Transcript
Ally (0:01)
Ellison berry was a 14 year old who was the victim of an AI deep fake pornographic image of her being circulated around her high school. Her story is tragic and compelling, but God has used it as a launch pad for really important legislation that has passed Congress called the Take It Down Act. Today we're not only hearing from her and her mom why this legislation is necessary, but also we're going to set it up with some really important context about what is happening in the pornography industry right now and how Christians should view all of this. This episode is brought to you by the Olive App. See what is really in your food. You're going to be surprised. You'll also be equipped to make better food decisions for you and your family. It's really helped us go to your app store right now and download the Olive App for free.
Ellison Berry (0:58)
Foreign.
Ally (1:04)
Hey guys, welcome to Relatable. Happy Thursday. Hope everyone is having a wonderful week so far. Okay, we've got to talk about some serious stuff today, some dark stuff today, but it's really important, especially as parents, that we really understand what's going on. And like we talked about with Andrew Clavin earlier this week, looking at objective evil straight in the eyes is, can be really important in drawing us towards what is good and right and true. And when we confront the reality of evil, we can either become paranoid or we can become anxious, we can become fearful ourselves, or we can be strengthened. We can realize that part of the reason that God has placed us on this earth is to make the world around us better, better for his glory and the good of those he has placed in our lives. And one of the things that the church has done best for thousands of years that we have to take the mantle up on is the defense of children, is the defense of those who do not have a voice. That includes embryos in a lab, that includes babies inside the womb, that includes children outside of the womb. And unfortunately, a tale as almost old as time. Certainly when we look back thousands of years, we see this in the pagan world, the trend of using children for sexual gratification and objectification. I've talked a lot about this book by historian Owen Bakke, When Children Became People, and he details just the horrible mistreatment of children in ancient pagan Greece and Rome. Sold into slavery, they were sent to exposure Hills when they were unwanted newborn children. They were literally placed on these hills to die from things like hypothermia or being eaten by wild animals. Or they were sold into slavery or into sex slavery. They were used by the powerful by the rich as prostitutes. Awful, awful treatment of children. And it was the introduction of Christians 2000 years ago, their gospel, their what was at the time, the upside down world view that changed everything. Not only for children, but for women, for the poor, for those truly on the margins of society. Ancient pagan Greece and Rome said, the Logos is what determines someone's worth. Your full ability to reason and to rationalize. And only the adult free male was seen as having that capacity, whereas children were seen as not having that capacity. So they were viewed as. As subhuman and they were treated as such. But Christians coming in with this concept of the imago dei, coming in with this radically equalizing gospel, that everyone is equally dead in their sin and can be made alive by grace through faith in him, that changed everything. And as the centuries passed, the treatment of children went from subjugation to a place of special dignity because of their powerlessness, because grace. Christians serve a God who came to earth as an embryo, who was welcomed by the kicks of an unborn. John the Baptist, who was welcomed into the world as a newborn, who as an adult said, let the little children come to me, even against the protestations of his disciples. That is the Jesus we serve. And not only that. Jesus is described in John 1 as the capital L, Logos, the word made for flesh. So the capital L logos turned the pagan philosophies of ancient Greece and Rome on its head, who said, the lowercase l logos determines someone's worth, but the capital L logo says no, Your worth is determined by me and the Christians who believed that changed everything for children. And it is still our task to do so today as we devolve into what seems like, at least from my perspective, paganism. Not even atheism, but paganism. As we allow and celebrate child sacrifice, we also see the subjugation and objectification of children. And we see that most prominently through places like pornhub. Nicholas Kristof is a reporter for the New York Times, and he has been a very brave reporter. I'm sure he is progressive in most ways, but he wrote an article, the children of Pornhub, back in 2020, which sparked a lot of change, positive change, both legislatively and just, in the industry. And he has published a new piece in the New York Times that came out just last week about how pornhub's employees actually deal with child sex abuse material. And if you don't believe in evil, you just need to read this article. So let me tell you a little bit about it. It's very relevant for our conversation that we're about to have with ell. So documents that were accidentally leaked to Nicholas Kristoff or they were leaked and then Nicholas Kristof got a hold of them. Show that pornhub posted videos tagged with terms like this is very disturbing. Like 12 year old with one video of 15 year old being this is very dark. It's even hard for me to say. But it's just the truth of what's going on. And if these children are enduring it, we have to be able to talk about it. This 15 year old was enduring gang rape. It was uploaded to pornhub and it was viewed widely, leading her