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Them Before Us Podcast
Them Before Us #068 | Them Before Us & Our Supreme Court Brief | The Fight to Protect Kids Online
00:32:06
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- [00:06]
Jen Friesen
Hey, everyone. Welcome to the Them Before Us podcast. I'm your host, Jen Friesen, and today we're joined by founder and director, Katie Faust and our engagement director, Patience Sunny to talk about something pretty important that is happening in this week or the next few weeks. The Supreme Court is looking at a case that Texas is, I think, being sued by some people within the porn industry and some other folks because Texas made an age verification requirement to access pornography sites. And people got mad about that. But them before us is involved because we were asked to and joined, joined Texas in support of the age verification law with an amicus brief. So Katie and Patience are on today to just inform all of you about it. Inform me about it. So, ladies, welcome to the show.
- [01:06]
Katie Faust
Thank you so much. This is one of my favorite podcasts. I just love it when I see your episodes load in my, you know, Apple podcast app. So really, really honored to be with you today.
- [01:18]
Jen Friesen
Especially when you're on it, or maybe a little less. You're like, what did I say?
- [01:23]
Katie Faust
Yeah, more interesting when I don't know what's going to happen.
- [01:27]
Jen Friesen
Yeah, exactly. Patience, can you give us sort of a summary of what the case is about?
- [01:34]
Patience Sunny
Absolutely. So Texas is one of a number of states now that have passed laws requiring age verification if you're going to be accessing pornography websites. And in response to Texas's law, a group of, they call themselves the Speech coalition, but really this group has been around for about 20 years and they have only existed for the sake of protecting the pornography industry. It's a coalition of people who are in the so called adult entertainment industry. And they challenged this law, saying that it's a threat to their free speech. So Texas is going to the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court's going to consider whether or not this very common sense child protective law is going to stay in place. So what we've done is we've submitted an amicus brief that means friend of the court saying, hey, here's why we think it's really important for this law to stay in place. And what we do in our brief is we walk the court through what children are being exposed to on these websites and how they're being hurt by that. So we give the court a very candid explanation of what could be accessed by a child who just visits the homepage of one of these websites. And then also we talk about the ways that pornography use impacts children, especially when they're seeing it at a young age. The average age of first exposure in the United States right Now is only 12 years old, and that's the average. So there are kids younger than that accessing these sites as well. And children who access pornography sites and regularly view pornography are more likely than their peers to. To engage in problematic sexual behavior. And also, what we're seeing as the first generation that grew up with access to online pornography is reaching adulthood is that they've really internalized some very troubling ideas about what normal sexuality looks like, including research from 2022 shows that one third of female college students experienced choking and strangulation in their most recent sexual encounter. So that's not ever. That's their most recent encounter, likely with the partner that they're still currently with. And that's the way that this industry has just completely distorted the mindset of an entire generation.
- [03:57]
Jen Friesen
Even if you could, you know, people who are. There's been a bit of a movement now to say, let's call it sex work, let's make a distinction and call it ethical and all. Okay, let's say you could actually make sure it was ethical, meaning people are not being abused. People are not being forced and coerced into doing things they don't want to do or trafficked or being, you know, riddled with drugs. And then, okay, let's say you could separate all that. At the very least, then these sites are hosting minors. They're hosting abuse. A lot of this stuff. It can be sort of like, filmed and made at home and uploaded. And I believe pornhub has been busted numerous times for how little moderation they're doing. I think there's even been people saying, you know, they work as a moderator. But it's like, well, it's so much. And there's too many things to do that they sort of give up. So it's interesting that we can't even get sort of widespread agreement that we should go after the things that are. No one should think is ethical. The children, the abuse, the. All these things. And instead, now we have to argue about, well, adults should have the right to do this and that in the privacy of their bedroom. Katie, what do you think?
