Freshman State Lawmaker Wants To Ban Porn In Oklahoma 

Free Speech

from the extremist-maga-lawmaker dept

A far-right state lawmaker in the Oklahoma state legislature has started his first term on the civil liberties shortbus. Sen. Dusty Deevers, a Republican lawmaker and Southern Baptist pastor, introduced a complete ban on consensual pornography despite its First Amendment protections.

Senate Bill 1976, sponsored by Deevers alone, features fascistic language looking to completely ban the viewing, production, and distribution of adult content that is otherwise legally produced. 

Any violations of the bill, if it were to become law, would make it a felony or misdemeanor if an individual violates these criminal provisions. According to the bill’s language, legal pornography which features one or more consenting adults over the age of 18 years would be defined similarly to criminal penalties for the morally bankrupt asswipes who produce and distribute child sexual abuse materials (CSAM) or cases of non-consensual intimate imagery (e.g., revenge porn, etc.).

Sen. Deevers intends to create entirely new definitions that would ultimately outlaw porn. Deevers uses bogus public safety terminology to sell the bill, which is at the moment being circulated among far-right Christian nationalists, white supremacists, and extremist anti-pornography campaigners to push the bill.

Senate Bill 1976 provides a definition for “obscene material” that isn’t related to CSAM or NCII:

“Obscene material” means and includes any representation, performance, depiction, or description of sexual conduct, whether in any form or on any medium, including still photographs, undeveloped photographs, motion pictures, undeveloped film, videotape, optical, magnetic, or solid-state storage, CD or DVD, or a purely photographic product or a reproduction of such product in any book, pamphlet,[…]magazine, or other publication or electronic or photo-optical format, if said items contain the following elements: a. depictions or descriptions of sexual conduct which are patently offensive as found by the average person applying contemporary community standards, b. taken as a whole, have as the dominant theme an appeal to prurient interest in sex as found by the average person applying contemporary community standards, and c. a reasonable person would find the material or performance taken as a whole lacks serious literary, artistic, educational, political, or scientific purposes or value. The standard for obscenity applied in this section shall not apply to child pornography.…”

Federal statutes and case law indicate that obscenity isn’t protected by the First Amendment. By this, obscenity is typically content that depicts illegal material that violates the Miller test. U.S. Supreme Court justices ruled in Miller v. California that material that is obscene but is defined by a judge or jury through a three-pronged test. The Miller test asks whether “the average person, applying contemporary community standards,” would find that a work is taken as a whole that appeals to a criminal prurient interest. The test adds that if the work depicts or describes, in a patently offensive way, sexual conduct or excretory functions specifically defined by applicable state or federal laws. Or that the work taken as a whole lacks serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value to the national culture and conversation. Something is obscene only if the judge or jury defines these three conditions are satisfied. Only then is the material in question obscene. 

Porn, as defined in Deevers’ bill, is not considered obscene given that pornography is protected speech.

Adult entertainment companies are regulated by the U.S. Department of Justice and are required by federal law to verify the age and consent of all performers and retain those records through a custodian of records. Any violation of these laws is punishable by federal criminal penalties. By no means does Deevers have a viable bill, given that it seeks to repress legitimate entertainment.

The Oklahoma bill also provides the following definition for “unlawful pornography”:

“[U]nlawful pornography” means any visual depiction or individual image stored or contained in any format on any medium including, but not limited to, film, motion picture, videotape, photograph, negative, undeveloped film, slide, photographic product, reproduction of a photographic product, play, or performance in which a person is engaged in any of the following acts with a person: a. sexual intercourse which is normal or perverted…b. anal sodomy, c. sexual activity with an animal, d. sadomasochistic abuse, e., flagellation or torture, f. physical restraint such as binding or fettering in the context of sexual conduct, g. fellatio or cunnilingus, h. excretion in the context of sexual conduct, i. lewd exhibition of the uncovered genitals in the context of masturbation or other sexual conduct, and j. lewd exhibition of the uncovered genitals, buttocks, or, if such person is female, the breast, for the purpose of sexual stimulation of the viewer.”

Excluding the depiction of bestiality, Senate Bill 1976 defines pornography as unlawful when, in reality, it is otherwise consensual in virtually every other U.S. jurisdiction — including jurisdictions with unconstitutional age verification requirements. In fact, there are some lawmakers in other states who are realizing that broadly applied age verification requirements could limit the rights of free expression and privacy adult entertainment consumers, producers, and creators are given. Deevers is toeing the company line for the Heritage Foundation and the conservatives who openly called for the revocation of First Amendment rights covering legal porn, content that isn’t pornography that deals with sexuality, LGBTQ+ rights and health information, and more. It is safe to say that this legislation follows the fucked worldview of Project 2025, which seeks to strip civil liberties and set back women’s and LGBTQ+ rights back by over five or six decades.

Deevers introduced the bill on his own. It is unlikely that the bill would advance given the First Amendment concerns. But it speaks volumes that a man who knows nothing beyond far-right Christian nationalism ideology feels so emboldened to criminalize legally protected expression.

Michael McGrady covers the legal and tech side of the online porn business, among other topics. He is the politics and legal contributing editor for AVN.com.

Filed Under: 1st amendment, adult content, dusty deevers, oklahoma, porn