The War on Porn Regular Updates about the Assault on The Adult Industry
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It feels like the walls are closing in a little more every week. As age-verification laws continue to reshape—and in some cases dismantle—the adult industry, a Utah lawmaker has now stepped forward with a bill that would slap a new tax on porn sites operating in the state. It’s the kind of proposal that makes you pause, reread the headline, and wonder how we got here so fast.
Introduced by Republican state senator Calvin Musselman, the bill would impose a 7 percent tax on total receipts “from sales, distributions, memberships, subscriptions, performances, and content amounting to material harmful to minors that is produced, sold, filmed, generated, or otherwise based” in Utah. If passed, it would take effect in May and require adult sites to pay an additional $500 annual fee to the State Tax Commission. According to the legislation, revenue from the tax would be directed to Utah’s Department of Health and Human Services to expand mental health support for teens.
A new strain of American conservatism is asserting itself more boldly, and lawmakers across the US are calling for tighter restrictions on adult content. In September, Alabama became the first state to introduce a porn tax—10 percent on adult entertainment companies—after passing age-verification mandates that require users to upload ID or other personal documentation before accessing explicit material. Pennsylvania lawmakers are also exploring a proposal that would tack an extra 10 percent tax onto subscriptions and one-time purchases from online adult platforms, despite already charging a 6 percent sales and use tax on digital products, two state senators wrote in an October memo. Other states have flirted with similar ideas before. In 2019, Arizona state senator Gail Griffin, a Republican, proposed taxing adult content distributors to help fund a border wall during Donald Trump’s first term. To date, 25 US states have enacted some form of age verification.
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Efforts to criminalize sex workers and regulate the industry have been unfolding for years, accelerating alongside increased online surveillance and censorship. Yet targeted taxes have repeatedly stalled, in part because the legality of such measures remains deeply contested.
“This kind of porn tax is blatantly unconstitutional,” says Evelyn Douek, an associate professor of law at Stanford Law School. “It singles out a particular type of protected speech for disfavored treatment, purely because the legislature doesn’t like it—that’s exactly what the First Amendment is designed to protect against. Utah may not like porn, but as the Supreme Court affirmed only last year, adults have a fully protected right to access it.”
Utah, Alabama, and Pennsylvania are among 16 states that have adopted resolutions declaring pornography a public health crisis. “We realize this is a bold assertion not everyone will agree on, but it’s the full-fledged truth,” Utah governor Gary Herbert tweeted in 2016 after signing the resolution. Utah’s early response to the spread of adult content dates back to 2001, when it became the first state to establish an office focused on sexually explicit material by appointing an obscenity and pornography complaints ombudsman. The role—often referred to as the “porn czar”—was eliminated in 2017.
“Age restriction is a very complex subject that brings with it data privacy concerns and the potential for uneven and inconsistent application for different digital platforms,” Alex Kekesi, vice president of brand and community at Pornhub, said previously. In November, the company urged Google, Microsoft, and Apple to adopt device-based verification across app stores and operating systems. “We have seen several states and countries try to impose platform-level age verification requirements, and they have all failed to adequately protect children.” To comply with existing mandates, Pornhub has blocked access to users in 23 states.
Critics argue that age verification has never truly been about protecting children, but about quietly scrubbing porn from the internet. In 2024, a leaked video from the Centre for Climate Reporting showed Russell Vought, a Trump ally and Project 2025 coauthor, describing age-verification laws as a “back door” to a federal porn ban.
Platforms like OnlyFans and Pornhub have pushed sex work further into the mainstream, but they’ve also made it easier to monitor and police both performers and audiences. As states consider new tariffs and penalties, it’s creators who are most likely to absorb the shock.
The cultural conservatism taking shape under Trump 2.0 is driven by a desire to punish sexual expression, says Mike Stabile, director of public policy at the Free Speech Coalition, the US adult industry’s trade association. “When we talk about free speech, we generally mean the freedom to speak, the ability to speak freely without government interference. But in this case, free also means not having to pay for the right to do so. A government tax on speech limits that right to those who can afford it.”
OnlyFans says it complies with all tax requirements in the jurisdictions where it operates, while creators remain responsible for their own tax obligations. Pornhub, which is currently blocked in Utah and Alabama, did not respond to a request for comment.
Douek points out that while states can regulate minors’ access to explicit material following the Supreme Court’s decision upholding Texas’ age-verification law, “a porn tax does nothing to limit minors’ access to this speech—it simply makes it more expensive to provide this content to adults.” A 2022 report from Common Sense Media found that 73 percent of teens aged 13 to 17 had viewed adult content online. Today, much of that exposure happens through social media platforms like X and Snap. A recent survey from the UK’s Office of the Children’s Commissioner found that 59 percent of minors encounter porn accidentally—up from 38 percent the year before—mostly via social feeds.
In Alabama, as would be the case in Utah, revenue from the porn tax is earmarked for behavioral health services, including prevention, treatment, and recovery programs for young people.
Last year, Alabama state representative Ben Robbins, the Republican sponsor of the bill, said adult content was “a driver in causing mental health issues” in the state. It’s a familiar claim among lawmakers advocating for a nationwide porn ban. While some studies suggest adolescent exposure to porn may correlate with depression, low self-esteem, or normalized violence, medical experts have never reached a clear consensus.
As lawmakers increasingly frame the issue around harm to minors, Stabile says it’s crucial to remember that adult content is not a special category outside the bounds of free expression. Courts have repeatedly struck down content-specific taxes as unconstitutional censorship.
“What if a state decided that Covid misinformation was straining state health resources and taxed newsletters who promoted it? What if the federal government decided to require a costly license to start a podcast? What if a state decided to tax a certain newspaper it didn’t like?” he says. “Porn isn’t some magical category of speech separate from movies, streaming services, or other forms of entertainment. Adult businesses already pay taxes on the income they earn, just as every other business does. Taxing them because of imagined harms isn’t just dangerous for our industry—it’s a dangerous expansion of government power.”
