Drew Wilson Was Right: Lawmaker Pushing to Outlaw Porn Possession

Drew Wilson warned that age verification could easily expand. With an effort to criminalize possession, it looks like he was right again.

When the age verification debate was first being brought up, I had long warned that the push to age gate “porn” has no hope in stopping at just preventing minors from viewing pornographic websites. For example, clear back in 2021 (yes, I’ve been making this argument for at least 4 years now), I wrote that these efforts to censor the internet can only expand from there into other areas. Here’s what I wrote all those years ago:

Obviously, the criticism of this is going directly at the amount of damage it would cause not only for free speech, but privacy and the Internet free market. This over top of the fact that such a censorship push always leads to other kinds of content being actively censored. It’s the famous scenario of when you have a hammer, everything looks like a nail.

While many simply either ignored this prediction or simply dismissed it as just crazy talk, those words alone turned out to be downright prophetic, punctuating a typical “Drew Wilson was right” moment. The prediction was so crazy accurate that it is borderline comical. As the age verification laws got passed in multiple jurisdictions, lawmakers around the world began wondering where to expand their new found censorship powers. This includes contemplating age verification laws on video games, social media, and even in app stores in both the US and in Europe.

Of course, it’s not just expanding age verification into other areas of the internet, but rather, expanding how the government plans on censoring anything deemed “pornographic”. For example, supporters have long fully admitted that age verification laws are actually little more than a stepping stone for a full porn ban. It’s worth repeating that everything about this is blatantly unconstitutional. What’s more, supporters of this push for censorship are also doing this as a backdoor way of suppressing LGBTQ+ content among other things they personally find objectionable.

It’s kind of incredible just how prophetic my own words were all these years later. What’s more, the many ways I wound up being ridiculously right just keeps adding up. Today, we are learning that one lawmaker is pushing legislation to make “possession” of pornographic material a criminal penalty worthy of 10 years in prison. Don’t worry, as asinine as that sounds, in reality, it’s much worse than that. From TechDirt:

Oklahoma state senator Dusty Deevers has introduced a slate of bills that would impose his “moral sanity” on the state’s residents, whether they want it or not.

It starts with this statement, which strongly suggests Deevers just really wants to run an op-ed service that is backed by the force of law.

Together, these bills set a course for pushing back against the moral decay foisted upon Oklahoma by the far-left’s march through our institutions to destroy the moral foundations upon which the United States and Christian Civilization had long rested.

Yeah, about “those bills.” It starts stupid, goes evil, goes even stupider, and then settles into a groove that pairs evil with stupid in equal measures.

First, there’s the “Abolition of Abortion Act,” which would allow the state to criminalize the use of morning after pills and other such options, even if they’re not provided by entities subject to Oklahoma State laws.

That leads directly to Dusty’s anti-porn efforts — efforts that claim they’re about preventing CSAM before moving on to make it clear anyone involved in the free exchange of ideas in this particular marketplace is just another criminal in need of jailing. It goes beyond targeting porn producers, performers, and porn sites. It also treats end users as criminals.

The bill also prohibits pornography in general, providing for criminal penalties of up to 10 years in prison for production, distribution, or possession. It also provides heightened 10-to-30-year criminal penalties for organized pornography trafficking.

What’s not explained is what “possession” means in this context. Is this dad’s box of Playboys that’s been stashed in the attic for years? Is it the cookies stored by porn sites visited by internet users? Is it any image or video stored locally on an Oklahoma resident’s computer? Who knows? Deevers doesn’t care, so long as he gets to prevent adults from accessing content created by other consenting adults.

There’s also a bill that would saddle performers and producers of drag acts if any child (not defined) is present in the audience. This is followed by the “Covenant Marriage Act” that would allow residents (presumably only the married males) to opt into a “covenant marriage” that would hamper attempts to dissolve this marriage other than for “abuse, adultery, or abandonment.” Those opting in would get a $2500 tax credit. Those who don’t just get to remain married, but without this additional credit. In Sen. Deevers’ own words, people who chooses to “opt out of the no-fault divorce scheme” are more equal than others in the eyes of the state’s tax laws.

Welcome to the dystopian world of the United States. There’s so much wrong with all of these efforts by the lawmaker that it’s difficult to really know where to begin.

First of all, much of the content the lawmaker is going after is constitutionally protected speech. Standard pornographic material, when it is produced with consent, is legally protected speech.

Second of all, as Tim Cushing pointed out above, what counts as “possession”? When you view streaming content, that content is generally placed on the users device so that it can be properly viewed. As a result, does that count as “possession”? What about images being viewed online? Temporary files are typically stored on the users device so that the image can be shown on a given website. Does that count as possession?

Thirdly, what about movies that contain adult scenes? How many people have Blu-Ray movies that they legally purchased that happened to have a rather, shall we say, “hot” scene? Could your Blu ray collection of TV shows such as Game of Thrones land you in prison? What about games like Far Cry 3, Mass Effect, or The Witcher 3? Would owning any of that land you in prison? I mean, you could reasonably argue that the purpose of all of the above isn’t necessarily pornographic, but does that even matter under the circumstances? Probably not. Heck, you could probably play a number of these games and never see a single one of those scenes, but again, does that even matter? Again, probably not.

The deeper you look at the concept of criminalizing “possession” of “pornographic” material, the more problematic it becomes.

Of course, for those on an anti-porn crusade, logic and reason doesn’t matter to them. They have their deeply held beliefs on how the world should operate and they are doing everything they can to force those beliefs on everyone. This regardless of how much you would object to the idea of having someone else dictating how you should run your life as a fully grown adult.

The thing about all of this is that those trying to dictate how everyone else should run their lives aren’t going to stop until they are forced to stop. Unfortunately, now that we are living under the Trump regime, they are going to be emboldened rather than discouraged. As a result, this isn’t going to be the limits to this insanity. If anything, I’m betting we are going to see some even more extremists efforts moving forward to crack down on civil rights moving forward. So, prepare your anus because the extremists are going in dry whether you want it or not.

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