- [05:16]
Katie Faust
Well, I think one of the. So there's a wonderful, powerful coalition of people that are fighting to support Texas's law, which is one of 19 states that have enacted age verification laws. Very interesting that wherever we see these laws enacted, places like pornhub choose to withdraw from the state completely. So when we say, hey, when we people that stand for child protection and the policymakers that are implementing these laws say, you just have to ensure that anybody that accesses your content is over 18. They would rather lose access to their customer base who is 18 to 88, than lose access to their customer base that is 8 to 17. So that should tell you something about the industry and what they want. They want to create lifelong consumers of their product. And so what is it that the kids are going to find when they go to these websites? Well, Patience has already talked about there's a lot of violent content there. But we actually go into quite a bit of detail in our brief because we don't want the justices to have any confusion about what it what kind of quote, unquote speech they would be protecting if they were to side with the supposed Free Speech coalition. What kind of speech would it be? Would a 12 year old be able to stumble upon nearly by accident? Well, right now the most popular genre of porn is step porn pornography that has to do with stepmother, stepson, stepfather, stepson, stepbrother, stepsister. And so there's a lot of incestuous content on there. I submitted an article to Newsweek where I highlight one aspect of our brief that talks about how there's a certain genre of porn that is really similar to anime, which is incredibly popular among teens and preteens. And this form is called hentai porn. And it very often involves sex with girls and mythical creatures that if those creatures were to be real and those sex acts recreated would actually like rip the woman's body apart because, like, the phalluses are so large. And so we wanted to make sure that when the justices made this decision, they're not talking about Michelangelo's David. That's not what we're banning here. We are banning gang rape, which is also a very popular category on pornhub's offerings. And so we just wanted to make it very clear that this is not just artistic representations of male female relationships. This is some of the most damaging, deranged, dangerous content. And it is having a very real effect on the children who watch it.
- [08:12]
Jen Friesen
Yeah, we had John Schweppe from I think the American Principles Project, who wrote the pornography chapter for Pro Child Politics. So if you haven't gotten that book yet and read that chapter, it's really good. And he has done a lot of work in trying to get these age verification laws in place in different states. And he talks about exactly like both of you have mentioned, you to get a lifelong customer, you need a child whose brain is not fully developed yet. And he said we would not stand for a. On the corner with the trench coat, with the hey kids, here's some really graphic, really disgusting, really illicit material and I'm handing it out to you in front of your parents. We don't say that that's free speech. We don't say that that's awesome and that should be protected and that adult has a right to that. We would protect kids from that. And he said, how is that different from basically these industries intentionally seeking your 8 year old online? And it's pop ups, it's little ads in their, in their apps and their games. Roblox, we've, I think we've talked about that computer game has all these crazy little side games and groups and chats. They were searching people's username just by Epstein and it was like hundreds of people with Epstein as their username and doing these things and pretending to be children so they can get access to your kids. Right. So this is a, it's not that when a 25 year old sees porn for the first time, it's not the same thing to their brain as an 8 year old. Patience. You have more thoughts.
- [09:50]
Patience Sunny
Yeah, absolutely. Because you know an 8 year old's brain is still forming and has a lot more plasticity than an adult's brain. And so those neural pathways really get cemented if a child is habitually using porn. And it does develop into an addiction and a much harder addiction to break than if they start viewing it as an adult. And so, you know, this law is just saying, hey, that shouldn't be happening to kids. This should be something. Kids should have a safe online childhood. And one of the things that's really striking is one of the testifiers in a Texas committee while this law was being considered pointed out that in many ways all of these filters and such are the privilege of the wealthy. The kids who don't have, whose parents don't have access to these filters are usually low income kids from broken homes. And the research shows that kids from broken homes are spending a lot more time on screens, a lot more time online. Which makes sense if you've got a single mom who's raising kids, she's working, she doesn't necessarily have the time to be making sure that her kids aren't spending all of their extra free time online. She may not have that availability and she may not have the tools and the budget to be investing in the best parental controls. Filters, you know, the ones that come built in to your smartphone or your tablet, those are pretty easy to get around. Most kids can get past those. So if you want an actual filter that's going to be helping make sure that your child's not accessing this content. It usually is something that you're going to be paying for that service because it took someone time and money to develop that tool. So it really is, if we say that parents don't need support in this, that it's just up to the parents to make sure that this isn't happening, then we're saying that a safe online childhood is the privilege of the wealthy. And I think that's really an unacceptable answer. And so Texas is absolutely right to be saying that kids deserve better online protection.
- [11:58]
Jen Friesen
Do you have thoughts on that, Katie?
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Katie Faust
Well, I want patients to explain because this was new to me when we got into this case. I want patients to explain that what it is that this law is doing is not identity verification, it is age verification. And so one of the objections of this free speech coalition is this is going to impede their access to this material, you know, or, you know, it's a violation of their privacy or something like that. And that's actually not what we're talking about here. We're talking about a pretty low barrier for them to access that video of that gang rape. So you can still access the video of the gang rape, but you're going to have to verify your age, but not necessarily your identity. So patience. Can you just explain for people that are listening, what's the difference there?
