The War on Porn Regular Updates about the Assault on The Adult Industry
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WASHINGTON — The fight over online adult content never really disappears in Washington. It just changes shape, changes names, and circles back around again. This week, it arrived in the form of a letter from Sen. Jim Banks, an Indiana Republican urging the U.S. Department of Justice to revive federal obscenity prosecutions and take aim at platforms including OnlyFans.
The letter, addressed to acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, was first reported Tuesday by the New York Post.
“Ending obscenity prosecution was a mistake. With explicit content only a click away, there has never been a more important time to enforce our laws,” Banks wrote. Throughout the letter, he calls on Blanche and the administration of Donald J. Trump to restore the Bush-era Obscenity Prosecution Task Force and increase enforcement efforts targeting what he describes as “obscenity.”
“The porn industry has been complicit in child abuse and violence toward women while raking in billions,” Banks posted on X. “Obscenity laws are still good law. It’s time to restart obscenity prosecutions and protect children online.”
Banks points specifically to OnlyFans as an example of how, in his view, “online obscenity has proliferated.” He also repeats disputed claims that pornography harms “the mental and relational well-being” of consumers and exploits performers involved in its creation.
He further argues that “OnlyFans has been exposed for allowing minors to sell explicit videos and for featuring child sex abuse content. The site hosts other kinds of extreme and dangerous sexual content, including videos involving bestiality, incest, and acts that demean women. … It is neither healthy nor safe for sexual content to be so pervasive.”
A spokesperson for OnlyFans declined to comment on the letter. Still, earlier efforts urging the Department of Justice to investigate the platform and its parent company, Fenix International Limited, have not resulted in federal action. For critics of the effort, that history suggests the latest push may have more political symbolism than practical consequence.
The original federal obscenity task force was established in 2005 during the administration of George W. Bush. Its purpose was to pursue cases involving what prosecutors at the time classified as hardcore obscene material. But despite the attention surrounding it, the initiative struggled to produce meaningful results.
Legal scholar Geoffrey R. Stone, the Edward H. Levi Distinguished Service Professor of Law at the University of Chicago Law School, noted in a 2022 article for the First Amendment Law Review that federal obscenity prosecutions between 2001 and 2005 totaled fewer than 10.
That number remained largely unchanged until the task force was shut down in 2011. One of the best-known failures involved adult filmmaker John Stagliano, founder of Evil Angel. Stagliano was indicted in 2008 on obscenity charges but ultimately succeeded in having the case dismissed.
At the time, Mark Kernes reported that the judge overseeing the case described the prosecution’s evidence as “woefully inadequate.”
Banks’ latest letter does not reference the federal government’s past struggles in securing obscenity convictions. James Felton, who serves as legal counsel for the Adult Performance Artists Guild, said in an email that he sees the renewed push as distracting from larger policy concerns facing Congress.
“His actions intend to make a direct hit on free speech and the rights of performers to earn a living,” Felton said.
“OnlyFans and similar sites have provided a much-needed business opportunity for performers to earn a living at a time when the economy poses challenges for performers and non-performers,” he added. “Congress should devote its time to solving much more important issues than pornography.”
This is not the first time Banks has pursued the issue. He sent a similar letter to the Department of Justice in 2019, though no enforcement action followed.
Other lawmakers have also pushed federal authorities to investigate adult platforms over the years with little visible effect. Among them is Ann Wagner, a Republican congresswoman from eastern Missouri who has repeatedly urged the Justice Department to investigate OnlyFans and similar companies.
Wagner sent two letters in 2021 and later told Reuters in 2024 that OnlyFans was facilitating sex trafficking, though she provided limited evidence publicly to support the claim. Wagner also played a leading role in advancing the FOSTA-SESTA package through the House of Representatives.
The Bush-era obscenity task force was formally dissolved by Eric Holder during the administration of Barack Obama. Its responsibilities were folded into the Department of Justice’s Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section, commonly known as CEOS, which continues to oversee enforcement of federal record-keeping and obscenity-related laws.
