1984 in 2025? Michigan Law Aims to Outlaw Adult-Content – And Too Much That Isn’t
Health resources, non-sexual imagery, written erotica, trans expression, and more would be illegal
If passed, Michigan’s House Bill 4938, the Anticorruption of Public Morals act, effectively criminalizes anything on the internet that is “deemed to corrupt public morals.” For Joshua Shriver, the bill’s author, and his co-sponsors, Republican representatives Joseph G. Pavlov and Matt Maddock, such material includes “various forms of pornographic content and other depictions that violate the act’s standards.”
Penalties for violating HB 4938 include felony charges for anyone convicted of willingly distributing any material the state government says will be corrupting to adults, carrying a fine of up to $125,000, and/or imprisonment for up to 25 years.
Sex equals jail
Introduced in September of this year, HB 4938 still has a long way to go before landing on Michigan’s Democratic Governor, Gretchen Whitmer’s, desk—who, despite recently supporting her state’s new anti-deepfake legislation—is unlikely to sign it into law.
And if Whitmer should, for some reason, decide to sign it, there’s a high probability it’ll be subsequently thrown out due to its obvious Free Speech violations.
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However, the fact that HB 4938 was introduced to the Michigan House or representatives proves there’s a serious, organized, and ongoing threat to suppress not just adult content but potentially everything related to reproduction, sexual education, invaluable health-related resources, gender and trans expression—and anything people like Representative Schriver don’t like.
If you think that’s hyperbole, HB 4938 specifically targets:
Depiction, description, or simulation, whether real, animated, digitally generated, written, or auditory, that includes a disconnection between biology and gender by an individual of biological sex imitating, depicting, or representing himself or herself to be of the other biological sex by means of a combination of attire, cosmetology, or prosthetics, or as having a reproductive nature contrary to the individual’s biological sex.
If that’s not blatant transphobia, then I don’t know what is. Then there’s it having such vague terms, how could anyone differentiate between explicit materials from important sexual information sites? In short, if it has to do with sex, then, innocuous or not, it—and you—could end up in the bill’s crosshairs.
They know it when they see it
Sharing what might prove to be devastating ambiguity with many other anti-porn legislations, Michigan is also specific when it comes to sex or barely sensual depictions, including anything made “to sexually arouse or gratify, including videos, erotica, magazines, stories, manga, material generated by artificial intelligence, live feeds, or sound clips.”
Reading that—while you still can, that is—should send an extremely unarousing shiver down your spine. Spicy audiobooks? Illegal. Music with provocative lyrics? Illegal. Love poetry? Illegal. Video games with sex scenes? Illegal. Caught purring sweet nothings in your partner’s ear? Both of you, as well as anyone with whom either of you might have shared it, could be looking at a quarter-century in a Federal prison.
Sex equals hope
It would be easy—not to mention dangerously foolish—to dismiss HB 4938 as yet another attention-seeking, yet pointless attempt, by anti-sex zealots to appeal to their intolerant and ignorant base.
Much as we hate to admit it, we urgently need to wake up to the fact that there are a number of people in the United States and in many other countries who’d like nothing better than locking up or even executing you, me, or anyone “deemed to corrupt public morals.”
If there’s going to be a future where these sorts of misguided beliefs are relegated to the history books, we need to fight back. Case in point, let’s embrace the undeniable truth that consensual sex—and depicting it in movies, books, songs, stories, et al.— is fun and more than anything else makes us totally, absolutely, wonderfully human.
Starting with nonjudgmental, comprehensive sex education. As the World Health Organization (WHO) states, citing a three-year study on the subject, “Evidence consistently shows that high-quality sexuality education delivers positive health outcomes with lifelong impacts. Young people are more likely to delay the onset of sexual activity – and when they do have sex, to practice safer sex—when they are better informed about their sexuality, sexual health and their rights.”
Whether you’re offended by HB 4938’s assault on our inalienable rights, rightfully scared that you or those you care about could be arrested and imprisoned because of it, or just wanted to keep Representative Schriver’s hands off your dirty books, join us in condemning these and other attempts by similarly misguided bigots who keep trying to make sexual pleasure a criminal offense.
We can have a bright, beautiful, inclusive, accepting, and sexually knowledgeable tomorrow—but only if we do everything we can to make it a certainty and not a tragically remote possibility.
Image Sources: Depositphotos
