The War on Porn Regular Updates about the Assault on The Adult Industry
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There’s a certain kind of political announcement that feels like the temperature in the room suddenly drops — and next week’s hearing in the House does exactly that. A subcommittee is gearing up to review a stack of bills aimed at protecting minors online, including the SCREEN Act, which would make age verification for adult content a federal requirement. It’s the kind of proposal that sounds straightforward until you start asking the obvious questions lurking underneath: Who verifies? How? And at what cost to everyone else’s privacy?
On Tuesday, Congressman Brett Guthrie of Kentucky, who chairs the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, and Congressman Gus Bilirakis of Florida, who leads the Subcommittee on Commerce, Manufacturing, and Trade, revealed the Dec. 2 hearing, pointedly titled “Legislative Solutions to Protect Children and Teens Online.”
“One week from today, this Committee will begin advancing a suite of online safety bills to address the challenges facing our kids in the digital age,” Guthrie and Bilirakis said in a joint statement. “Parents and lawmakers both agree on the importance of enacting meaningful protections that can stand the test of time, so we look forward to this important first step.” You can hear the bipartisan weariness in that last part — everyone wants to “protect kids,” yet nobody can agree on the mechanics.
The hearing will cover 19 different bills circling everything from privacy protections to gaming, messaging, algorithms, bots, and artificial intelligence. It’s a wide net, the kind lawmakers cast when they’re trying to grab the whole digital universe at once. The Kids Online Safety Act — still carrying the scent of its earlier “duty of care” controversies — sits near the top of the list, freshly softened after years of pushback.
But the bill with the sharpest edge for the adult industry is the one with the dramatic, almost sci-fi name: the Shielding Children’s Retinas from Egregious Exposure on the Net (yes, really) — the SCREEN Act.
When Republican Sen. Mike Lee of Utah introduced it earlier this year, the proposal echoed the age-verification mandates spreading through various states like a chain reaction. Under this bill, failing to comply with AV requirements would count as a violation of the Federal Trade Commission Act’s ban on unfair or deceptive practices — a move that opens the door to civil penalties up to $10,000 per violation. Just imagine the math on a busy website; it’s enough to make any operator dizzy.
Lee has long been one of Congress’ most outspoken anti-porn crusaders, consistently pushing measures to revive obscenity prosecutions and criminalize all forms of sex work. His SCREEN Act has drawn support from religious and conservative groups across the ideological map — and interestingly, from the Age Verification Provider’s Association, whose members would undeniably benefit from turning age checks into a global business model.
Earlier this year, industry attorney Corey Silverstein wrote a detailed breakdown of the legislation, pointing out that similar laws have already collided with constitutional limits and lost. History has a funny way of whispering warnings if you’re willing to hear them.
“If it is deemed too broad or restrictive, courts may invalidate it as unconstitutional,” Silverstein noted. “However, if the law is perceived as narrowly tailored — e.g., focusing only on commercial porn sites and clear, workable verification methods — it might survive such challenges.”
And that’s the tension that keeps repeating itself: the desire to shield children, the fear of government overreach, and a legal system forever balancing on the thin edge between protection and intrusion. The coming hearing won’t settle that — but it might reveal just how far lawmakers are willing to push the boundary this time.