- [12:49]
Patience Sunny
Yeah, absolutely. So there is a distinction between identity verification and age verification because other countries have actually looked at various age verification laws. This was a big thing in the UK a couple years ago. So there are tools that exist where you can verify your age online through a third party. It's a secure website and usually it's not even using your id. It'll be using some other factor like, you know, do you have an account at a bank which means you have to be 18? Or sometimes just a facial recognition software that says, okay, the features of this face look to be an adult or sometimes even hands. They can take a video of someone's hands and say, yes, this is an adult, not a child. So it's a one time verification. You verify through a third party and then that becomes a cookie on your browser that then any of these adult content websites can look at and say, okay, this person's verified that they're over 18. So it's really a pretty low barrier to be able to get to this material. And it's not sacrificing people's identity information the way that many of the opponents of this legislation are saying. So the Complaints against this bill really don't stand up unless it really comes down to adults want to be able to access this content unimpeded and don't want to have to have that extra second of hey, if this is really bad for kids, maybe it's bad for me too. As they're waiting to get onto this website.
- [14:34]
Katie Faust
Yeah, like so. So let's just explain the trade off here. An adult can still get whatever they want, but they might need to do a one time verification where some technology looks at a picture of their hand and then it saves it on their computer so that in the future it will sort of trick like it will tip the scale so that they can have access to this content and that's too much of an impediment for them before they then go on. Or maybe it's just a little scratch of a slight conviction that they don't want to have to deal with and because they don't want that minimal inconvenience or even the suggestion that maybe this isn't something that you should be jumping on after your wife goes to bed or whatever it is the trade off is instead the 9 year old is going to be sucked into a world of gay porn or trans porn, or hentai porn, or scatological porn or sex with your step parent porn and become a lifelong addict. It is the ultimate us or them. Will the adults do a minimally hard thing so that children don't have to? Or will the adults get the complete free for all with nothing impeding their fetishes? Fascistic, not fascistic fetish. Ish arousals. And as a result the child may be saddled with lifelong sexual dysfunction, addiction and distortion in their own future relationships. This is one of the easiest put them before us that we're ever going to find in the pantheon of choices between choosing the children or the adults.
- [16:25]
Jen Friesen
Yeah, I don't know if either of you remember, it might be in C.S. lewis's book mere Christianity, he talks about if you saw a society where people paid money and they went to a show and then it opened up the curtains and there was a chicken leg on a, on a plate and it was kind of moving around and people were like really riled up and really like excited about seeing this like chicken or food or like a banquet table, whatever he would say, you would conclude people were starving or had some kind of crazy view about food, Right? And then I think he talks about the way our culture is looking at sexual things and he said, but then you would say are they starving? But it's like, no, because you can access, like you're saying you can access every variety of every kind of thing so easily. And it's in our movies and it's in our music and it's in our tv and people can go to a club and find whatever they want. And it is interesting to me, how far do we need to go before like culture at large starts seeing that it's not working? We've talked about people aren't getting married, people aren't even having sex anymore. People are not pursuing healthy, any kind of even just like healthy in, in like a secular view. What would. A secular, secular view is basically consent is the only thing you need.
- [17:43]
Katie Faust
Well, a secular view is, you know, my, my 17 year old is in the midst of his sex ed class, which now he's in high school. I'm like, oh my gosh, go like tell me everything that they say and like shred them, you know, so it's amazing because they'll say, you know, the healthy perspective. Because that's what he's getting, right? He's getting a full serving of the healthy secular perspective, which is have sex, this is good for you, but use protection, don't get pregnant, make sure that you use condoms, STIs are bad. And like that's the healthy perspective. And what we see is we've got the largest generation of the youngest virgins, you know, from teens to 20 year olds to 30 year olds of, of men especially, that have never had sex before. Like what we are seeing is actually an overriding of one of the most ingrained and robust appetites in the, in the male drive now. And it is largely because they're not even interacting with real life women anymore. All of those interactions have been replaced with screens. And so we can look at that and say, great, there's fewer people having sex outside of marriage. But it actually is an indictment on a society that is removing these critical aspects of what it means to be human. And we're seeing it reverberated in the, in the young generation. I mean, and you ask like, how long is this going to need to go on? Well, we've got the first ever recorded epidemic of impotence in 20 year old men. Why? It's because they've actually totally tapped out their adrenal system that is responsible for sexual arousal. They have, they've exhausted it and so they are no longer able to be aroused when there's a real genuine sexual encounter. So we can get into like porn and how it contributes and Escalates and addicts and all of that. But the bottom line is we are seeing society wide, I would say civilizational threatening fallout from the fact that we are allowing screens to not just enter our children's worlds, but then so terribly distort them.
- [19:49]
Patience Sunny
Well, it's interesting. Go ahead.
