BIRMINGHAM, Ala., OKLAHOMA CITY, Okla., OWOSSO, Mich. — An Alabama op-ed by an obscure graduate student, a piece of legislation quietly introduced in Oklahoma and a clickbaity tech news item peddled by a small Michigan startup. These might seem unrelated items to an uninformed observer but they are all part of a propaganda blitz being unleashed by War on Porn crusaders during this electoral year.
The objective? To win the hearts and minds of candidates and voters through controlling the discourse around adult content in areas with hyper-centralized local news, powerful religiously motivated political caucuses and a culture of influential preachers.
As many sex workers and adult industry figures take to Twitter to express their frustration with censorship and constant attempts to sideline their voices from political and corporate discussions about their fates, the well-funded War on Porn movement continues doing what it has always done best: steadily feeding the public a diet of porn myths and sexual disinformation.
Their megaphones of choice? Local news outlets, state legislatures and houses of worship.
The Original Watchdogs of Our Great State
Today the website Al.com (highly ranked as a Google News source) published an opinion piece melodramatically titled “Every click on porn. Another victim.”
Penned by Jaclyn Wallace, described as a “student in the Master of Social Work program at Auburn University,” the piece features the usual tawdry collage of pseudoscience and religiously motivated, erroneous information and made-up anecdotes typical of War on Porn propaganda.
“Commercial sexual exploitation is a worldwide, multi-billion-dollar industry that victimizes millions every minute,” Wallace begins. “Victims are those forced into sex slavery, exploited through prostitution or used in pornography; however, there is essentially no difference between these three groups.”
If this ridiculous conflation sounds familiar is because it is one of the two cornerstones of the present-day anti-porn movement: human traffic (“sex slavery”) = sex work (“prostitution”) = adult content (“pornography”). This and the equally made-up “porn addiction” are the alpha and omega of this crusade, and one finds it in every single pronouncement from religiously motivated activists who are fighting for digital censorship.
“Many people falsely assume that pornography is some harmless fantasy that’s unable to cause real-life damage or have consequences for those involved,” Wallace continues. “Pornography consumers too often think that because someone is featured in porn, he or she consented to the violent sex acts in the film. However, what we don’t see is the director making serious threats or the actress being drugged just minutes before the camera started rolling.”
After this delirious fantasy, Wallace concludes with a vision of her porn-free utopia: “Together, we can decrease the demand for pornography, which reduces the supply of sex trafficking victims. If we refuse to click pornography and choose to fight for love, we can end commercial sexual exploitation together.”
These are not, however, merely the random musings of a sexually repressed zealot far from the centers of influence. Auburn University, where Jaclyn Wallace is allegedly enrolled, is Alabama’s second-largest research university. Al.com, where the piece is syndicated, is not a random news blog — it is the main online presence of the Alabama Media Group.
This conglomerate describes itself as “a digitally focused news and information company that combines the quality journalism of The Birmingham News, the Huntsville Times and Mobile’s Press-Register and the Mississippi Press with the up-to-the-minute access of AL.com and gulflive.com.”
Their properties are essentially local news monopolies or oligopolies, and the Birmingham News is the leading news source in the largest city in Alabama.
“We believe the news we deliver is important to the lives and culture of Alabamians and are here to serve our Alabama communities as the No. 1 news site in Alabama and as the original watchdogs of our great state,” is how the Alabama Media Group describes its mission.
These are the publications of record for voters, candidates and legislators passing the ridiculous bills declaring porn “a public health crisis” bigger than opioids or obesity.
There are currently 17 states that have declared such a crisis, with Ohio debating whether it will be the 18th after religious Republican representative Jena Powell recently introduced a bill prepared by War on Porn lobbyists.
Alabama is not one of those states yet, but editorials like Jaclyn Wallace’s are being planted as the groundwork for a sure-to-be-introduced “porn is a public health crisis” bill.
Puppies, Phones and Porn
The use and abuse by lobbyists of “copycat bills” across several state legislatures to drum up national support or condemnation for specific issues is the subject of another article today by Kristian Hernández and Pratheek Rebala from the nonprofit Center for Public Integrity.
The piece, titled “Puppies, phones and porn: How model legislation affects consumers’ lives” was published by The Oklahoman, and goes into detail about a new “model legislation tracker” tool developed by the Center for Public Integrity and a group of news sources.
“Earlier this year,” wrote Hernández and Rebala, “the Center for Public Integrity, USA Today and the Arizona Republic analyzed model statehouse bills to take the first nationwide accounting of how prolific copycat legislation has become.”
The CPI’s new model legislation tracker is designed to identify “copycat legislation by comparing statehouse bills to each other — and making that information accessible to the public.”
“The tool developed by Public Integrity reveals model bills — some previously unidentified — that impact nearly every aspect of American life, from who can grow hemp or breed puppies, to what can be called ‘milk’ or ‘meat’ for purchase at your local grocery stores.”
The authors point out another glaring example of “copycat legislation” being stealthily peddled state-by-state: the “porn is a public health crisis” bills.
“Model bills have even tried to mold the debate around some of today’s moral flash points,” wrote Hernández and Rebala. “For example, a model resolution, written by the National Center on Sexual Exploitation (NCOSE), declares pornography a public health crisis.”
