Conservative Christians’ new tactics against porn are bearing fruit.

Every year since 2013, the National Center on Sexual Exploitation (NCOSE) has published a Dirty Dozen list of companies it believes are significant contributors to sexual exploitation. New to the list in 2021 OnlyFans.com, the hugely popular site for cam models and independent pornographers, was described by NCOSE as the latest version of the online sexual exploitation market. The group insists OnlyFans facilitate sexual exploitation, harm minors and encourage men to objectify and humiliate women, and the company’s inclusion on the list was a sign that it had become a target for anti-porn crusaders.

In the days following last week’s announcement by OnlyFans that it would ban sexually explicit videos, Victory! was the word prominently featured on the NCOSE website. The group takes much of the credit for push the site to ban porn from October 1. It is the group’s second major win in less than a year: NCOSE also claims part of the credit to push Mastercard and Visa sever key ties with the world’s largest porn site, Pornhub.com, last December. NCOSE’s unambiguous goal is to bankrupt companies that peddle pornography, and supporters of the organization believe they are succeeding.

Pornographers commit the greatest crimes of the century! were the first words I heard from Laurie, an evangelical anti-porn activist and staffer at a major anti-porn organization that hosted a conference I attended as a researcher in 2019. (Laurie is a pseudonym I had to provide anonymity to staff members to access the conference.) She led a session called Pornography and the Law. I started the day with a continental breakfast where I sat with three white women in their twenties, all friends, who had flown from Portland, Oregon, to the East Coast, where one roasts her own coffee beans. They all have a passion for sex trafficking, as someone described to me, and are members of the same church.

During the conference session a few hours later, Laurie explained that two major crimes have been committed by pornographic websites: the crime of obscenity, which involves the distribution of material so offensive that it is not protected by the First Amendment, and the crime of facilitating illegal activities, including assault, rape and human trafficking. Obscenity is not now, and has never been legal in this country, Laurie explained. Obscenity in 2019 is just as illegal as it was in 1919 and 1819, but no one is enforcing these laws, she told us in aggravated tone. Internet porn is a complete cesspool full of rapists and pedophiles documenting their crimes, Laurie said, nodding. If the laws were enforced, pornographers would be off the streets and where they deserve to be: in jail.

Evangelical Christians are focused on criminalizing pornography and persecuting the porn industry for over a century. But as a sociologist who has spent years studying the contemporary anti-pornography movement, I’ve seen evangelicals lean towards new tactics as the porn industry itself has changed.

In recent decades, anti-porn Christian activists have pushed for the enforcement of obscenity laws dating back to the late 19th century.^e century as a way to fight the porn industry. However, obscenity laws have been notoriously difficult to prosecute since a 1973 Supreme Court ruling, Miller v. California, when the Court created what is now called the Miller Standard, which differentiates obscenity from other forms of protected speech based on different community norms and literary, artistic, political, or scientific merit. That is, Laurie is right in saying that obscenity is still a crime, but wrong in describing all pornography as obscene. Since the 1970s, the courts have consistently distinguished pornography from obscenity, the former protected by the First Amendments’ right to free speech.

The Primary Strategy of the Anti-Porn Movement in the 21^NS century is to use anti-sex trafficking laws to restrict porn. The last of these, SESTA-FOSTA, signed in 2018, situates all Internet pornography on obscure grounds: it amends the Communications Decency Act of 1996 to remove protections granted to websites for its users’ content if it is found that content promotes or facilitates the prostitution of another person . In other words, under SESTA-FOSTA, any website with sexual content could potentially be legally liable for sex trafficking, a term that is only loosely defined. Anti-porn activists are taking advantage of this.

OnlyFans’ existing terms of use require all people using the site to be over the age of 18 and not display obscenity. This means that the site has a long list of words that are banned, from kidnapping to zoophilia. Anti-porn activists have warned that websites with user-uploaded content, such as OnlyFans, are only superficially compliant with the law, and that it is easy for users to thwart both age and content verifications. But it is perfectly legal to allow adults on OnlyFans to share pornographic content. That’s part of why it is a popular option for sex workers, especially those who want to produce content independently and free of supervision (and sometimes direct pressure and coercion) from the agents and directors in commercial pornography.

Although OnlyFans has said publicly that banking supervision motivated their decision to ban all sexually explicit videos, fear of government scrutiny may also have played a role in their decision. The announcement came just over a week after Republican Representative Ann Wagner of Missouri sent a letter with more than 100 signatures to the Department of Justice urging the Attorney General to investigate OnlyFans.com for criminal activity. The letter came at the urging of several interconnected anti-pornography organizations, including NCOSE.

Although NCOSE touts itself as impartial and non-religious, the group began in the 1960s as Morality in Media, an ecumenical group of clergy united in their opposition to pornography. Today, the group maintains its religious ties through a leadership of conservative Christians and alliances with Christian organizations. Still, NCOSE has benefited from alliances with anti-porn feminists concerned about the exploitation of women, including Gail Dines and Julie Bindel, and secular porn addiction recovery groups, such as NoFap.

While secular feminists and many recovering porn addicts maintain that their problems with porn are not due to moral opposition to sexual explicitness, they have joined a movement started by and continues to be led by conservative Christians. And religious activists use these other groups to make the anti-porn movement seem more diverse than it actually is.

I repeatedly heard about the so-called diversity of the anti-porn movement as I traveled to events across the country. Evangelical activists insisted that the problems with porn transcend any religious belief system and can instead be measured as objective forms of harm. But in my research, I find that religious actors continue to dominate anti-porn efforts, even behind the scenes. or by resolutions passed by states to declare pornography a public health crisis, An petition signed by millions to shut down Pornhub.com, or the latest move to push OnlyFans.com to ban porn, these efforts can be traced back to organizations with religious roots.

When anti-porn groups use language about human trafficking, they hope to gain widespread support, as we all agree that no one should be forced into labor or slavery, sexual or otherwise. Yet groups like NCOSE and others led by conservative Christians use human trafficking as an umbrella term for all sex work, including that which is legal and consensual. According to NCOSE’s guiding values, the commercialization of sexual acts is inherently exploitative.

As much as sex workers have pointed out in the wake of OnlyFans announcement, executives will not face the harm caused by the site’s new policies. Instead, sex workers are themselves. Camming is by far one of the safest forms of sex work, and without this big platform, many will be forced to consider riskier shapes.

The win for NCOSE and groups that like it when it comes to OnlyFans isn’t cutting back on sexual exploitation. It is the victory of anti-sex work convictions to gain a firmer footing within politics and business.