- [19:52]
Jen Friesen
I was just going to say, like any drug, you need more. It's altering your brain, and you need more and more and more and more and more variety. And that's where a lot of these just abhorrent versions, like you said, fetishes are arising because you need more and more things to make it interesting. And that's what, you know, even see that in popular culture, people will say, well, was it boring? And oh, you need to make it interesting, and there needs to be more and more things added. But really, in essence, it's more and more degradation needs to be added to make it interesting versus, like Katie's talked about, when you just love the one person and you have the intimacy and you have the security and the safety, and every time you have sex, you're looking at that person. So you have the. What do you call them? The monogamy goggles. Yeah, yeah. So the chemicals are designed to make you connected to that person versus now it's connecting you to a 2D image on a screen of someone you don't care about, you're treating as an object you're discarding. You brush your hands with it, move on to clear your browser, and you move on. And nobody wins when that happens. Nobody feels good about that. Go ahead. Patience.
- [21:02]
Patience Sunny
Yeah, I was just going to say, going back to the, you know, even from a secular perspective, the kids are not okay. And it's interesting, you look at the 90s, there was so much, oh, no, the kids aren't okay because there's so much teenage sex happening. And now there are sociologists saying, oh, no, the kids aren't okay because, you know, even well into their 20s, they're not even dating the opposite sex, much less, you know, having intimate relations with them. And, you know, it's really a pendulum swing where, you know, we had the one extreme of sexual licentiousness, and now we have this other extreme. And in both cases, there. There isn't that commitment to one individual. There isn't a. A healthy sexuality happening there. There's just these extremes. And it makes me think you brought up the CS Lewis quote about a culture that stares at a piece of food instead of eating it. CS Lewis also had a really good quote. I forget the exact wording but how? If you have an entire harem at your disposal in your mind because of the images that you've consumed, then why settle with being satisfied with the one woman that you're married to? And the research does show that pornography is a significant factor in relational breakdown as well as, you know, mental health, body image, you know, how a person feels not just about the person that they're in a relationship with, but also how they feel about themselves. And I think we're absolutely seeing that in Gen Z and Millennial adults, where we have two generations in a row now that are really struggling with mental health, that are really struggling with relationships, that are struggling with stability, that are struggling with self worth. And it's not incidental that these are the generations that have grown up with immediate access to pornography throughout their childhood.
- [23:01]
Jen Friesen
Yeah. Maria Baer wrote our digital technology chapter for Pro Child Politics, and she made a point, I think, like what Katie was saying of, you know, when you have a pool in your backyard, think an Arizona or something, every single house has a pool. There's generally some accepted, some, some kind of required practices. Everyone needs a fence. It makes it harder for the adult to get into the pool. That's how it is. But it's worth it because it's protecting the two year old from falling into the pool. And she was saying tech companies really could do a service to parents by defaulting to the most restrictive. So when you open your iPhone, it's up to the parent to release some of those privileges versus a parent trying to dig through every kind of setting to figure out, how can I possibly get my kid not to fall into. And Katie, maybe you could speak to this too. We would also, you know, a lot of the comments when we posted about this on TikTok were very well, this is the parents job and we don't want the government watching what we do. And it was more those privacy arguments. But this would, these are conversations parents need to be having before your kids get exposed. And that is a big protective thing. So maybe, Katie, you could just share, you know, if a parent is thinking, shoot, I have a 6, 7, 8 year old, we have an iPad, we have, we thought we have stuff locked down. But it's not just the, it's not just your tech, it's also that conversation you can have with your kids. So before they get exposed to something, what, what are the, some of those conversations they could have?
- [24:28]
Katie Faust
Well, obviously whenever there is a screen introduced in their life, especially something that's fairly regular, you have to tell your kid that porn exists. Hey, there's a lot of screens in your life. Sometimes you might see a picture of a naked person or somebody having sex that's going to make you feel yucky. That's called porn. If you ever see it, you can come and talk to me or your dad, okay? That's all you need to do. You don't need to go into all of the debauchery that they would find there, but you need to give them a heads up that something like that exists. And then the next thing I tell my kids soon after that is, you may not be looking for porn, but porn is looking for you. And so you'll see it in unexpected places and it's going to surprise you. It's going to come out of nowhere. And if that happens, you just drop the tablet, shut the computer and just come get me. Don't try to deal with it, just come and get me. And that has been useful at times. But I'll tell you the other thing too. Like I'm like on this as a mom and I, my husband and I tried to give our kids a heads up and we're no idiots. Like, especially when our kids are young, they weren't on a device on their own. But I remember the first time, my gosh, what was he probably 6 year old son saw porn. And it was because we were at my mom's house on her computer looking for coloring pages. Because you can like Google My Little Pony coloring pages and it'll give you an outline and you choose the one you want, you print it off and the kids color it. So much easier than carrying a coloring book around with you. So my son was really into Star Trek, so he was like, okay, Star Trek coloring pages. So then you hit the images and then you can, I mean, I'm no idiot. I'm looking through the images, right? And then I look through it and I say, you take a look and let me know which one you want. And I went into the kitchen, I was chatting with my mom, blah, blah, blah, blah. He comes back like five minutes later, he's like, okay, I found the one that I want. And I went in and he's like, it was so weird because some of those pictures had, you know, Captain Kirk naked. And it was an opportunity to practice my no flinch response. I'm like, oh, thanks so much for letting me know, honey. That's not where it's supposed to be. And that's called porn. I'm so sorry you had to see that. And he left the room and I'm like so mad because I thought I was doing everything I needed to do. Like I had talked with him about it. He told me, which is great, but like I had looked things over ahead of time, but he had scrolled obviously beyond where I had scrolled or taken it, some click that I had not clicked on. So do parents need to be aware? Yes. Does technology and like filters have a role in this? Yes. Should we do everything we can to make sure that a six year old cannot stumble upon graphic videos and images that can addict them and redirect their brain development? Hell to the. Yes, we should.
