Donald Trump has pledged to do everything in his power to limit access to internet pornography if elected president.
The bipartisan nonprofit Enough Is Enough announced on Monday that the Republican presidential nominee has signed its Children’s Internet Safety Presidential Pledge, which outlines five broad anti-porn efforts Trump has effectively vowed to do as president.
The primary focus of the pledge centers on efforts against child pornography—illegal material that is not protected by the First Amendment. The pledge also demands the next administration’s Department of Justice leadership “aggressively enforce” laws requiring schools and libraries to filter out pornography and provide law enforcement and intelligence agencies with tools to investigate child pornography and sexual exploitation of minors.
The provisions, as outlined in the pledge Trump signed, are as follows:
If elected President of the United State of America, I promise to:
1) Uphold the rule of law by aggressively enforce (sic) existing federal laws to prevent the sexual exploitation of children online, including the federal obscenity laws, child pornography laws, sexual predation laws and the sex trafficking laws by:
a. Appointing an Attorney General who will make the prosecution of such laws a top priority in my administration and,
b. Providing the intelligence community and law enforcement with the resources and tools needed to investigate and prosecute internet crimes involving the sexual exploitation of children.
2) Aggressively enforce the Children’s internet Protection Act (CIPA) requiring schools and public libraries using government eRate monies to filter child pornography and pornography by requiring effective oversight by the Federal Communications Commission;
3) Protect and defend the innocence of America’s children by advancing public policies that prevent the sexual exploitation of children in a manner that is consistent with the government’s compelling interest in protecting its most vulnerable citizens, within the limits set forth by the First Amendment.
4) Give serious consideration to appointing a Presidential Commission to examine the harmful public health impact of internet pornography on youth, families and the American culture and the prevention of the sexual exploitation of children in the digital age.5) Establish public-private partnerships with Corporate America to step up voluntary efforts to reduce the threat of the internet-enabled sexual exploitation of children by the implementation of updated corporate policies and viable technology tools and solutions.
“Governments can’t parent and parents can’t enforce the law. Parents alone cannot prevent internet crimes against their children,” Donna Rice Hughes, president and CEO of Enough Is Enough, said in a statement commending Trump for his signature. She added: “Over the last two decades America’s children have paid an unnecessarily steep price for the lax enforcement of federal obscenity laws. Obscenity is not protected under the First Amendment, and the failure to enforce the law is harming children across the nation and around the world. Strong leadership to protect vulnerable children from unscrupulous internet pornographers, predators and traffickers must begin at the top.”
Obscene material is one of the murkiest categories under the purview of the First Amendment, particularly in an age when pornography from around the world is widely available in any state, city, or town in America.
Courts determine what is considered illegally “obscene” based on the so-called Miller Test, first laid out in the 1973 decision Miller vs. California. In that decision, the Supreme Court set “basic guidelines” for deeming material in violation of obscenity laws. All three elements of the Miller Test must be met for courts to find material lacking First Amendment protections.
- Whether the average person, applying contemporary community standards, would find that the work, taken as a whole, appeals to the prurient interest.
- Whether the work depicts or describes, in a patently offensive way, sexual conduct specifically defined by the applicable state law.
- Whether the work, taken as a whole, lacks serious literary, artistic, political or scientific value.
A spokesperson for Enough Is Enough did not yet respond to a request for clarification about what the group considers illegally obscene.
Trump’s signature on the group’s pledge follows the Republican Party’s official 2016 platform, which identifies pornography as a “public health crisis that is destroying the lives of millions.” The inclusion of that item follows a law passed by Utah lawmakers in April, which deemed pornography as detrimental to the “sexual health of future generations.”
Trump’s vows to push back against the spread of pornography as president fall before a backdrop of his comments and business investments that objectify women.
At this point, neither Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton nor Libertarian Party nominee Gary Johnson has signed the pledge.
“This is a bipartisan unifying issue in which we can all check our differences at the door for the sake of the children,” Hughes said in the statement. “I remain optimistic that Secretary Clinton will reconsider signing this important pledge and that Gov. Johnson will do the same.”