New Bill Would Make All Pornography a Federal Crime in the U.S.

https://www.404media.co/mike-lee-porn-law-interstate-obscenity-definition-act/

32 comments

  1. Do we know how likely it is to pass? This guy try to pass this bill many times but has failed do far.

  4. For those who don’t want to log in:

    “Senator Mike Lee (R-Utah) recently introduced the Interstate Obscenity Definition Act (IODA), which would effectively criminalize all pornography nationwide by legally redefining what it means to be obscene. For years, “obscenity” has been all but a defunct legal category that narrowly defines speech that [remains unprotected](https://uwm.edu/freespeech/faqs/what-is-obscenity/) by the First Amendment. Lee would explode this legal category, expanding it to encompass virtually all visual representations of sex.

    According to [the bill text](https://www.lee.senate.gov/2025/5/lee-bill-establishes-obscenity-definition-across-states?ref=404media.co), “a picture, image, graphic image file, film, videotape, or other visual depiction” of any media that “appeals to the prurient interest in nudity, sex, or excretion” would be considered criminal. In other words, if you have an old VHS tape of some Cinemax-style smut stashed away in your garage, you could, under this law, be considered to be harboring deeply illicit materials. Some critics have suggested that Lee’s definition of obscenity is so ridiculously broad that it could effectively [criminalize *Game of Thrones*](https://reason.com/2025/05/12/republicans-want-to-redefine-obscenity/). That said, the punishments for merely possessing porn under the proposed law seem unclear at this point, as the legislation seems more focused on punishing the creators and distributors of racy material.

    The law would “pave the way for the prosecution of obscene content disseminated across state lines or from foreign countries and open the door to federal restrictions or bans regarding online porn,”

  7. Regardless of your feelings on it, pornography is a giant economic sector. The amount of money that goes to strip clubs, sex workers, and OnlyFans is probably larger than the budget of many states.

  8. Banning alcohol worked so well they want to try it with genitals?

  9. People who work in porn and related endeavors should go one strike for a week and the resulting outrage would be unimaginable. Anyone who voted for the bill would lose their next election.

  10. Seems like this was part of Project 2025. And in that document, librarians and educators would be charged as sex offenders for distributing books and materials on transgender subjects, and trans people and drag queens would be charged for distributing pornography by being in public. You can’t enforce this at a federal level without defining porn at the federal level, thus giving federal law enforcement, and not local, the power to arrest.

    It’s right there in Project 2025 ….

    [Project 2025 Tracker](https://www.project2025.observer/)

  12. So… GTA 5 (probably GTA 6) or bascially any video game with any nudity depicted in it would be illegal. Any TV show or movie that even suggests people are having sex (without showing any actual nudity) would be illegal. So, not only would actual pornographic videos on PornHub be illegal, but movies like Jerry Maguire, Basic Instinct… hell anything R-Rated (and a bunch of PG-13 films) would be illegal.

  13. You know, porn sites *did* have banner ads saying Republicans wanted to ban porn. Weird. I wonder why they thought that.

  14. >I’m fairly sure if they took porn off the internet, there’d only be one website left, and it’d be called “Bring Back the Porn!”

    Perry Cox, *Scrubs s3e4*

  16. Ah, the party of individual freedom and small government in action again…

  17. “Isn’t it a famous old story that the man who has to read all the pornography in order to decide what’s fit to be passed and what’s fit not to be, is the man most likely to be debauched?”

    – Christopher Hitchens – On Free Speech

  19. Has anyone told Mike Johnson and his son about this yet?

  20. They know this won’t pass. It’s to look good to certain people, like they’re doing something about the corruption of society. It’s also a strategy of just chipping away, chip chip chip, not getting everything they want but whittling away our freedoms piece by piece.

  23. No birth control. No porn. Spread em ladies, you’re gonna be baby machines so America can have that cheap supply of labor in the sweatshops.

  24. The quiet part is that LGBTQ representation is often considered to be pornographic by the religious right.

  26. And what exactly is pornography? A man and a woman railing each other? Two gay people holding hands? Two gay people having sex? A woman in a bikini? Michelangelo’s David? A drawing of a girl in a swimsuit? A drawing of a girl in jeans?

    You all know good and well what purpose this has, and it has nothing to do with porn. This is a ploy to label anything they don’t like as obscene. It serves only to take away freedom of expression by saying it is evil.

  27. Seems to me this is a play for the

    Porn is Illegal
    Being Trans/Homosexual in public is porn
    Being Trans/Homosexual is illegal
    Send them to the camps

    Pipeline

  29. Their king cheated on his wife with a pornstar. These people are delusional.

  30. The definition of “porn” will probably be broad enough to include gay and trans characters in movies, books etc.

  31. Yall need to PAY FUCKING ATTENTION cause you are acting like this is actually about pornography. Its not. They want to erase gay and trans people from society by making any mention of their existence ‘pornography’. You can read this in Project 2025.

  32. Everyone is missing the forest for the trees. This is not about getting rid of porn. It’s right there in the name of the bill. They want to legally, constitutionally redefine what is considered obscene. They will use this to label anyone or anything they consider a threat as pornographic. Trans people. Gay people. They’re trying to legislate away the LGBTQ community’s right to exist.

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