WASHINGTON — Indiana Sen. Jim Banks is sounding the alarm about an “explosion of obscene pornography” ravaging the internet and imploring the Justice Department to crack down on it.
The Hoosier State Republican urged Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche to reconvene the DOJ’s Obscenity Prosecution Task Force, which was dissolved in 2011 under the Obama administration.
“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,” he pleaded with Blanche in a Tuesday letter seen by The Post.
The Bush administration had established the task force in 2005 to go after the dissemination of hardcore pornography. Banks previously made an entreaty to the first Trump administration to revive that initiative.
Banks argued that the situation has grown more urgent in the time since his 2019 letter to the DOJ due to the growth of pornographic content.
“Most of the 4 million creators on OnlyFans, a subscription service for adult content, sell pornography. An additional 370 million users buy this content,” Banks explained.
“OnlyFans has been exposed for allowing minors to sell explicit videos and for featuring child sex abuse content,” he added. “The site hosts other kinds of extreme and dangerous sexual content, including videos involving bestiality, incest, and acts that demean women.”
Banks said, “It is neither healthy nor safe for sexual content to be so pervasive.”
The senator noted that many porn sites often lean on social media companies such as TikTok, YouTube, and Instagram to promote their explicit content.
At the federal level, porn is allowed to be used by consenting adults in the US. Before it was dissolved, the Obscenity Prosecution Task Force had pursued hundreds of cases.
Supreme Court precedent on the First Amendment has established the so-called Miller test to determine if explicit content rises to the level of obscenity, including an appeal to the prurient interest, being patently offensive, and lacking value. Material has to fail all three prongs to be deemed legally obscene.
Prior to that, there was the famous “I know it when I see it” test from Justice Potter Stewart.
“It is a crime to create and disseminate child pornography, as well as content that is obscene for adults,” Banks noted. “It is also a crime to knowingly display obscene content for children and to mislead minors into viewing adult content or adults into viewing generally obscene content.”
“I urge the Justice Department to re-establish the Obscenity Prosecution Task Force, prosecute illegal content to the fullest extent permitted by current Supreme Court doctrine, and end this scourge once and for all,” he concluded.
The Post reached out to the Justice Department and OnlyFans for comment.
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