- [27:27]
Jen Friesen
Yeah. So maybe I don't know which of you might know this, but. So is, is a Supreme Court justice reading what we wrote?
- [27:37]
Patience Sunny
Yes. So the Supreme Court receives all of the arguments from the defense. From the side that's challenging, they read through all of that and they also receive a whole stack of amicus briefs like ours. So I forget the exact number, but there was, I think a couple dozen for and against submitted. So the justices are reading through those, their clerks are reading through them. A lot of times clerks will kind of do first, first reading on some of the things and then flag for justices. Hey, here's what you should look at. But typically justices will also read, you know, all of the evidence, all of the research. They're, they're good about doing due diligence. So yeah, they're, they're going to be reading what we submitted and hopefully weighing those arguments as they're looking at this case. Another thing that happens is sometimes there will be an amicus brief that one side or the other really wants highlighted and they'll reference it in their oral arguments. So we'll see if that happens. Oral arguments are coming up on the 15th. For any of our listeners who are in the D.C. area, there's a rally outside of the Supreme Court supporting Texas's age verification law at 8:30 the morning of the 15th. So if you're there, it'd be great if you show up and show support for really great laws that protect kids. You probably won't get into the, the Supreme Court chambers. You typically have to get tickets in advance for that and I think it's already filled up. But those are also going to be available online. You can watch the whole proceedings and you'll, you'll find out if our brief gets quoted.
- [29:18]
Jen Friesen
Wow, that's pretty cool and pretty amazing. Yeah. For people who are our supporters and have followed them before us, you're seeing that we're making a difference. We're presenting an argument that is not maybe widely used, that children protection. Child protection is a reason to have these sorts of laws in place, like Katie, so eloquently and passionately just laid out. Thanks, everyone.
- [29:43]
Katie Faust
You want expertise. That's why we brought patients. You want, like, some righteous fire? I'm here all day.
- [29:50]
Patience Sunny
Thank.
- [29:51]
Jen Friesen
Well, I said thanks, everyone, but I mean, thanks to both of you for your work on the brief and for sharing it with our listeners. Any final thoughts before we wrap it up?
- [30:00]
Katie Faust
I'll just say we're so grateful for your support because this brief was actually something that among the coalition said, somebody needs to write this brief. And there were a lot of organizations that totally agree with it but wouldn't touch it because our brief was appropriately explicit, because we didn't want the justices to think that this is artistic expression. It is not. And so we were, I think, the precision tool needed for this case at this time and this message, because it absolutely is a them before us issue and because we are not quite as institutional as some of the other organizations that are working towards this, because we're a little more indie and a little bit more on the edge of being able to take some risks, we were able to put together a brief that I think is actually going to be incredibly useful when both the arguments are taking place and when the clerks are reading them over and flagging things for the justices. It's shocking and they deserve to be shocked. And if we hadn't submitted this brief, that angle of the argument might not have been as apparent. So if you support us, thank you. We're able to do things that a lot of other organizations are not able to do that are going to have a very real impact on defending children's life, family, mind and body.
- [31:29]
Jen Friesen
Yeah, well, I'm going to have to mark this podcast explicit, but yeah, it's. It's necessary because we have to talk about some of these things so we can be well equipped to fight it. So I hope all of you listening enjoy this conversation. Maybe send this to somebody who doesn't know what's going on. And like Patience said, you can follow what's happening at the Supreme Court. I'm gonna. We're posting this one today so you'll have it in time for the things happening next week. So thanks, everyone, for listening. Thanks for joining the Them Before Us movement.