to being shamed and dropping out of school. As you can imagine, it ruined her life. Pornhub delayed or avoided removing flagged child sex abuse material. So this was content that they knew was child sex abuse material with 706,000 videos flagged for review, some requiring 16 flags before taking action. And they didn't take action on many of these. So Kristof wrote that internal memos seem to show executives obsessed with making money by attracting the biggest audiences, including pedophiles. In one memo, pornhub managers proposed words to be banned from video descriptions such as infant and kitty, while recommending that the site should still include to allow brutal childhood force unwilling minor. One internal note says that a person who posted a sex abuse material of a child shouldn't be banned from the site because, quote, the user made money, made themselves money, made the company money. Staff acknowledged in these memos that the presence of child sex abuse material with internal discussions joking about it and debating whether to allow childhood as a search term. A class action lawsuit filed in 2023 exposed Pornhub's monetization of child sex abuse material with tags like young and teenager being highly profited and pornhub doing absolutely nothing about it. There are other parts of this, of this article that shows memos of pornhub employees joking about it. One employee saying we shouldn't CC our manager when we are talking about child sex abuse material. And the other employee says we don't want our manager to know about this. No, they didn't want people to know about this. The employees at pornhub know that their children and their babies that are being sexually abused on their website and they won't do anything about it, at least at the executive level, because it makes them money. And that is why they oppose every single regulation and every single form of protection that is out there, because they know that they are going to lose money on it and they see it as well. If there is a demand for it, then we will just supply it and it is immoral. I will wash my hands of this. Kind of like Pilot. If the people want it, I'll do it. But I'm not responsible for it. Pilot was wrong. Pornhub is wrong. Nicholas Kristof said that he has never received more death threats after an article than when he published the article in 2020 exposing how Pornhub monetizes child rape. He said that he's reported on terrorism, he's reported on extremists and gangsters, and never has he received more death threats than when he threatened the porn industry. And you think Imagine thinking that Satan isn't real. Imagine thinking that there isn't a print of the power of the air, the spirits that are now at work in the sons of disobedience says Ephesians 2. Imagine not believing in Ephesians 6 that there is a spiritual battle going on between good and evil. And imagine not having hope that we have a God who promises to come back and avenge the innocent. We have a God who promises that he is going to redeem all of it, that he is going to do away with evildoers and the main evil one forever and ever. Like imagine not having that hope. Like, aren't we so thankful for the gospel that God is going to do something about all of this? And in the meantime, we as Christians still have a lot of work to do. Quick pause to tell you about Seven Weeks Coffee, y' all. 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You'll get that box of coffee to your front door. Every month you save 15% when you subscribe. Plus when you use my code ally, you save an extra 10, 10%. So many savings and you are saving lives by buying coffee. It's just a win all around. Go to 7weeks Coffee.com, use code ALLY at. Check out that 7weeks Coffee.com code ALI. Now, this take it down act that we are about to talk about with Ellison Berry, we actually recorded this interview a while ago. So I have an update for some context before we get into that conversation, but just to give you a little intro about who she is. She was 14 years old, a student at Alito High School in Texas, when a classmate took an image off of her social media where she was fully clothed and used AI to make it look like she was naked. So these deep, fake, naked pictures of her, the perpetrator was a 15 year old classmate. He also created these fake images of seven other classmates. And this was a really difficult thing, obviously for her and her family, but also in the hesitance of the school and authorities to really try to find a way to do anything about it. Ellison Berry joined President Trump as a guest at his speech before Congress a few months ago as he talked about what really is a bipartisan issue and that is protecting people, especially minors, from the predation of pornography and these kinds of deep fake images. So her story is really compelling. This is an important one for parents. You need to know what's going on. Without further ado, here is Elliston and her mom, Anna. Okay, before we get into the conversation with Elliston, which we recorded a few weeks ago, I want to give you an update on this Take It Down, Take It Down Act. It was just signed by President Trump into law on Monday. Melania Trump has been a big supporter of this legislation. As you will hear, Ellison and her mom Anna were a big part of the passage of this bill. And we should be very grateful to President Trump for signing it into law. You'll hear more about it now and the dangers that led to the need for this kind of law. So thank you, President Trump, for making this happen. And also you'll hear how grateful we should be to Alison and her mom for their courage as well. So without further ado, here is Ellison Berry. Allison and Anna, thank you so much for taking the time to join me. First, I just want to start with your story. Can you take us back to what happened?