SALT LAKE CITY — The two leading War on Porn crusaders in the Utah legislature, Republican Rep. Susan Pulsipher and Senator Todd Weiler celebrated their state’s pioneering role in developing anti-porn legislation and hailed their age verification initiative as the source of later copycat legislation.
Pulsipher and Wailer made their remarks during interviews with Salt Lake City Weekly reporter Matt Pacenza for an article published over the weekend surveying the effects of the state’s long-term crusade against adult content online.
As XBIZ reported, SB 287 was one of several anti-porn measures promoted in Utah by the Republican Party, which controls all branches of the state’s government. SB 287 was similar to the Louisiana age verification bill that went into effect in January 2023.
Free Speech Coalition Executive Director Alison Boden wrote to Weiler at the time, explaining that his bill was “so vague — and the requirements for compliance so contradictory” that she could not figure out how FSC members could comply.
Weiler and Pulsipher’s bill, the Salt Lake City Weekly explained, created civil liability for adult platforms, but “so far, no private Utah citizens have taken advantage of SB287 and filed a suit.”
Weiler told the paper that he had considered “a version of SB287 that would have given the attorney general a right to sue, but he decided it was less likely to pass the Legislature because it would have likely cost several million dollars in salaries for attorneys and support staff,” the Weekly reported.
"If I empowered the AG to go after them, it would have had a huge fiscal note," Weiler added.
Pulsipher gushed about how much positive feedback she alleged to have received from constituents.
"[It was] probably the most 'Thank Yous' of any stance I've taken or any bill I've run," she told the Weekly.
Yes, You Can Still Easily Find Porn in Utah's Computers
The article’s author did a cursory search for adult content in Utah — one of the first states where Aylo made the decision to block access to Pornhub because of potential liability created by the vaguely written bill — visiting the 20 most-visited adult sites as determined by Similarweb “from a computer in Salt Lake City using a home Internet connection with no filters installed.”
“Of the top 20,” Pacenza wrote, “10 could be accessed with no age verification or by simply clicking a button that says ‘Yes, I'm 18,’ but offering no proof. None of these are complying with Utah's law.”
"Sites that are overseas may not feel the need to comply with U.S. law," FSC’s Mike Stabile explained to Pacenza. "That's one of the key flaws of this legislative approach."
“Unsurprisingly,” the report revealed, “the sites with no age verification have seen a boost in traffic in Utah: Seven of the ten are up, and three of those have seen their traffic double. It turns out that if you don't make Utahns prove they're 18, they're more likely to check out your porn.”
Utah has often led other states in implementing anti-porn legislation and Weiler is known as a staunch Culture War proponent in the form of moralizing legislation, even within the state’s notably religiously conservative Republican Party.
In practice, the state has little separation between church, state, press, education and business, and the Mormon church — with which a majority of Utahns claim affiliation — has resisted scientific, evidence-based and parent-focused approaches to protecting children online.
Despite the national GOP’s laissez-faire philosophy regarding most business and regulatory issues, Utah’s Republican officeholders have relentlessly championed blanket mandates when it comes to default manufacturer-enabled filters or age verification systems.
The LDS Church has also promoted “porn filters” in Utah and nationwide, based on church elders’ theological belief that all porn — a term that for them encompasses all depictions of sexuality outside of the Mormon marriage — is a ploy by Satan to destroy Mormon households.
Legislation mandating porn filters, another of Weiler’s persistent crusading efforts, would also result in a financial boom for filter businesses, which would be able to bid for both public and private contracts.
A Forever War That Continues Benefitting the Crusaders
"Are we winning the war against pornography?" Weiler asked rhetorically in the Salt Lake City Weekly piece. "No. Will we ever win it? Probably not. But that doesn't mean we shouldn't do what we can."
The article points out that while SB 287 and other preachy efforts by Pulsipher and Weiler were "mocked by many progressive Utahns, who saw the same heavy-handed morality that limits our access to alcohol and lottery tickets," Utah's approach toward pornography "has spread quickly across the country."
The article concludes by quoting a Utah academic who posits that “What we know works best for stopping the potential negative effects of this content is for parents to talk to their children openly.”
Immediately after that, however, the piece suggests to Utah parents that this “conversation” should be almost exclusively about how terrible porn is, and endorses the highly controversial, sensationalizing 2015 documentary “Hot Girls Wanted.”
Weiler, also unsurprisingly, agrees with those terms of engagement.
“We need to make it safe to talk about it," Utah’s top anti-porn state senator told his local Weekly. "They're going to search for porn. They're going to find it. And so we need to talk about it."
