened as it is in this moment.
Pornography is always the first battlefield. From the Comstock Act all the way up to FSC v Paxton, certain groups have seeded actions in the United States government to restrict the freedom to produce and consume “pornography.” The recent decision made by a highly partisan Supreme Court in FSC v Paxton has landed the first major blow against your right to consume erotic content in decades. You now have to give up private information to a third party—stoking fears and rumors that your data may be leaked or that you’ll end up on a list of “porn watchers.” Whatever your fears*, the point is that you’re being overburdened by the government to privately enjoy the entertainment that you want to. All in the name of “protecting the children.”
Before I get into “protecting the children” we need to start with the why. Why is this happening? Why go after porn?
Crackdowns on pornography provide the pretext for broader censorship
Erotic art and sexual expression always comes under attack from groups and regimes that want to wield power over others. It’s an easy target with which to leverage social control, moral authority, and institutional dominance. Groups with authoritarian aspirations must convince you, living in a free society, that giving up your freedoms to them is good for you. They must show you that the thing you do is bad—bad for you, bad for your children, and bad for society. So first they must control your personal behavior—and where better to start that control than in your bedroom. It’s the first step in eroding your personal autonomy, normalizing oversight and compliance, which will make you more pliable to broader control measures.
Targeting sex work and pornography also helps them suppress dissent. Restricting sex work and pornography disproportionally impacts marginalized groups (e.g. women and nonconformists). Criminalizing and stigmatizing these groups limits their economic independence, justifies surveillance and enforcement of punitive measures under the guise of “public safety.”
Further, crackdowns on pornography provide the pretext for broader censorship. The infrastructure used to surveil and regulate adult content can be repurposed easily in order to censor any other speech or entertainment that the authoritarian regime deems “harmful to society.”
The Supreme Court’s decision to allow Texas and other states like it to demand sites like mine “verify your age” or risk civil and/or criminal penalties has literally opened the door to censoring free speech overall.
And it is all being applauded by both left and right because it “protects children.”
I want to take a moment to emphasize that I do not condone children accessing pornography. But let’s be real. Adolescents will access pornography one way or another. Sadly, this law is likely going to push them into sites that do not create or host pornography ethically—bringing back dangers that have been largely eradicated from the adult industry. The best barrier to keeping kids away from porn is good parenting, followed by putting all explicit content behind a paywall (I’m looking at you, Tube Sites).
The people who have created this “protect the children” argument against internet pornography and paved the way for censorship to take hold know these bills on age verification won’t actually be effective. There is plenty of data and research to prove this. Hell, even Mark Zuckerberg came out against its effectiveness and called for device-based age verifications instead.
The organizations that pushed this argument and formulated the plan to make site-implemented age verification don’t care about protecting children at all. They care about banning porn so they and their like-minded cronies can further their authoritarian agenda. Quite a statement, I know. So who are “they”?
The first age verification bill to become law was Louisiana’s HB 142, sponsored by Representative Laurie Schlegel. She attested that her inspiration for flooring the bill was listening to a 2021 interview on the Howard Stern Show where Billie Eilish discussed the negative impact of being exposed to porn at age 11. The actual interview was quite subdued, and while Eilish’s comments were damning to porn in general, her remarks were certainly not worthy of the sensationalized headlines that followed.
These headlines are what NCOSE—the National Center on Sexual Exploitation—zeroed in on. NCOSE, it is important to note, was formerly known as Morailty in Media and rebranded itself to NCOSE in 2015. “National Center” of course makes the average person think that it is a government institution—which it absolutely is not—and therefore whatever they say must be true and for the good of the nation. Think again.
The bigger the lie and the more often you repeat it, the more it will be believed.
Morality in Media began in the 1960s and has a sorted history of directly consorting with Christian Nationalist organizations and figures. Morality in Media at its inception explicitly endorsed “Judeo-Christian** precepts” and “traditional family values.” Its early mission focused on combating obscenity, which it linked to societal issues like atheism, homosexuality, juvenile delinquency, and moral decay, though these claims then and now lack any empirical evidence.
In the 1980s, Morality in Media affiliated itself with the Christian Coalition, a key player in the religious right. They also joined the “Coalition for Marriage” which opposed LGBTQ+ rights and further aligned with Christian Nationalist goals of preserving the heteronormative, Christian-centric society. MIM/NCOSE’s campaigns against same-sex marriage, sex education, and decriminalization of sex work mirror Christian nationalist priorities of resisting “moral relativism” and “social liberalism.” These positions align with the Christian nationalist aim of curbing progressive ideologies like LGBTQ+ rights. The group’s rhetoric, such as equating pornography with societal decay or linking it to issues like “high school sex clubs,” attempts to incite a fear of a cultural shift away from traditional Christian values.
