WASHINGTON – Democratic U.S. Senator for Illinois Dick Durbin participated in a joint press conference Wednesday with the CEO of the anti-porn crusade group NCOSE (formerly Morality in Media).
The press conference was organized by Republican Senator Lindsey Graham to build support for the controversial Eliminating Abusive and Rampant Neglect of Interactive Technologies Act (EARN IT) Act.
Leading free speech groups, including Free Speech Coalition, Electronic Frontier Foundation, and the Woodhull Freedom Foundation, have raised serious concerns about the EARN IT Act, which has been pushed by anti-Section 230 lawmakers for years.
Woodhull President and CEO Ricci Joy Levy called the 2022 version of the EARN IT Act “an attack on internet freedom, an attack on the First Amendment and an attack on human rights.”
A Woodhull representative explained that the EARN IT Act “would make internet platforms legally liable for any illegal sexual content posted on their platforms or services – even if they aggressively block and promptly remove such content.”
The representative added that the proposed law “incentivizes internet platforms to broadly censor legal expressions under the pretext of pursuing illegal content.”
Wednesday’s press conference was posted to YouTube by Graham, although his account disabled comments or the ability to share them.
Graham announced the conference via a post on X.com announcing that he was “holding a press conference on the need to pass legislation to protect children online and hold Big Tech accountable.”
The post announced the presence of Durbin and staff from NCOSE, Protect All Children from Trafficking (PACT) and International Justice Mission (IJM).
According to a statement from IJM, speakers at the press conference included NCOSE CEO Dawn Hawkins, a conservative Mormon activist who played a key role in changing the branding of. Morality in Media should downplay the religiously inspired core mission of pro-censorship.
Under Hawkins’ leadership, NCOSE has had successes in sharing projects and platforms with supposedly progressive lawmakers, mostly in the name of bipartisanship, even though the well-funded anti-porn and anti-sex work organization claims to be nonpartisan.
As XBIZ reported, Democratic New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez issued a press statement in March that prominently highlighted her involvement with NCOSE and Hawkins.
AOC’s office declined to answer questions about why the supposedly pro-sex work lawmaker chose to highlight an organization that seeks to criminalize all sex work and eradicate adult content, and which has an extensive, well-documented history of defending state censorship and opposing LGBTQ+ rights .
Durbin praised Wednesday’s news conference with NCOSE, celebrating that while the Senate Judiciary Committee, which he chairs, “has not always been known for bipartisanship. Yet a year ago, all 21 members — every Democrat and every Republican on the committee — unanimously passed “five bills regulating online speech,” which he claimed were intended to “make minors safer online.”