Oklahoma’s Anti-porn Bill Empowers Citizens to Police Sexuality—and Profit From It
SB 523 targets adult content while carving out exemptions for married couples
A Baptist minister serving in the Oklahoma State Senate, Dusty Deevers wants everyone except married couples to be prosecuted, fined, and imprisoned for any transmission, ownership, or viewing adult content. Unless, of course, you’re a presumably heterosexual married couple wanting to share spicy selfies.
According to XBiz, Deever’s proposed Senate Bill 523 amends existing laws, many already existing to prohibit underage sexual imagery and under eighteen access to adult content sites such as Pornhub.
Quoted in the article, Deevers claims “pornography is both degenerate material and a highly addictive drug” and his proposed law would “restore moral sanity.”
But it’s one thing to propose legislation against child pornography—something most people clearly support—and quite another thing to prohibit materials depicting every possible type of adult consensual sexual behavior.
In the eye of the legislator
Though SB 523 and the laws it intends to amend includes the oft-quoted definition of pornography as lacking “serious literary, artistic, educational, political, or scientific
purposes or value,” the law would also prohibit depictions of “sexual intercourse which is normal or perverted;” “oral and anal sodomy”; oral sex; masturbation; “lewd exhibition” of uncovered sexy body parts; bondage; and flogging.
“Acts of excretion in a sexual context” would also be prohibited, suggesting it’s okay to possess, view, or transmit depictions of bodily excretions that somehow aren’t sexual.
As Corey Silverstein, an adult industry attorney, told Xbiz, “Oklahoma’s SB 593 is one of the most ridiculous proposed anti-pornography laws that I’ve ever seen.”
Similarly quoted in Xbiz, Mike Stabile, Director of Public Policy at Free Speech Coalition, said, “Porn is the canary in the coal mine of free speech, and the trial balloon used by governments to pass laws that can censor speech more broadly.”
So, wait! More than just sexy spousal selfies?
A curious feature of Oklahoma’s SB 523 is the ending of Section Section 1024.2., “This section shall not be construed to prevent spouses from sending images of a sexual nature to each other.”
So it’s not against the law if Dusty Deevers—or any of his colleagues in the state senate or in his congregation—want to send depictions of “acts of excretion in a sexual context” to their legal spouses?
And does Section 1024.2.’s oddly worded, legislative afterthought mean images don’t have to necessarily feature either one of the married couple or that its hefty fines and lengthy sentences need not apply?
Criminalizing behavior–and creators of adult content
SB 523 goes a step further. Not content with prohibiting viewing, owning, or distributing the naughty images, no one would be allowed help produce them:
No person shall knowingly photograph, act in, pose for, model for, print, sell, offer for sale, give away, exhibit, publish, offer to publish, or otherwise distribute, display, or exhibit any book, magazine, story, pamphlet, paper, writing, card, advertisement, circular, print, picture, photograph, motion picture film, electronic video game or recording, image, cast, slide, figure, instrument, statue, drawing, presentation, or other article which is obscene material.
Don’t you be my neighbor
That’s not all, SB 523 actually provides a financial incentive for citizens to inform on one another. Free Speech Coalition, which tracks legislation affecting the adult industries, summarized:
The measure authorizes any person to bring action against any person who produces or distributes such items and knowingly engages in conduct that aids or abets the production or distribution of unlawful pornography. The measure provides that a person prevailing in his or her claims shall be entitled to $10,000.00 for each image as well as court costs and attorney fees.
One is one too many
Dusty Deevers may have set his sights on erotic imagery but legislators elsewhere, like Texas State Representative Hillary Gail Hickland, have taken aim at pleasure products too. In December she introduced Texas HB 1549 to prevent sex toys from being sold in Target, Walmart, and CVS, referring to sex toys as “obscene devices.”
Likewise, Indiana enacted a bill banning sexually oriented businesses from operating within 1,000 feet of “any location where children may be present.” And if you are trying to locate a sex toy retailer in West Virginia, you’re out of luck, as a 2023 law restricts all sexually oriented businesses, including “retailers of videos, pleasure products, and print materials, theaters, strip clubs, and even art studios featuring nude models.”
Worse, yet these and other state laws could be harbingers of federal legislation, evidenced by the current US administration’s embrace of the conservative Project 2025’s advocation that “Pornography should be outlawed. The people who produce and distribute it should be imprisoned.”
For a fact-checked discussion of the impact of prohibitions of adult content and how this has been centered in US policy discussions, check the Woodhull Freedom Foundation.
Image Sources: Wikimedia Commons