MIM/NCOSE’s focus on protecting a Christian vision of family and morality aligns with Christian nationalist narratives that view America as a “Christian nation” threatened by secularism and progressive values. This is evident in their opposition to the 1962 Supreme Court ruling banning school-sponsored prayer (Engel v. Vitale), a turning point for Christian nationalists, as it galvanized activism against perceived secular encroachments.
The group has a long history of advocacy for laws that enforce moral standards through legislation, a strategy akin to Christian nationalist efforts to influence public policy with religious values. So do we really believe that Representative Schlegel was “inspired” by a brief section of Billie Eilish’s Howard Stern interview? Or was she actually lobbied by NCOSE to help restore Christian values in America?
Full stop.
Let’s take a moment to acknowledge that America is NOT a Christian nation. It’s the exact opposite, because you know what else is in that lovely, beautiful First Amendment? The freedom to choose your religion. The founding documents of this country—the Declaration of Independence and the US Constitution—emphasize a secular (non-religious) government and individual liberty. Congress is prohibited from making laws establishing or restricting the exercise of any religion. Many of the founding fathers that the Christian Nationalists put up on a pedestal were deists or skeptics of any organized religion.
Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 has so far been the most successful implementation of Christian Reconstructionism since its inception by Rushdoony.
And yet, here in 2025, we are speeding toward a theocracy. The vehicle for that theocracy? The Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025, which the anti-porn legislation is taken directly from. And while our President decried Project 2025 and assured voters that he wasn’t going to execute it—the writing is on the wall, folks. Many of Trump’s political appointees are contributors to Project 2025, and have implemented policies taken directly from it. It is estimated that 36-42% Project 2025 objectives have been executed, depending on what analysis you read.
The attacks on porn? On Project 2025, page 5: “Pornography, manifested today in the omnipresent propagation of transgender ideology and sexualization of children… 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.”
Co-author Russ Vought, now Director of the Office of Management and Budget, discussed on a hidden camera that age verification laws were a pretext to shut down porn sites.
So what do you think fans? Should the Black Label Beauties and I all wind up in a jail cell together? More importantly, do you want your freedoms stripped? Do you want this to be America or some hell like Gilead?
Remember: targeting pornography is the first step in conditioning you to accept authoritarianism. This is the goal of the authors and executors of Project 2025. Project 2025 represents the sum of all the efforts of Christian Nationalists throughout our history—who’s goal is to conduct a “reconstruction” of the United States. The roots of this largely come from a 1973 doorstopper called The Institutes of Biblical Law penned by one R.J. Rushdoony.
Rushdoony, a Calvinist theologian, advocates in Institutes for the application of Biblical law in all aspects of society. Biblical law—which contains things like the stoning to death of delinquent children and homosexuals, condones slavery, and subjugates women to men. This is the America that Rushdoony called for, and the one that Christian Nationalist groups that sprung from his seed have strived to implement. One of those groups was the Heritage Foundation, co-founded by one Howard Phillips, an early follower of Rushdoony and patron to Rushdoony’s Chalcedon Foundation.
Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 has so far been the most successful implementation of Christian Reconstructionism since its inception by Rushdoony. It’s been genius how they have done it under the guise of “conservative policy.” Yet as we compare the two, Project 2025 and Rushdoony are hauntingly similar in their approaches to restricting free speech and pornography. Both clearly desire to align society with Christian moral standards. Both view certain speech (e.g., blasphemous or progressive) and pornography as threats to family and societal stability, advocating for governance to enforce restrictions. Rushdoony’s vision is explicitly theocratic, relying on biblical law, while Project 2025 uses pragmatic policy tools within a democratic framework, targeting “woke” speech and online pornography. The project proposes policies that could indirectly limit certain types of expression, particularly those associated with progressive ideologies. While Project 2025 avoids explicit calls for censorship, its focus on using the Supreme Court, reshaping federal agencies, and empowering conservative values within the government have already lead to policies that indirectly suppress speech opposing those values (e.g., through funding cuts to public media or regulations targeting online platforms). The latest win for Project 2025 are the SCOTUS rulings in not only the FSC v Paxton decision, but also with Mahmoud v. Taylor.
