An Oklahoma state senator has proposed a law that would make watching pornography a felony and ban sexting among people who are not married.
The bill, set to be introduced next month (February) by state Sen. Dusty Deevers (R-Elgin), would prohibit consuming or producing sexual content that “lacks serious literary, artistic, educational, political, or scientific purposes or value” in any medium.
The measure defines “obscene material” as the depiction or description of any “acts of sexual intercourse,” including those that are “normal or perverted, actual or simulated.”
Content depicting sodomy and masturbation would also be off the table, in addition to videos, movies, video games and text messages that involve “sadomasochistic abuse” and “acts of excretion in a sexual context.”
Under the measure, pictures of human genitals or women’s breasts would also be banned as well as “lewd exhibition” of the “buttocks.”
It would carry prison sentences of up to a year and $2,000 fines.
The proposal would also allow anyone who produces or promotes the allegedly untoward content to be sued by any state resident for $10,000.
Married couples would be exempt from the ban, provided they only share explicit content they created together with each other.
The suggested law would even require social media sites like X to be made unavailable in the state, unless it heavily censored its content.
Deevers, a Baptist pastor who was elected last year to represent a rural district, envisioned that much of the ban would likely violate the First Amendment and penned a provision declaring that “constitutionally valid applications of this section shall be severed from any application that a court finds to be invalid.”