“Utah Republican Gov. Gary Herbert first signed such a model resolution in 2016. Critics pounced, arguing the resolution promotes ‘pseudoscience’ by comparing the porn industry to the tobacco industry.”
“Nonetheless,” the article confirms, “porn-is-bad-for-your-health resolutions have since been introduced in at least a dozen states.”
The NCOSE is a religiously motivated group whose aim is to stamp out all “pornography” from American life.
The group’s definition of “pornography” is far out of any mainstream definition, encompassing Sports Illustrated and Cosmopolitan.
A Strong Battle Plan
This obsession with seeing porn everywhere and blaming it for all social ills is not a fringe attitude in War on Porn types. It is, in fact, the norm.
“Talk about porn to everyone — and regularly.” This is not the advice of an XBIZ news editor or a Chatsworth-based skin flick producer, but one of the main tips on an article published last week by Karen Potter, the director of Church & Ministry Outreach for Covenant Eyes.
Covenant Eyes is currently reaping the benefits of a flurry of mainstream media attention, most of which does not challenge the start-up's assumptions, methodology or dubious business model.
Covenant Eyes, the brainchild of religious activist Ron DeHaas, offers what they call “accountability software” from a small office in Owosso, Michigan, somewhere in the economically ravaged expanse between Flint and Lansing.
But this geographical fact does not mean that DeHaas’ ideological influence is limited to the non-urban Midwest. Yesterday, Washington D.C.’s Capitol Hill news outlet of choice, Congressional Quarterly, published a laudatory profile of Covenant Eyes in its Roll Call vertical.
“Evangelical groups are turning to artificial intelligence and machine-learning technologies to help their members fight addiction to online pornography in a budding industry that one scholar calls an emerging ‘purity-industrial complex’,” wrote CQ’s tech reporter Gopal Ratnam.
What Covenant Eyes sells is software, e-books and courses to help church congregations fight a supposed epidemic of “porn addiction” among their parishioners.
Karen Potter’s call to “talk about porn to everyone” is part of an article titled “3 Keys to Creating a Strong Battle Plan to Fight Porn in Your Church.”
“Many churches across the country are seeing the devastating effects of pornography on their congregations,” Potter begins. “Broken marriages due to virtual infidelity. Heartbroken parents who don’t know how to help their child who is already addicted to porn. The young, 20-something woman who can’t find a guy in college not watching porn. Even the young women are carrying secret burdens of watching porn themselves.”
“Everyone in your church is, in one way or another (and whether they know it or not), affected by the porn problem,” she writes.
The rest of the piece, which can be accessed on the Covenant Eyes website, is equally obsessive and paranoid, a trait Potter shares with her employer, Ron DeHaas.
DeHaas is not new to the “behavioral change through questionable methods” business. His “pray the porn away” startup Covenant Eyes uses the same template as countless failed “pray the gay away” schemes from previous decades.
None of the current accolades for Covenant Eyes — the Chicago Tribune just reprinted the Congressional Quarterly piece today — mention DeHaas’ biggest embarrassment. Around 2012-2013, the religious activist championed a repentant pornographer named Donny Pauling, who lectured with DeHaas about the evils of his former line of work.
“Over the past year Donny spoke boldly, warning people to flee pornography and uncovering the horrors of the porn industry. Early this year my team at Covenant Eyes interviewed him and published the transcript of the interview in our e-book ‘The Hardcore Truth: An Ex-porn Producer Reveals 10 Myths About Pornography’,” DeHaas wrote about the man he helped turn from juggs to Jesus.
“Thanks to a Christian encounter,” DeHaas added, “he was able to stop that production and instead spoke out against the industry. Instead of building the myths of pornography, he has shared the truth about the road to pornography and where it leads.”
But in 2014, Pauling was arrested for sexual assault of three minors, to which he admitted.
“I don’t know the details of the allegations, and I certainly don’t know if they are true or false,” DeHaas wrote at the time. “Only time will tell.”
“I will be praying for you, Donny,” he added.
Covenant Eyes, Ron DeHaas’ current panopticon startup charges churchgoers to input their porn usage and leave it in the hands of his small staff in the nondescript blight of Owosso, Michigan, so it can be shared with designated “allies.”
“Partner Up to Defeat Porn,” their website invites. “Your allies will receive comprehensive reports of your screen activity, lessening the temptation to look at porn.”
It might be that DeHaas truly believes that this nightmarish shaming device can really help someone like Donny Pauling stop the slippery slope from watching dirty movies to the most abominable dungeon.
Or maybe he’s just a War on Porn crusader trying to make a buck.
“As pornography infiltrates more areas of our lives, the church cannot keep ignoring this issue,” writes DeHaas' lead propagandist, Karen Potter.
“We need ongoing educational campaigns for parents, so they can help to protect and teach their children about the dangers of the Internet. We must equip high school and college-age singles to take a stand for purity in their friend groups and on their campuses. We have to provide support groups for men and women who have been struggling with pornography addiction. The list of must-dos is long, but essential.”
“So, you may be reading this thinking, ‘Wow! I don’t have the time, training, or staff to pull off something this massive,’ but guess what? Covenant Eyes has your back! We have a team of experienced and trained professionals who will help you and your team develop a plan to fight porn in your church. There’s too much at stake to wait — book a meeting with one of our Ministry Coaches today!”
Subscriptions start at $15.99/month.
