Republican Sen. Mike Lee's pornography ban is moving forward in the Senate

A Republican bill that would ban all pornography federally is advancing within the Senate.

Utah Senator Mike Lee's Interstate Obscenity Definition Act (IODA) has been referred to the Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation for review. If approved, it will go to the U.S. Senate for voting.

Related: Republican Sen. Mike Lee wants to ban pornography with new bill

The law would alter the Miller Test, which was established in the 1973 Miller v. California Supreme Court decision that determined "obscene" speech is not protected by the First Amendment. The test defines obscenity as material that "appeal[s] to prurient interests as judged by the average person; depict[s] sexual conduct in a patently offensive manner; and lack[s] serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value."

The IODA would remove the “community standards” benchmark for determining obscenity, and would remove the provision clarifying that sexual conduct must be depicted in a “patently offensive” manner to be considered obscene — labeling all phonographic content as obscenity and rendering it illegal nationally.

The bill instead defines obscenity as material that “taken as a whole, appeals to the prurient interest in nudity, sex, or excretion; depicts, describes, or represents actual or simulated sexual acts with the objective intent to arouse, titillate, or gratify the sexual desires of a person; and taken as a whole, lacks serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value.”

The plan to outlaw pornography is outlined in Project 2025, the 900-page document created by the conservative extremist Heritage Foundation that provided Trump with a blueprint for his second term. The first page of the document equates transgender people and drag queens to pornography, and the fifth page calls for a nationwide ban.

"Pornography, manifested today in the omnipresent propagation of transgender ideology and sexualization of children, for instance, is not a political Gordian knot inextricably binding up disparate claims about free speech, property rights, sexual liberation, and child welfare," it states. "It has no claim to First Amendment protection."

"Pornography should be outlawed," the paragraph continues. "The people who produce and distribute it should be imprisoned. Educators and public librarians who purvey it should be classed as registered sex offenders. And telecommunications and technology firms that facilitate its spread should be shuttered."

Related: Kansas bill requires ID to view material 'harmful to minors,' including 'acts of homosexuality'

LGBTQ+ identities are included within "obscene materials" in some states. Under Kansas criminal law, obscene material deemed "harmful to minors" that requires identification to view includes nudity and "sexual content," which is defined in part as "acts of masturbation, homosexuality, or sexual intercourse."

This is the third time Lee, best known for his since-deleted social media posts mocking the murders of Minnesota Rep. Melissa Hortman and her husband, has introduced the IODA. It was defeated in both 2022 and 2024, and is not likely to muster the support needed to pass both bodies of Congress this time around.