How much of a role did these groups play in anyone’s decision making here? I’ve never gotten the impression that either of these groups to be especially influential outside of getting congressional reps to occasionally sponsor symbolic legislative fights. Like you can run all the media that you want but ultimately banning porn from the internet is a pretty quixotic endeavor and the stakeholders in OF know this. Where’s the leverage?
I think what the sibling to this comment has brought up is important to understand.
These groups are entirely trying to alter the definition of “sex trafficking.” Or rather, attempting to make the phrase so broad as to be meaningless.
Sex trafficking brings in images of humans being thrown into a container against their will, shipped overseas in darkness, and then maybe drugged up and pimped out in hidden shady backstreet houses.
These groups like Exodus Cry and NCOSE are attempting to conflate that above image with grown and often well educated people who are choosing to be their own bosses.
You can see this conflation all over their websites and in many of their press releases.
How much of an influence did they have in this and the pornhub debacle? I mean, i don’t know how we could accurately measure this. But it would appear their pressure campaigns are heavily funded, very active, and then during those campaigns many of their goals were met. So I guess it’s up to you to decide how much influence they really played.
Wrt influence, much of it comes from the association that these groups have worked hard to build between porn and sex trafficking. Simply disliking porn because of religious and/or conservative values is easy to dismiss for a large majority of people.
However, if "sinful" adult content and sex work becomes synonymous with non-consent, hurting children, etc, their arguments become far more difficult to dismiss without looking badly in the public eye. Especially for our politicians where discourse is limited to extended soundbytes and debates that leave no room for nuance or deeper discussion.