Rushdoony saw pornography as a symptom of secular humanism’s moral decay, undermining the family as the core unit of a godly society. He advocated for porn’s prohibition in a reconstructed Christian society, where local communities would set standards to eliminate such content; this has been realized with the FSC v Paxton decision. States, not the federal government, now have the power to decide what is obscene, “harmful to children,” and can require burdensome barriers to accessing expression it deems counter to their local standards.
Project 2025 further proposes cracking down on “Big Tech’s complicity in distributing pornography,” advocating for stricter regulations on online platforms to limit access to pornographic content. It frames pornography as a “public health crisis,” aligning with conservative arguments that it harms families, children, and societal morality—which in reality, no empirical evidence exists to support such arguments. The policies enforcing age verification, restricting access to explicit content, and potentially penalizing platforms that fail to comply are already underway. As of writing, 21 states have passed age verification laws. Three more are pending. There is no standard to these laws—they vary state to state. Civil litigation is underway in Kansas against multiple websites.
“Do you think I believe in the fairy tales I feed the boys? No, my friends. These are tools—levers to move the hearts of men.”
It won’t stop with erotic entertainment. Project 2025 also emphasizes protecting children from “inappropriate” content in schools and libraries, which could extend to censoring materials deemed pornographic or sexually explicit—even if they’re just text. This was partially won in Mahmoud v. Taylor.
All of this is manifesting before your eyes. A nation that once stood for freedom is being turned into an authoritarian theocracy. This shift is being manipulated by the real deep state—funded by families with names like Coors and Koch—under the guise of “purity,” “law and order,” and the “Christian values that our nation was (not!) founded on.” Making invasive age verification the law of the land has now opened the door to censoring anything else deemed objectionable. The architects of this shift to authoritarianism are right in front of you. They lie to your face and you believe them. You’ve voted for your own destruction and you don’t even know it.
“In the big lie there is always a certain force of credibility; because the broad masses of a nation are always more easily corrupted in the deeper strata of their emotional nature than consciously or voluntarily; and thus in the primitive simplicity of their minds they more readily fall victims to the big lie than the small lie, since they themselves often tell small lies in little matters but would be ashamed to resort to large-scale falsehoods.” ~Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf.
In other words, a massive, audacious lie is more likely believed because people assume no one would dare fabricate something so outrageous. What we are witnessing is directly out of Hitler and Josef Goebbels’ propaganda playbook: The bigger the lie and the more often you repeat it, the more it will be believed.
Here’s the lie: We must protect children from pornography, so we must burden adults who choose to consume it and the sites that display it. So we’re going to create this mechanism and allow states to decide and attack what is objectionable.
The definition of what is objectionable can change tomorrow. And soon, if left unchecked, that mechanism can be used to erode other expression. Before you know it your freedoms are gone.
This masterful manipulation, pulling at your heartstrings “for the sake of the children” has been sold to you and our politicians on both sides of the isle by organizations and actors who wish to turn America into a theocracy. Billionaires dead set on keeping control behind the scenes are who fund these organizations like NCOSE and Exodus Cry (#traffickinghub/Laila Mickelwait). The best tool for them to use in keeping their control is religion and the fear of God—by keeping the “guilt” stigma alive. Control your bedroom and you’ll get used to being controlled, then they can control the rest of you. All so they can stay in their ivory tower and you can keep making them rich with your labor. That, ladies and gentlemen, is what it is all about.
“Do you think I believe in the fairy tales I feed the boys? No, my friends. These are tools—levers to move the hearts of men. The truth is too heavy for most; they need illusions to act. I give them a glimpse of heaven and they will die for me, thinking it is for God. The key is obedience, not faith.” ~Vladimir Bartol, Alamut
We have lost this fight. Don’t lose the next one.
*I want to assure all our readers and subscribers, that the age verification service Black Label uses, Yoti, does NOT store your PII data. IF you have to submit identity documents, they are not stored anywhere. There is no risk that your identity will be compromised. It’s a pain in the ass, but it’s safe.
** “Judeo-Christian,” a term that conservatives love to throw around, is a complete misnomer. Christianity is at odds with Judaism in many ways. Christianity experienced in America today rejects much of Judaism, and Judaism does not believe that we are “saved” by the Messiah—they believe the Messiah hasn’t come yet. “Judeo-Christian” is just word salad that actually makes whoever says it sound like an idiot.