Actor Ricky Schroder from “NYPD Blue” and “Silver Spoons” recently launched an initiative called the Council on Pornography Reform aimed at changing the nation’s laws in regard to x-rated content.
The group filed an amicus brief in the case Free Speech Coalition v. Colmenero, which is currently on appeal at the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals after the trial court imposed a preliminary injunction blocking enforcement of a Texas law passed in June meant to keep minors from accessing pornographic materials online.
The judge further ruled the law is unconstitutional on First Amendment grounds.
H.B. 1181 requires companies that produce or distribute pornographic material to have age-verification capability to ensure that the companies did not distribute it to minors.
Council on Pornography Reform argues in its brief that the First Amendment deals with political speech and has nothing to do with pornography or obscenity.
“It’s absolutely absurd that they use the First Amendment and freedom of speech as political speech, as the justification for pushing perversion and pornography into our homes, into our pockets” via our phones, Schroder told The Western Journal.
The Texas law is just about age verification, “but we need to go further than age verification,” he contended.
“We need we need an off switch for those of us who choose not to have it pushed,” Schroder continued. “The rest of you out there in America can have it. Americans love choice. I don’t want it pushed to my house, my phone, my kids’ phones.”
“Whoever pays that bill should have the right to have the adult content turned off at the service provider level,” he said.
Do you support Schroder’s five reforms?
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Schroder’s Council on Pornography Reform has identified five areas for legislative change regarding pornography.
Age verification is one. The organization also wants explicit material separated into a .xxx domain on the internet, rather than .com.
Further, the Council seeks social media algorithms for underage users, which would block pornography from coming to the devices they are using.
As Schroder stated above, he wants customers to have an “off” switch at the service provider level for all devices.
Finally, the Council “advocates for the development and enforcement of robust artificial intelligence standards and procedures concerning adult content.”
The intent here is not to allow pornography producers to seek to skirt the law, by creating life-like artificial images that are erotic in nature.
Schroder noted when he was a kid pornography was available through magazines, and he first saw it at too young an age (9 year-old), but the internet has made the problem so much worse.
He argued that erotic images and videos harm people by taking a healthy, God-given desire and perverting it.
“It’s a weapon system against God, against common sense. It’s a sickness, it’s a disease and it’s permeated us for too long, and it doesn’t have to stay this way,” he said.
Schroder, through his Reel American Heroes Foundation, plans to produce a documentary series on the subject called, “Erotic Erosion.”
“It’s time that internet pornography reform takes place,” he said.
“I believe that this can unify us in positive legislation and a positive bill, and then we can take that group of people and push them into the next issue,” Schroder added.
