SALT LAKE CITY — A Utah legislative panel last week — convened by GOP state lawmakers following a campaign of disinformation by conservative activists — culminated with misleading pronouncements about the supposed availability of “obscene material harmful to minors” in educational databases in the state, and with a call to press criminal charges against the makers of those databases.
According to a report by the Salt Lake City Tribune, conservative activists rang the alarm that “pornography” could be accessed in Utah’s public schools. This shock tactic caught the attention of a number of Republican state representatives pushing an ongoing agenda of suppressing sexual expression online, in particular Rep. Travis Seegmiller.
Seegmiller told the Judiciary Interim Committee meeting Wednesday that “I want to state unequivocally here, on the record: Obscene material harmful to minors exists in our Utah public schools today on a widespread basis, accessible through a variety of methods or channels for even our smallest, youngest children to access. I confirmed with my own eyes that this is true today."
But a closer look at the supposed scandal reveals that Seegmiller and the conservative activists were not talking about widespread search engines or the open internet. They were very narrowly referring to curated databases for in-school reasearch that have been previously scrutinized after similar complaints.
Peter Bromberg, executive director of the Salt Lake City Public Library, told the Salt Lake City Tribune that “claims of pornography on these platforms are simply false and part of a campaign by conservative activists to censor information that they personally find distasteful."
Bromberg explained that “the databases in question contain scholarly journal articles and mainstream media publications... and teachers use them to train students in proper research methods.”
“This is a walled garden of safe, curated information, and it’s an invaluable tool for teachers,” Bromberg, who also co-chairs the Utah Library Association’s advocacy committee, added.
"Much of what these advocates are claiming is pornographic actually doesn’t fit the legal definition of the term," Bromberg added.
When Everything is 'Pornography'
The problem here — as in other relentless, well-funded, religiously motivated campaigns — is that the groups pushing for political intervention have an extremely radical, incredibly overbroad definition of “pornography,” which often includes magazines like Cosmopolitan or Sports Illustrated, or any mention of human sexuality outside of a religious context.
The Utah Education Network, which provides these databases to public schools, had already wasted time trying to find any “pornography” on these educational databases, among them EBSCO Information Services.
The organization’s board members even decided preemptively in 2018 to temporarily block access to EBSCO Information Services “as they examined claims that pornography was present on the platform,” the Salt Lake City Tribune Reported.
“However, meeting materials from 2018 show that staff members at the Utah Education Network combed the database using explicit search terms and keywords provided by parents who claimed they’d found inappropriate material," the article continues. "They weren’t able to replicate the searches that had allegedly returned the pornographic content, according to a staff report from the time.”
All they found was “one article with a black-and-white line drawing of breasts and genitals, the report stated. EBSCO immediately filtered out the article upon request.”
Seegmiller’s hearing on Wednesday featured a string of misinformation and deliberate exaggeration by the likes of anti-porn crusader Nicholeen Peck, president of the socially conservative Empowered Families Coalition, who told the lawmakers “parents across Utah have discovered pornography, promotion of illegal drugs and alcohol and material normalizing pedophilia on educational databases that public school students use when doing research.”
“My computer is full, chock-full, of these images," Peck said, and also offered to share screenshots with lawmakers upon request.
A Made-Up Public Health Crisis
Peck is one of the masterminds of the infamous 2016 state resolution declaring that “porn is a public health crisis.” That resolution resulted in a copycat pseudo-legislative campaign throughout the U.S. that resulted in time and resources being diverted from preparation for an actual public health crisis like the COVID-19 pandemic.
Other speakers at Wedensday’s meeting included Sen. Todd Weiler, a Woods Cross Republican who has worked with Peck on censorship efforts and sponsored the made-up “public health crisis” resolution.
Michelle Boulter, a member of the Utah State Board of Education and co-founder of activist group Gathering Families, told the legislators that “one of her relatives was exposed to pornography at school and developed an addiction during his teen years.”
There are no scientific grounds for the religiously inspired concept of “porn addiction.”
“The reality is, these databases are not safe, and children are finding pornography,” Boulder said. “And I hope that we will become proactive rather than being reactive.”
Representative Eric Hutchings, R-Kearns, told the meeting that “honestly, I think we oughta drop the fear of God into some of these database providers. That if you’re going to put that kind of stuff out in front of our kids, you’re going to spend some prison time. And the state of Utah is going to pay for our filters by shutting your company down.”
This threat of criminal prosecution echoes a recent bill where Utah attempted to force a warning label on any adult content anywhere online that could be accessed from Utah, under criminal penalty.
Main Image: Utah Representative Travis Seegmiller
